Tag Archives: projection

Mind reading:
“You just don’t like spending time with me!”

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"Convergence" by Mimi Stuart

“Convergence” by Mimi Stuart ©

People often assume that they know what another person is thinking — and most often those assumptions are negative and wrong. “Mind-reading” causes people to become defensive and avoid sharing their thoughts. It pushes people away because it feels intrusive to be told what they’re thinking.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Mind-reading is usually a result of your own fears. When you allow your insecurity to take over, you’re likely to scare people away, which is not a good way to promote dialogue. Moreover, when you project your fears onto another person, those fears are more likely to become realized – a self-fulfilling prophecy! If you repeatedly proclaim your worry that another person doesn’t like spending time with you, you create the very situation you fear, because you become less enjoyable to be with. Our perceptions have a tendency to materialize.

Dialogue

While part of you may feel worried and insecure, there is probably another part of you that wants to have an honest dialogue and is hopeful and curious about what the truth might be. Mind-reading assumes that you have all the information, which is rarely the case. To have a real dialogue, you need to focus on the other person and find out where they are coming from. Only when the goal is to gain understanding and not to assign blame can you find out what’s really going on.

To get truthful, relevant information, you have to engage others so that they won’t get defensive. Otherwise they’ll attack back, withdraw, or twist the truth to avoid your negative judgments. You have to ask questions in a way to get them to talk openly. This requires being able to actively listen without being reactive.

Connection

If you lose your connection, the other person is likely to go into a protective mode, which puts a stop to openness. You need to keep a connection to convey your desire to be understanding.

1. To avoid implying blame or self-pity, it helps to use a tone of voice that implies honest curiosity.

2. The best way to get information is to ask open-ended questions that get the other person to describe his or her side of the story. Open-ended questions include where, who, how, what happened. Beware of “But why did you do that?” because it sounds accusatory. When people feel blamed, they’re likely to skew the information to boost their self-esteem and avoid incrimination. It’s better to ask how something happened, followed by, “what happened then?”

3. Avoid leading questions, such as, “You’d rather work than spend time with me, right?”

4. Avoid “yes or no” prosecuting-attorney-type questions, such as, “Just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ — did you even think about calling me?” Even police investigators have moved from methods of cross-examination to open-ended questioning.

We are more likely to discover the motivation of the other person when we use compassionate curiosity rather than aggressive interrogation. Also, we are likely to find that others’ actions usually don’t stem from intent to harm us. From a position of compassionate understanding, we can then continue the dialogue and express our own desires or intent to change the situation.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Compassionate Confrontation: ‘He said he’d spend more time with me, but has not followed through.’”

Read “Negative Projection: ‘I never had children, because my husband didn’t want to, and now it’s too late.’”

Read “Five Keys to a Great Relationship: ‘There’s nothing we can do to stay in love.’”

Mind reading:
“You just don’t like spending time with me!”

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“Julia and Larry” by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

People often assume that they know what another person is thinking—and most often these assumptions are negative.

Not only are the assumptions usually wrong, mind-reading doesn’t make people want to openly share their deepest thoughts. It often doesn’t make them want to spend time with you either. Instead, it feels intrusive to be told what they’re thinking. They feel annoyed and defensive.

Projecting Insecurity

When you allow fear and insecurity to dominate your personality, you’re likely to scare people away—not a good way to promote dialogue. While part of you may feel worried and insecure, there’s probably another part of you that wants to have an honest dialogue and is hopeful and curious about what the truth might be. Although it is important to share your vulnerabilities with people you’re close to, it’s best not to let insecurity take over with accusatory mind-reading.

When you project your fears onto another person, those fears are more likely to become realized – a self-fulfilling prophecy! If you repeatedly proclaim your worry that another person doesn’t like spending time with you, you create the very situation you fear, because you become less enjoyable to spend time with. Our perceptions have a tendency to materialize.

Dialogue

Mind-reading assumes that you have all the information, which is rarely the case. To have a real dialogue, you need to focus on the other person and find out where they are coming from. Only when the goal is to gain understanding and not to assign blame can you find out what’s really going on.

To get truthful, relevant information, you have to engage others so that they won’t get defensive. Otherwise they’ll attack back, withdraw, or twist the truth to avoid your negative judgments. You have to ask questions in a way to get them to talk openly. This requires being able to actively listen without being reactive.

Connection

If you lose your connection, the other person is likely to go into a protective mode, which puts a stop to openness. You need to keep a connection to convey your desire to be understanding. To avoid implying blame or self-pity, it helps to use a tone of voice that implies honest curiosity.

Open-ended Questions

The best way to get information is to ask open-ended questions that get the other person to describe his or her side of the story. Avoid leading questions, such as, “You’d rather work than spend time with me, right?”

Avoid “yes or no” prosecuting-attorney-type questions, such as, “Just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’—did you even think about calling me?” Even police investigators have moved from methods of cross-examination to open-ended questioning.

Open-ended questions include where, who, how, what happened. Beware of “But why did you do that?” because it sounds accusatory. When people feel blamed, they’re likely to skew the information to boost their self-esteem and avoid incrimination. It’s better to ask how something happened, followed by, “what happened then?”

We are more likely to discover the motivation of the other person when we use compassionate curiosity rather than aggressive interrogation. Also, we are likely to find that others’ actions usually don’t stem from intent to harm us.

From a position of compassionate understanding, we can then continue the dialogue and express our own desires or intent to change the situation.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Compassionate Confrontation: ‘He said he’d spend more time with me, but has not followed through.’”

Read “Negative Projection: ‘I never had children, because my husband didn’t want to, and now it’s too late.’”

