Signs your Shadow is leading your behavior
“Projection” definition & meaning
Projection has various meanings, what they all have in common is something is sent out or forward. A movie is projected onto a screen; a skilled actress projects her voice out into a large theater without seeming to shout; also, something sticking out from a wall can be called a projection - https://www.merriam-webster.com
For example, when a person bullys you, they want to make you feel weak. However, the bully is usually the one with deeper insecurities. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the weaker person. Defensive projection is attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another person (disowning, dissociating the trait I cannot accept in myself).
Mainstream, adult examples of projection
Projection is a defense mechanism. People use it to protect their self-esteem by denying:
- traits,
- behaviors,
- characteristics,
- impulses, or
- feelings
which threaten either their self-esteem (gut brain) or self-concept (head brain). The mechanism is to imagine (project) the unwanted traits onto someone else. Some examples:
- A wife is attracted to a male co-worker yet can’t admit her feelings. When her husband talks about a female co-worker, wife becomes jealous and accuses him of being attracted to the other woman,
- A man feeling insecure about his own masculinity, mocks other men for acting like women,
- An athlete dislikes a hockey team member. Over time the athlete begins to believe this teammate hates them,
- A young man ignores his own aggressive impulses. Instead he inaccurately believes his friends display aggressive tendencies,
- A mother criticizes her daughter for interrupting her while she’s talking. In fact, the mother regularly interrupts the daughter,
- Feeling the urge to steal, a person feels guilty. Over time, they suspect others are planning to take their wallet or other valuables,
- A teenager with unconscious racist impulses might project those impulses onto a friend and then, on very slight grounds, accuse the friend of being a racist. When a person attributes their own unacceptable thoughts and feelings to others, their child within imagines this excuses them of blame, shame and need for change.
- Blame the victim ~ When someone is the victim of a crime, the perpetrator sometimes blames the victim for the perpetrator’s choices and actions. If someone was sexually assaulted, the projector may blame the person assaulted for dressing provocatively.
- A husband who has a hostile nature might attribute this hostility to his wife and say she has an anger management problem.
- Similarly, in false accusations, someone with adulterous feelings might accuse their partner of infidelity.
- Projection occurs when someone tries to shift blame, to ignore their own agency in creating the problem. Projection also occurs when people block their own awareness of their own unwanted feelings, flaws, and quirks; and, then perceive these traits reflected back to them from another person. Projection is what makes arguments between two people so confusing. It’s very common to accuse the other of the behavior you dislike in your own self.
Another common example of projection, is the British Royal Family. Especially to North Americans, its’ pretty obvious the “cult” of the Royal Family” exists primarily for those people dissociated from their own capacity to be Kings and Queens in their own lives. The popularity of the British Royal Family in the UK is a clear example of “projection” in the way most people know the term.
The Shadow
As many readers will know, “projection” connects with the Jungian idea of “shadow;” the internal parts of ourself we refuse to acknowledge or attend to, are perceived as outside us, in other people.
When were our old habits formed? Most of our internal Shadow parts were formed prior to age 15. Our healthy Self leadership was weaker then, immature. Other internal parts tried to protect us by being dramatic in one form or another. When we’re being reactive, these old protecter parts burst out, still trying to save you from pain, harm and rejection. Did any unresolved and unacknowledged wounding occur in your early years?
Having a set of shadow behaviors is not a shortcoming or deficit. Our old habits exist as FEEDBACK, as information. They inform our healthy Self what needs attention, creativity and support to change. The message of each shadow expression is similar: You and I, each have old habits. They need our conscious, deliberate attention, awareness and creative intervention.
The North American version of the uncritical UK fascination with their Royal Family is the uncritical US fascination with billionaires, celebrities and movies stars. Same pattern: media builds them up and feeds them back to the public who have dissociated from their own capacity to be Kings and Queens in their own lives. Once an individual matures up to sit on their own internal throne of healthy Self-leadership; and, makes their own healthy choices and decisions — the need for an external King or Queen diminishes.
Q: What’s the common denominator between UK Royal Family and USA billionaires?
