Both Things Can Be True

A reflection on complexity, contradiction, and making more room for our experience.

There’s a moment that happens often in therapy.

Someone says something with hesitation in their voice, almost like they’re confessing.

They’ll say:

“I know this sounds contradictory…”

And then they’ll tell me two things that feel impossible to hold at the same time:

I miss someone and I don’t want them back.

I love my partner and I feel disconnected.

I’m relieved it ended and I’m grieving.

I had a beautiful year and one of the hardest years of my life.

I’m angry and I understand why they did what they did.

I want closeness and I want space.

Usually what follows is some version of:

“So which one is it?”

It’s such a human question.

And I think many of us learn, for good reasons, to believe there should only be one answer: one feeling, one story, one truth. But experience rarely organizes itself that neatly.

—

One thing I notice often in therapy is that people can become exhausted trying to decide which part of themselves is the real one.

If I’m struggling to show up for someone, maybe I don’t care enough. If I feel resentful, maybe I’m ungrateful. If I’ve done something harmful, maybe I’m just harmful. If I’m overwhelmed, maybe my needs aren’t legitimate. If I’m scared, maybe I’m not brave.

So we start trying to solve the contradiction. We defend one side. We dismiss the other. We argue ourselves into certainty.

And often, the more urgently we try to resolve it, the narrower our world becomes.

—

Something I appreciate about psychological research is that there is growing support for the idea that our ability to hold complexity, to remain flexible in the presence of competing thoughts, emotions, needs, and experiences, is often connected to wellbeing.

Not because difficult emotions disappear. Not because clarity suddenly arrives.

But because we stop assuming that tension, ambivalence, or contradiction mean we’re failing to understand ourselves.

We become more able to stay with experiences that don’t fit neatly together, and to trust that feeling more than one thing at once is not necessarily a sign we are lost.

I find that idea quietly hopeful.

—

This is one of the places therapy can feel different.

Not because someone tells you which truth is correct.

But because there is room to stay with both long enough to see what begins to emerge.

To discover that grief and relief sometimes arrive together, that boundaries and love can coexist, that anger does not cancel understanding, that fear and courage are often much closer together than we imagine, and that being overwhelmed does not automatically mean being incapable.

This is not positive thinking. And it’s not about forcing ourselves into some enlightened middle ground.

Some experiences cannot be reconciled. Some losses remain losses. Some relationships remain complicated.

Sometimes the work is not integration.

Sometimes it is simply becoming less afraid of complexity.

—

If you notice yourself reaching for certainty, trying to decide which feeling counts, which version of yourself is the real one, which truth wins,

I wonder whether the question is not:

“Which one is true?”

But:

“What happens if I make room for both?”