I’ve had structural integrity on my mind this week. In a building, structural integrity means that all of the diverse parts are integrated, working together and holding together. It turns out, human integrity is much the same.

A few years back I was going through a particularly rough time and I found myself spending a good amount of time arguing with myself about various things. It got to the point where I reached out and asked a friend, who is also a psychologist, and also happens to specialize in working with a condition called dissociative identity disorder, if this meant I was going crazy. I’ll never forget his answer because in many ways it changed my life.

He said (and this is my paraphrase because as a clinician he’d never use these brash terms), but he essentially said, “The real crazy people aren’t the ones who talk to themselves. They’re the ones who don’t.”

So it turns out everyone, in a sense, has multiple personalities. The disorder is called “dissociative identity” because in certain individuals the disconnect between those facets of personality has grown so great that they don’t speak to one another any more. They’ve become so compartmentalized that they fight for control of the body and while one is in control the others loose awareness of time.

So it was nice to hear I wasn’t going crazy (although I think the jury may still be out on that one), but even better was the realization that the more I allow all the facets of my personality to freely express—even when they seem to disagree with each other … no, especially when they disagree with each other—the more whole I become. It was around that time that I adopted the phrase, “I reserve the right to disagree with myself.” It sounds funny but it’s an important freedom.

It means I’ve come to understand my mind looks less like a single business owner and more like a corporate board room or a tribal council fire. There are a lot of seats with a lot of voices and sometimes very disparate perspectives. There was a time when some of those voices seem so inappropriate, so radical, so childish, so dangerous, my goal was to keep them silent, deny them, or try to exorcise them as if they were a kind of demon. But they aren’t demons. They’re me. Just me.

We all have different voices within us and all of those voices are us. Letting them all speak and trying to get them all on the same page can be messy and confusing, but the alternative is far worse. No matter how much you try to silence it, no true voice inside you will be denied forever. It will wait and wait until it can’t wait any longer and then when no one is looking it will grab the wheel of the bus and drive you right off the road. In its worst form it’s called dissociative identity disorder. In its more common form it’s called self-sabotage. It’s what’s happening when you find yourself saying, “I don’t understand why I always do this to myself when everything is going along just fine.”

The mildest and most pervasive consequence of not letting all your voices speak is what we see in people as a lack of integrity. Saying one thing and doing another. Not being dependable because for some reason there are forces within you that are not integrated into the whole that can and will unexpectedly change the game if they can.

So it turns out, human integrity is a lot like structural integrity. It’s not some abstract moral virtue to be lived up to. It’s simply a measure of whether all the parts are integrated—working together and holding together. Being human is complex. Letting all your voices have a chance to speak their mind, especially if you never have, can at first seem like you’re going crazy. But you’re not. You’re just being honest about who you really are in all your messy, diverse and sometimes outright contradictory ways. You’re allowed. Let them speak. Make sure to listen. Find a way to give all of you a voice, each in its time, and you’ll find the strength of your integrity. Then, use it to build yourself a beautiful life.