A: Perceiving our own effectiveness as external to our Self. Perceiving our own healthy Self-leadership as external to me. “I lost it; it’s outside somewhere, out there in other people.”
The healthy alternative? Perceiving our healthy Self-leadership INSIDE us as a daily practice of self-connection, self-awareness, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, healthy self-direction.
Shadow material is old habits activated
The first step in handling these, once we’re aware of them, is to simply admit we’re being reactive — without judging our habits or our healthy Self for allowing this.
If we do judge, it can reinforce our old habit being in charge, instead of our Healthy Self leadership. Our old habits were simply formed thru repetition. New, better habits can replace old ones — if you practice the new behaviors you want.
Signs Your Shadow is leading how you behave:
- In a relationship, you act out old dynamics — emotional reruns.
- You’re overly critical of yourself, degrading yourself for not measuring up to some external standard,
- You consciously do something you know is unhealthy for you,
- When an interaction is otherwise peaceful, you suddenly get defensive.
Shadow as triggered reactivity
Automatically and repeatedly losing yourself in drama, over and over again, is a good sign your reactive Shadow is triggered and now leading your choices and behavior. A self-righteous, disproportionate, or defensive response now leads your body language and shapes your words. Is this working for you?
Why is this a problem? When our reactive Shadow leads, our healthy Self has fewer choices; often, no choice. When we’re being reactive, our behavior follows the same old familiar track we rehearsed and practiced for years.
Why do we allow this? Because our Habit Body prefers the familiar, the predictable and the repetitious. When our Shadow leads our choices and behavior, our habit playback button has been pushed. We allow our emotions to have their way with us. Why do we allow this? Our shadow emotions love DRAMA, the more intense the better. Drama is the opposite of peace, the enemy of contentment.
Toddlers learn to blame in the sandbox
In this way, “projection” leads to “blame.” Blame outsources our own agency onto the other, “HE did it not me.” This is the classic strategy of three year olds when something goes wrong. Toddlers’ internal sense of “I” and “I am” is so weak, they are unable to perceive their personal agency existing anywhere INside them. Not until after puberty can we perceive our own internal locus of control. Then we can take more personal responsibility for our choices and actions.
How adults blame in the “adult sandbox”
Here are five examples of what projection can look like in the “adult sandbox”:
1. Projection in Relationships
Projection surfaces in romantic relationships, when one partner reminds the other of traits they dislike in themselves or people they’ve had negative experiences with in the past, such as an old partners, parents, or siblings. Projection drives a wedge between two people, separating them further apart.
Projection in relationships can involve one partner blaming the other for their own flaws, such as a disorganized person frequently nagging their partner for being messy. Projection can also reflect undesirable traits. Someone who finds themselves attracted to someone who isn’t their partner, for example, might accuse their partner of being a flirt.
2. Projection in romantic relationships
Other signs projection may be interfering in your romantic relationship are:
- You have the same argument repeatedly,
- You feel upset with your partner yet don’t know why,
- You feel confused about you or your partner’s overreaction to a situation.
3. Projection in Parenting
Parents can unknowingly project their own fears and insecurities onto their children. Parents who feel like failures, for example, may project their frustration onto their kids. They may tell their kids the world is unfair; or, they’re foolish for thinking they can pursue their dreams. Anxious parents may unknowingly convey to their kids the world is a dangerous, hostile place.
Conversely, parents can also project their own hopes and ambitions onto their kids. Often in an attempt to build their kids’ confidence, the child may feel parental projections as pressure. This can make children feel like failures or disappointments in teh eyes of their parents. . . . kids pick up on projected messages. This can rob them of their own identity and autonomy, thus leading to resentment and conflict.
4. Projection at Work
Projection at work can look like “projection bias.” It assumes what is important to you, is equally important to your coworkers and subordinates. It’s an attitude your beliefs are held by others; or, those you work with should think and act like you do.
When you believe others should share your ideas and priorities; and, don’t seek to understand other perspectives, you risk disregarding their thoughts, needs, and ideas. It can create resentment, hostility, and conflict.
