A simple technique to protect yourself from someone else's projection!

Don’t you hate it when someone projects their stuff onto you?

Projection is a subconscious coping mechanism to help a person deflect a challenging situation away from themselves and place the attention onto another person. In order to protect themselves from feeling unease a person displaces their emotion elsewhere. It can also be referred to as blame shifting whereby a person blames another person rather than owning the feelings or the reality within themselves leaving them to play the role as the victim.

The ‘proud projector’ disowns parts of themselves by highlighting or seeing them in others. This is the key to understanding projection because what a person is purging onto another is actually the parts of themselves they dislike or refuse to take responsibility for.

Imagine the scenario of standing in a supermarket line gazing out in front of you. You catch the glimpse of the person in front of you who is frustrated about waiting in a line. As your eyes meet they say, why are you giving me such a bad look- what did I ever do to you? This type of perception can only happen because they are in a negative state and possibly have a lower self-image and because this aggression is within them, they see it in you.

Projection can be hurtful, negative and completely dis-empowering when we do not have clear awareness around what is going on and we passively take on energy from another person. The minute we buy into what the other person is saying or projecting onto us, then we take on that feeling and it affects us emotionally. We can feel ourselves shrink the moment we take on the negative and we can hear our inner thoughts move from clarity towards self-doubt or self-criticism.

This is normally what projection sounds like:

You always do this…

You are so irritating when you do that…

You are such a blah blah blah….

As you can see the common word is YOU!

The moment your subconscious mind hears the word YOU, you will have a natural mechanism to defend yourself, so instinctively you will react back.  Your reaction would then throw fuel to an already sensitive fire, and that person would then attack back- creating conflict and stress.

So this is a technique which I have taught my children, which will help you redefine or re-frame a projected comment from another and have more clarity around what is going on for them. This will allow you to self-manage your own reaction instead of blindly reacting. This will instantly shift the dynamics of the conversation and will therefore stop you from taking on any of that gooey energy.

Very simply, this is how it works… As you hear a person say, you always, or you never, or you are such a …  in your own thoughts, simply replace the word YOU with the word I. Now in your thoughts you will hear,  I always do this... I am so irritating when… I am such a ….

Now that your mind is hearing I am instead of you are , you will  alleviate your inner reaction.

How simple yet effective is that? 

Even though they may not be owning up to their own self limitation by using the word I, it gives you insight into how that person sees themselves and it gives you insight into the tapestry of their thoughts and belief system.

This insight and awareness is powerful because you shift away from taking it personally to seeing the situation through compassionate eyes, because you can now see into their own belief system.

You can even take this further by reflecting that awareness back onto that person. For example, asking them, “how come you see yourself that way?” A ‘proud projector’ will have no idea what you are talking about, however it will stop you from taking on negative emotion and shrinking to staying in your power and remaining detached.

The more you remain detached the less reactive you become and the more confident and empowered you can stay.

Give it a try and let me know how you go!

To your truth and freedom with lots of love,

Cheryne 

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