Shortcomings within us: what we criticize in others tells us a lot about ourselves

When the deficiencies within us prevent us from judging others healthily, what is called negative projection appears. A series of defense mechanisms that attribute our own defects, and even our own shortcomings, to other people. In situations of emotional conflict, we attribute to other people our own feelings or thoughts that are unacceptable to us.

Negative projection maneuvers in situations of emotional conflict of internal origin, attributing to other people our own feelings or thoughts that are unacceptable to us. Feelings or thoughts are projected that are not accepted as their own because they generate anguish or anxiety, directing them towards someone and totally attributing them as if they were someone else’s.

Much of the work done in personal development involves getting rid of these projections. establishing a defined boundary between the description we make of what happens and what really happens. In this way we avoid the distortion of facts, overcoming the conflict that in reality only exists within us.

The defense of the self in personal shortcomings

The external projection of one’s own personal shortcomings that cause anxiety or anguish is carried out to maintain a good personal concept. Self-esteem and defense mechanisms play a fundamental role in defending the self. The so-called ego defense mechanisms are strategies that we use without realizing it, whose function is to preserve our self-image and self-concept.

Our brain seems to have developed different ways to protect our body from what seems too painful or unacceptable to us.. Defense mechanisms are strategies to stop the discomfort of certain experiences and the feelings associated with them. These mechanisms protect us when we do not want to recognize some aspect of ourselves that we dislike or that breaks the self-concept that we had created.

The problem comes when these mechanisms become automated by using them over and over again. Thus, it is difficult to abandon the habit, despite the fact that in return it generates imbalance in certain maturational aspects. It is normal to sometimes use these mechanisms, but we must know how to identify them and combat them so as not to distort reality to the size of our ego.

Otherwise, these defense mechanisms will turn against us, introducing important distortions in our perception, in addition to making them more complicated to identify because they are easily camouflaged among our more realistic perceptions.

What we see in others tells us a lot about ourselves

Others act as a mirror for our mind, in it we see different qualities or aspects of our own being reflected. When we observe something we don’t like about someone, we feel dislike and rejection; this may indicate that in some way we dislike that aspect within ourselves. Psychological projection makes us think that the defect only exists out there, in that other person.

Psychological projection is a mental defense mechanism through which a person attributes to others their own feelings, thoughts or impulses that they deny or find unacceptable for themselves. When our mind understands that there is a threat to mental health, it will attribute the unacceptable qualities to a subject external to ourselves.

In this way our mind apparently manages, by self-deception, to put these threatening contents outside of ourselves. These projections are valid for both negative characteristics, hatred, resentment, envy, and positive ones, admiration, idealization, affection. Therefore, when we overly criticize other people, we may be criticizing ourselves.

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