It’s important to note even if you don’t personally deal with projection issues, you may wind up on the receiving end of someone else’s projection. For example, you can be accused of being lazy by someone who is projecting an unpleasant trait away from themselves.
5. Projection in Friendships
Just as in romantic relationships, projection can disrupt friendships.2 For example, one friend who is subconsciously insecure might accuse another of being too needy, clingy, or demanding.
Reactions which are disproportionate to a situation, such as lashing out in anger when a friend is a few minutes late, may be projections of jealousy. It could also be a repeated accusation someone received in the past, such as being selfish or inconsiderate. . . .
“Projection: Definition, Examples, & Use as a Defense Mechanism” (2022) — https://www.choosingtherapy.com/projection/
Chapter 2 Deeper understandings of projection
The movie screen metaphor
In psychology, the best metaphor for projection is a movie theater experience. In a theater, you watch a big screen, where you view the movie of your life. The images come from a projector located in the back, in a small area, high up. Mostly, you don’t even notice the projector generating the moving images.
In the audience, watching the big screen, you see things you do like; and, things you don’t like.
To take this further, it supports us to switch gears and shift to a developmental view of projection.
Each day, the young child strives to be the hero of their own story
Unlike adults, the young child lives in a dream world. In their waking dream, they strive to be the hero or heroine of their own day. In the young child’s delicate, fragile, tentative ego state, morality is limited to black and white. if the hero has a flaw or admits they are wrong, they are no longer the hero but the villain. When singled out for inappropriate behavior, a young child believes, “If I am in the wrong, I am a bad person.” A young child becomes defensive when they imagine to admit they are at fault, will be the end of the world. This is black and white young child reactive thinking.
As children playing in the the sandbox with other kids, we all learned to use projection, deflecting criticism by accusing another child to be in the wrong — not me.
Q: Why does a child in the sandbox want to shift blame to another child?
A: The young child has few ego skills and few defenses for its immature Self. For better and worse, a young child is also self-centered, personalizing everything.
Projecting is how the young child avoids taking responsibility. They are too young to accept personal responsibility. They have neither tools nor role models nor methods yet to change their own habits.
The young child’s main task is to accumulate experiences of healthy self-esteem. When singled out for inappropriate behavior, the young child believes, “If I am in the wrong; them, I must feel shame.” Shame cancels healthy self-esteem. Shame is toxic to the young child. The young child avoids shame.
Without a mother’s protection, the young child projects blame to deflect feeling shame (avoid losing self-esteem). They have no inner coping methods yet. They can only avoid inner conflict and anxiety by offloading blame onto others.
For a child prior to puberty, this kind of ego defense is natural and normal. After age 15, we expect people to have more courage to admit their own errors and begin to be accountable for addressing bad habits once they are pointed out to them. After puberty, after age 15, a teen’s sense of personal responsibility and courage is greater. They can now begin to explore methods for addressing their own inappropriate behavior.
Ego defense blaming (projection) is a child’s strategy. It mostly occurs on a sub-conscious level. If carried into adulthood, it cancels Interpersonal Competency (a more clear phrase than “emotional intelligence”). Some adults deliberately use projection as their preferred defense tactic. A politician, for example, may use projection to distract from their own flaws, try to shift all blame to their opponent.
What can we conclude? Everyone who wants to strengthen their healthy Self leadership, benefits from information and education, on what projection is; and, methods to transform and redirect our ability to project and introject.
The two halves of projecting, Project and Introject
dg- project and introject
Projection
When we (1) attribute a quality, trait or personality characteristic to our mother, our friend, or others at school or college, we are almost always imagining, using the other person as a screen to “push out” and receive an internal part of us we wish to be rid of.
This is called “projecting.” It has a strongly visual and imaginative character.
Projection also has a mirror-like character: what we dislike in others is what we dislike in ourselves.
Projecting onto others what we dislike inside us is a classic expression of our inner child and his or her talent for imagination.
Introjection
Is there anything positive about projection? Yes. This is the same intelligence inside us thru which we learn from and grow from observing positive role models people we admire.
