Why People Project Their Insecurities and How to Prevent It from Hurting Us

Although we are not fully aware, our mind is capable of protecting us from situations that affect us emotionally, and one of these defense mechanisms is called psychological projection. It is a process in which a person “projects” their own undesirable feelings or motivations onto another person. This type of situation can harm our relationships, since its essence is to hurt or make the other feel guilty, which can happen unconsciously.

O incredible.club decided to research a little more about psychological projection, thinking precisely about how to identify it and what we can do to prevent it from happening.

When a person cannot accept certain traits, qualities, desires or impulses in himself, he projects these thoughts onto another. This usually happens because of a nuisance or some feeling of shame, often unconscious, that the person avoids facing. That is, instead of recognizing these undesirable motivations in herself, she projects them all onto the other.

Once this is understood, we can ask ourselves what “surrounds” and even “protects” this projection mechanism. In general, self-esteem and ego. That is, it takes a pretty solid ego to hide those feelings. Deep down, this type of person claims to himself that negative feelings, thoughts and behaviors turn him into someone inferior, and the way he behaves is a way of hiding all of this.

This is one of the most common behaviors. The person who projects himself onto the other avoids acknowledging his own guilt and looks for reasons to attribute it to others. In general, projection situations are based precisely on demonstrating that it is the other’s fault and not ours.

For a person who normally projects himself onto others, it is much simpler to attack and highlight the “bad” behavior of others than to confront his own way of acting. In this sense, the way she acts towards the other is nothing more than a reflection of how she actually feels about herself in relation to a given situation.

Those who bully usually have some insecurities, so the strategy ends up being to intimidate and transfer to the other the insecurities that the person projecting is not able to face.

The worst case scenario is when someone who projects onto the other causes the projection to be incorporated by the other person. For Darlene Lancer, a specialist in toxic relationships, the individuals most likely to suffer are those with codependency, that is, people who show excessive concern for others and, in this case, for the person who projects and criticizes them. .

Codependents tend to accept the other’s needs many times to avoid any kind of conflict. That is, the individual who projects his emotions ends up criticizing and judging the codependent person, causing him to increasingly lose his self-esteem and independence, to the point of doubting who he really is. In this process, her identity is unraveling until she begins to believe in everything the other person is projecting onto her. Psychologists call this “projective identification,” which happens when an individual ends up identifying with what the other projects onto him.

It is also possible that a person who is codependent or has low self-esteem criticizes himself harshly and insistently, to the point where he feels that the negative details he sees in himself are also seen by others. That is, the person ends up projecting their own insecurities onto others.

This situation usually arises in love relationships in which the unconscious feelings that the “projector” feels in relation to the father or mother are transferred to the partner (or partner) and this person assumes that as his own; that is, the individual onto whom these emotions are projected embodies this complexity or difficulty. The signs of this type of projection are:

Living the same fight over and over. Feeling uncomfortable with the partner and not knowing why. Confusion to understand the other’s reaction.

If you identify with any of these situations, it is likely that you are in a relationship where there is some kind of psychological projection. Projection affects self-knowledge and self-recognition — it is very easy to see that a person who is not able to recognize and accept his own weaknesses projects these insecurities onto others.

Therefore, it is necessary to become aware of ourselves, our thoughts, actions, emotions, reactions, etc. Questioning yourself is always the first step to find out if we have made some kind of psychological projection on others.

Now, if you identify yourself as an object of projection, it is important to know that there are certain signs that can help you recognize and face the situation:

Judgments are exaggerated and don’t match the situation. Reaction to a particular circumstance doesn’t match how the person talks about it. Not having a reasonable explanation for a particular reaction. Attributing the conversation to someone else.

If you have to deal with a person who makes this type of projection, the ideal is to answer clearly, without getting into major conflicts. It is possible to respond with a “I disagree” or, if the person does not stop arguing, you can even remove yourself from the conversation. The important thing is not to internalize these unfair criticisms or blame.

After a while and with a clear head, you can try to talk about how the other person reacted, but without wanting them to change, because that is not your obligation. Furthermore, for an effective transformation to really take place, it is important that the situation be discussed with a professional.

If you find yourself behaving this way, it’s best to distance yourself from the problem so that you can look at the situation objectively. For this, it is important to pay attention to four steps:

Describe the situation without using adjectives or words that express emotions of any kind. Introduce and explain your role in the situation. “What did I do, intentionally or unintentionally, to trigger this reaction in the other person?” “What does it mean to me if what was said about me is true?” Describe the other individual’s role in the situation avoiding adjectives. “What stories am I telling about the other person’s behavior?”, “Is there evidence that I am right?” If yes, “How does this affect me?” Do you recognize that you are projecting in some way?

Finally, it is important to highlight the most important point: in any type of projection situation the best option is always to talk to an expert🇧🇷

Do you think you’ve ever been through a situation of psychological projection? And how did you react? Share your experience in the comments.