Read “Five Keys to a Great Relationship: ‘There’s nothing we can do to stay in love.’”

Falling in Love & the Unconscious:
“I’m crazy in love. But friends say I’m setting myself up to be rejected again.”

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"Marilyn Silver Screen" by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Romantic passion calls forth intensity, excitement, and focus of desire.

Intense emotions are generally fueled by psychological “complexes,” that is, heated reactions (positive or negative) to a person or situation reminiscent of a past experience that left a mark on the unconscious. A “complex” is a core pattern of emotions, perceptions, memories, and desires in the personal unconscious triggered by a common theme evoking past emotional experiences.

For instance, being in love with a smart and cold woman, who by coincidence is like your mother, may be driven by a projection of certain characteristics of your mother. Unconsciously, you hope to resolve your disappointment with that initial relationship by finally having someone similarly smart and cold be responsive and appreciative of you.

Does the fact that desire and even falling in love are possibly the result of a psychological complex taint their authenticity and beauty? Does one’s past experience of hope and disappointment with a similar type of person make a current love affair less authentic and meaningful?

Even if infatuation and love are complex-driven, they are no less real and important. The very fascination with the beloved reflects the entanglement of unconscious processes with falling in love. Falling in love involves projection, which is loaded with powerful affect.

Projection, however, is fraught with dangers. Consider the repeated disappointment a person will feel when the beloved becomes withholding or neglectful, just like his mother. What’s important in this case is that we don’t repeat our same ineffective ways of dealing with those who bring forth our complexes.

Emotionally-committed relationships are one of the best vehicles that can assist us in becoming aware of our unconscious and our complexes. They give us the opportunity NOT to repeat the past. But this takes awareness and effort.

Does passion driven by a complex fade when we become more integrated and whole? Does the fantasy of the “Magical Other” subside when we become more grounded and less neurotic? Perhaps.

If so, is it worth the cost?

We can hope for some progress toward wholeness, but few of us need to worry about losing our passion because we’ve become wholly-integrated and enlightened. So, we might as well enjoy the intensity of falling in love on our path to insight and understanding.

Even with great strides toward increased consciousness, the crazy feeling of infatuation might be replaced by the mindful intention to love — not a great cost after all for such a transformation.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Positive Projection: ‘He is so amazingly intelligent and articulate!’”

Reference: James Hollis’ “The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other.”

“She’s just like my mother! — so weak!”
“He’s just like my father — so controlling!”

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"Journey" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

The quality of all of our relationships is a direct function of our relationship to ourselves.

~James Hollis

Since no one influences our relationship to ourselves as much as our parents, we are often drawn to people who have some key qualities of our parents (or their extreme opposites.) While at first familiar and comforting, eventually those qualities become all-too-familiar triggers to our childhood responses. For example, what at first seemed attractive, “strong and in control,” turns into “controlling and dictatorial.”

“How many marriages are wrecked for years, and sometimes forever, because he sees his mother in his wife and she her father in her husband, and neither ever recognizes the other’s reality!” wrote Carl Jung.

Imagine a wife is projecting onto her husband, “You’re just like my father — controlling and dictatorial.” Naturally, she will respond with the same defenses as she did as a child — she will behave like a child, whether with hostility, withdrawal, or reluctant compliance. Such a response intensifies the dynamic between the couple. He will see her as weak and become more domineering as a defense against vulnerability.

Projection triggers automatic responses, closing off the opportunity to relate in a fresh way in the current situation. By projecting all the control onto her husband, the wife assumes a lack of self-empowerment and continues to give away the power that she can develop within herself. The husband projects away his vulnerability and becomes increasingly forceful to repress any healthy though uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty.

To avoid this unhappy vicious cycle, the partners can try to take back their projections and overcome their automatic reactions.

Taking back projections is not easy. Partners feel obligated to point out the weaknesses of their partner that really reside within themselves. However, by taking back our projections, we have a chance to grow and learn to approach our partners fair-mindedly.

So, if we see our partner as controlling, for example, we must

1) learn to deal effectively with controlling people,
2) develop more personal authority to become less of a victim, and
3) deflate the power of controlling behavior by seeing the fear of vulnerability beneath the controlling behavior.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Negative Projection.”

Negative Projection:
“I never had children, because my husband didn’t want to, and now it’s too late.”

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"Mastery and Mystery" — Queen Bess by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

It was Carl Jung who stated that thoughts and fears that remain unconscious get projected onto others. A wife blames her husband for their decision not to have children, unaware of her own fear of such responsibility.

People tend to project qualities that are incompatible with their own self-image. For instance, a person who sees himself as kind and generous might not want to acknowledge his own greed, and consequently sees it only in others; or a husband blames his wife for having given up his dreams of traveling the islands with a guitar, unaware of his own preference for the security of his stable job, lifestyle, and wife.

When we make negative projections, we rarely recognize the seeds of those qualities in ourselves. Painful or incompatible qualities get projected onto another person, and that person ends up becoming the target of our wrath.

Our task is to take back our projections in the quest for wholeness.

By projecting the decision not to have children on your husband, you disown your own free will. You disregard your own part in that decision. Ultimately, you made the choice not to have children. You could have talked your partner into it, discussed it before getting together, or left him rather than abiding by his preference. You chose to stay with him and thereby agreed with his desire not to have children.

By taking back responsibility for making your own decisions, you become aware of your true priorities and choices. When you stop blaming others, you gain freedom and control in your life. As a result, you don’t live with resentment toward others in your life — a key to happy relationships.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Childhood impairment: The family projection process.”

Read “Positive Projection: ‘He’s so amazingly intelligent and articulate!”