Learning from, growing on positive role models is the reverse of “projection.” When we admire and learn from a positive role model, we “introject” (project onto our own self) the positive quality or trait we observe in our positive role models.
I’m lucky to have had multiple role models and teachers I learned many positive traits from. I learned many positive traits from my mother and father (I eventually edited from my Habit Body most of their traits not useful to me). From Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudolf Steiner, I learned how to think and write more clearly. From James Cameron i learned how to apply his persistence, consistency; and, his idea of a pipeline for VFX-CGI to other projects in my life. From John-Roger I learned how to flow more as awareness, not to get stuck in any one rigid position.
Projection in social media for young girls
In addition to the list of projections at the top of this article, please watch out for Projection techniques corporate advertisers use against you.
- ALL corporate social media platforms bombard teen girls especially with images on one, and only one, very specific body form and female body image.
Q: Why is only one female body image promoted as good?
A: Because this is the ideal female body image the male gaze most desires.
Q: Why does the male gaze most desire one ideal female body image?
A: Because this is the body image males would want to have if they were in a female body: athletic, competent, capable. The mono-image of female bodies is a projection from the male gaze of what body shape males would want if they themselves were female. Wish fulfillment
Healthy Best Practices for addressing and resolving projection
What can one do if one wants to wake up from dissociating from and outsourcing pieces of our awareness?
Since 1970, dozens of methods, many of them very effective, have been shared. Each of them is one way to dialog with your old habits, one by one, to unburden and re-direct them, for your highest good, as determined by you alone.
Well, you need a method workable for you. A large number of self-connection methods exists. From most elegant-effective to most primitive-basic, we can list them here:
- Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Gestalt Two Chairs, or Empty Chair technique
- Solution Focussed Brief Therapy
- inner child work
- talk therapy in the realm of mind-emotions
- dream analysis
- writing and/or acting in a play
- reading books, movies, fables
- passive watching of TV and movies
Given all the good methods available now, anyone interested in redeeming their own shadow habit has many methods to choose from. We are each in a position to do more with our shadow than just complain about it; and, blame it for our shortcomings.
So where to start?
Every method begins with healthy self-awareness: “If I am honest with myself, I can admit, I have at least one old habit I’d like to change.” Then what? The next questions tends to be: “Do I now have enuf tools, methods and strategies to do this by myself; or, do I need to ask for support, possibly even professional support, from those who have gone ahead of me, in clearing up and upgrading their old internal voices and habits?”
Q: Which parts inside me are my Shadow parts?
A: Any old habit, memory or behavior which no longer, “feels like me, no longer contributes to the person I wish to become,” can be considered a shadow part.
What “not me” internal parts are you aware of currently? Which old habits, memories or behaviors make you exclaim, “I don’t know what got into me;” or, “That wasn’t me!”
Your shadow is rarely any form of possession. Most shadow parts are old habits our healthy Self leadership has been too busy to slow down and give attention to with some defined method of dialog.
Once you have a method workable for you, apply it to accept your own impulses or feelings. Growth will always be towards withdrawing such projections from the outer world and people (re-collection) and re-claiming your own agency.
Please also inform your unconscious, your undermind, you are taking this project seriously. Easy way to this is by writing, tracking your daily progress in written form. If you have no method and no written tracking, progress is 90% or more diminished.
References
Your Habit Body; An Owner’s Manual: Gut-brain Axis 2.0
“What Is Projection Psychology And What Does It Reveal About People?” (2023) by MyTherapist Editorial Team — https://www.mytherapist.com/advice/psychology/what-is-projection-psychology-and-what-does-it-reveal-about-people/
“Signs your shadow is present” by Robert Augustus Masters, PhD — http://blog.robertmasters.com/signs-that-your-shadow-is-present/
https://www.healthline.com › health › project
“Projection: Definition, Examples, & Use as a Defense Mechanism” (2022) — https://www.choosingtherapy.com/projection/
“Self-Deception, Part 9: Projection” (2019) — https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201902/self-deception-part-9-projection
“Projection” https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/projection
