Emotional conflict

Examples of basic emotions

Emotional conflict occurs when a person experiences two (or more) opposing emotions/feelings at the same time, and those opposing feelings are pulling them in different directions.

Carl Jung indicated that "emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious are the classical features of...medical psychology". The child psychoanalyst Eric Erickson indicated that emotional conflict was a source of neurosis in children.

Emotional conflict happens when:

• A person wishes to do something, but another part of the person doesn’t want to do it.

• A person feels both positive and negative emotions about the same person or situation.

• A person has two or more different values, desires, or needs inside themselves that are incompatible.

Emotional conflict can create stress, indecision, hesitation, and/or even physical tension. See also: Stress management

Journal articles

• Emotional conflict affects microsaccade dynamics in the emotional face-word Stroop task, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2025 May;1547(1):204-219. doi: 10.1111/nyas.15342. Epub 2025 Apr 2024.

• Differences in Emotional Conflict Processing between High and Low Mindfulness Adolescents: An ERP Study, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2022 Mar 2;19(5):2891. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19052891.

• Conflict control of emotional and non-emotional conflicts in preadolescent children, Biol Psychol. 2019 Sep:146:107708. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.05.008. Epub 2019 May 30.

• Differences in the emotional conflict task between individuals with high and low social adjustment: An ERP study, PLoS One. 2019 Jun 12;14(6):e0217962. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217962. eCollection 2019.

• Positive emotion impedes emotional but not cognitive conflict processing, Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2017 Jun;17(3):665-677. doi: 10.3758/s13415-017-0504-1.

• Emotional conflict in interpersonal interactions, NeuroImage. Volume 54, Issue 2, 15 January 2011, Pages 1685-1691

• Affect, emotional conflict, and deficit: an overview, Psychother Psychosom. 1991;56(3):116-22. doi: 10.1159/000288543.

See also

• Emotional stability
• Neuroticism
• Self-regulation

External links

• A Guide To Conflicting Feelings: Dealing With Mixed Emotions

• Emotional regulation during moments of conflict

• Emotional reactions leading to conflict, University of Toledo

• Intense Emotional Conflict as a Dysfunctional State

• Consequences of Emotional Conflict in the Workplace

• The Emotional Conflict Behind 50 Mental-Health Symptoms

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions