-Know thyself.-
~Plato
Projection.
It is the most basic, yet insidious form of coping mechanism humanity has ever evolved.
But what exactly is it, and why for the love of donuts is it so damned hard to identify?
This is actually, in my own personal opinion, rather much an easier thing to get a handle on, than most people make it out to be, and in my own life I have found that identifying it makes for a metaphorical ammunition press that never seems to stop giving you rounds to fire off, if you are of the mind to do so that is.
Knowing when to shoot, and when to stay in cover, is also somewhat of a learned skill needed to use this to its greatest effectiveness. The trick is however, in knowing whose name is on which bullet, to keep with the allegory a bit longer than necessary.
Firstly, let me explain what I mean by all of this; Projection, is as the word clearly implies, the casting of something from one place to another, usually within the context of images, or more simply, ideas.
In the psychological context, it means to take something internal, and to personally externalize it onto someone else. In the most basic of ways, you are projecting your own thoughts or feelings or reactions, onto another person, most likely in an effort to either explain something about them for yourself, or as a coping reaction to diffuse a disruption within your own cognitive processes which you cannot reconcile.
It has been said that it is easiest to find our own faults in others, and this can been proven true time and again, as varied levels of hypocrisy can be observed between people where fault finding becomes normative.
We can most readily identify things we dislike about ourselves in others, because we recognize it, however, when one is projecting, this becomes muddled, and far less clear.
Hand in glove with this is of course, is fault finding, wherein one will focus upon negative traits or behaviours either in oneself or in others, and harp upon them needlessly. You know what your weaknesses and shortcomings are, but do you truly know what the same might be in others? Honestly I doubt it, given how much we tend to hide, as a means of protecting ourselves, others have a much harder time seeing or understanding our innermost selves, and how can you know the struggles or stories behind the scars and behaviours of another at little more than a glance?
All this is born of the root failure of not taking personal responsibility for ones own thoughts, choices and actions, and the results thereof. What is much more damaging, is when the time and effort is put into a relationship, only for this to be betrayed by the other (or by yourself) by way of exploitation of the weaknesses and hurts, as the saying goes, the closer you are to someone, the deeper you can bury the blade.
Yet, the projection of such personal things onto another, is at times, equally as damaging. To be accused of behaviours, mindsets, weaknesses, shortcomings or choices of which are misconstrued, unrealized, misplaced or outright untrue, is its own sort of damage, and it is the trick of playing upon our universal fear of the unknown that drives this home all the harder.
Think about how shocking or hurtful it is when someone accuses you of the very thing that they themselves have done? How much more so when it is something that you have actively avoided doing?
The doubt and fear takes hold, the question of how valid the accusation might be can carry great weight. "Did I really do/say/mean that?" "Did this really happen?" "Am I the bad guy here?" "Am I actually a monster?"
Such questions are necessary to ask oneself, and can indeed be helpful long term, but when it is a false accusation or misleading query, it instead becomes harmful to self. A knife is useful for cutting your food, it is much less useful as food.
What is worse, the projection of self onto another, is a shortcut we as humans use to speed up the cognitive process, we humanize things, and others by projecting traits onto them.
And how easy is it to project our own traits, be it consciously or subconsciously?
A machine, like a car for example, may be humanized by way of a gender label, most often female, most often by a noun, or even a name, a pet, is humanized in a similar way, to help with internalized inclusion and to accept behaviours we might not otherwise understand.
This is all well and good, but when we do so in a negative light, it suddenly becomes dangerous for ourselves and others.
Water is essential for life, but you don't give a thirsty man a drink with a firehose... More to the point, when we ascribe our own negative behaviour to others, we are pushing off the burden of responsibility onto them, as a means to protect our frail ego from the necessary introspective honesty, by which we might unfuck ourselves and stop our own selfish, and self destructive behaviour.
But straightening ourselves out is hard work, it is uncomfortable and we often avoid it because of this, so why not project our vile motivations and actions onto others? Its easier than looking hard in the mirror and saying "I need to stop being such an selfish unmitigated asshole to my partner."
