Projection and Reflection

One of the more annoying things that happen when people are not healed—when they have an active problem with judgement—is a tendency to give other people credit for the tendencies about themselves they don’t like, feel they must reject, or otherwise do not wish to ascribe to themselves.

Working with healing means having a constant stream of projection splattered against you like paint, as people encounter the things about themselves that they’ve rejected and are rejecting. In some ways, it can be amusing to be someone’s “bogey-man.” It’s certainly illuminative of their relationship to the thing, whatever it is. It will tell you a lot about where they are, in the process of healing.

I have previously been more understanding of it. After all, most of the time they don’t know they’re projecting. All they know is that they feel bad when you’re around, at some preverbal state in their consciousness where such judgements are made.

Judgement is common. People who are not judging someone—whether simply because they don’t care or because they don’t feel the need—trigger suspicion and fear in judgemental people.

Many times, when people have strongly projected judgement on me, I am surprised to find that they think I care.

I find, increasingly, that I don’t feel the need to tolerate projection. In fact, I suspect tolerating it is actively bad for someone’s process, though as my family’s scapegoat, tolerating people’s projections is certainly something with which I was very familiar.

Not without love, but I don’t think I’ll be tolerating projection. I might reflect someone’s judgement back at them, or simply tell them that I’m not the source of it, but I do not intend to passively accept it.