Indeed, the blissful ignorance of our own conscious thought process means we can ignore the more abstract, yet somehow more honest subconscious, by focusing upon something external to distract us, rather than dig deep within ourselves to better understand who and what we are, or who or what we might could be. But by not knowing, we duck our burden of personal responsiblity.
When we don't know ourselves, we find a sort of vague equilibrium, a metaphysical space where we are all potential, anything is possible, and the sky might not be the limit, but the dark secret of such a state of mind or being is that we lack direction, or a goal, and as such we can never be disappointed, because we haven't tried to do anything.
This also means, internally at least, that no one else can be disappointed in us too, because we have yet to fail. But this is as I said before, ducking personal responsibility. The most harmful way we do this, is by ascribing our own behavoure or faults or imperfections to someone else. I cannot say why we do this, maybe the abstract, subconscious mind simply must make space in our head, and thusly must trick the conscious mind into to venting personal observations as something else, onto someone else when we choose not to dig into ourselves in an orderly fashion, and figure out how to go about setting ourselves right, or at least making ourselves a little better if no less terrible.
What seems to make this whole process toxic however, is an overabundance of negativity and faultfinding by which a person is metaphorically drowning in rampant accusations, exposition of character flaws, past insults or wrongdoing, redged up from the imperfect archives of human memory... For young children especially this gives an example and sets a pattern of habits that are long term, dangerous at worse, and simply heartbreaking at best.
Without me going into the whole breakdown of child development, I'll once more point to my exwife: her mother was a fault finder, a hypocrite and projector. Any problem, any inconvenience, anything she didn't like, was someone else's fault, and she was going to by god tell out about it, and what was more, she could never understand how everyone could just simply treat her so terribly, when she had been nothing but
It would be rather funny (its not) if it was not oh so sad and utterly terrifying. (which it clearly is.) Yet she would offer all of this toxic input, dispensing it like it was candy, to anyone
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and to share it, but repeatedly handing out verbial beatdowns born of your own unwillingness to admit that you might have issues, is pure and simple abuse. It is, the projection of yourself (and your brokenness) onto others, backed with intent, must of which is to simply make yourself feel better in the moment.
Social Media has become a pressure cooker of such behaviour, and as the most recent events seem to indicate, the lids about to blow off, and frankly, I doubt any one of us has a mop big enough for the kind of mess it could be. And I know most folks don't have the fortitude or willpower to endure what would follow.
Not even 100% sure I do, but I'm more than happy to find out, everyone else? Not so much.
Back to the topic at hand however...
A typical narcissist will blame others, for their own bad behaviour, a skilled one, will blame others for shit they themselves have yet to be caught at, but the truly damaged narcissist, will completely push their own behaviour off onto another, paint that person as the actual narcissist, and then claim victimhood for themselves, as if they where an innocent bystander, or set upon hostage, rather than not only a willing participant, but an active one as well, refusing to acknowledge their own hand in the events leading upto the latest shit storm they leave in their wake, and furthermore, will blame the victim for being the instigator if they should ever stand up for themselves against the actions and choices of the narsissist. All it takes is just a little bit of blissful ignorance, a refusal to accept responsibility, and just enough selfishness to be tone deaf to everyone around you.
Being on the other end of that equation, especially if you are the kind of person who willingly, gladly takes on the burden of responsibility, is akin to getting your reproductive organs hooked up to a car battery once a month while angry (insert your prefered, culturally inappropriate person group to joke about here) beat you in the face with baseball bats wrapped in popped bubble wrap.
And this is not to say it cannot or is not ever a 2-way street, far from it, but if both sides are playing the same game, by the same basic rules, the only conflict I can foresee, is having separate outcomes in mind.
But then, if it is not a 2-way street, knowing when you are being detrimental and when you are actually standing up for yourself, is a whole new level of complicated, as I found out in the waning year of my marriage.
I shall not cover that here again now.
Understanding how to know yourself, how to self evaluate and regulate, will be key in not projecting your shit onto others, and maybe, it might force you to fix it yourself, or with help, but in either case, it is not a small burden. It is not for the faint of heart, weak of will, or childish of mind.
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