Let's talk about projection.
Projection is a psychological process where a person unconsciously attributes thoughts,
Feelings,
Traits,
Or impulses that they cannot tolerate or recognize in themselves onto someone else and then reacts to that person as if those qualities truly belong to them.
So basically,
This is when the psyche places unconscious material onto other people.
When someone has not yet owned or integrated parts of themselves,
They tend to see those parts outside of themselves and react to them as if they belong to the other person.
This is where a lot of misunderstanding,
Judgment,
Idealization,
And conflict come from.
Knowing thyself means bringing what is unconscious into your consciousness.
The more someone becomes familiar with their own shadow,
Motives,
Wounds,
And values,
The less hooked they are by other people's projections.
Not because the projections stop happening,
But because they are recognized for what they are,
Which is a projection.
When a person lacks a solid relationship with their own inner world,
They are more likely to seek out validation,
Correction,
Or defense externally.
That can show up as over explaining,
Justifying,
Or trying to manage how others see you.
In Jungian terms,
That energy is being pulled outward instead of being rooted inward.
Individualization is the term for the process of becoming psychologically whole.
A byproduct of that wholeness is that other people's perceptions carry less authority over you and your inner reality.
You can hear them,
But you don't collapse into them.
The core of this is that deep self-knowledge creates a kind of inner boundary,
Not a wall,
But a center.
From that center,
Projections are seen,
Felt,
And understood without automatically becoming personal truth.
There's a deeper truth here,
And it's that projections are not just misunderstandings.
They're serious because they can be psychologically destabilizing when they are strong and sustained.
When someone carries unconscious material that they cannot tolerate in themselves,
They export it.
They place it on to another person and then relate to that person as if the projection is a fact.
Over time,
If the person on the receiving end does not have a solid sense of self,
They begin to doubt their own perceptions,
Intentions,
And their character.
That is where the danger comes in.
Think of a child being raised by a narcissistic parent.
This is why many people don't know who they are when they grow up,
Because if they grew up in a psychologically disturbed household,
Then the person has an adult as an adult don't know who they are because they took these projections as fact.
When consciousness is weak or when someone is a child,
The psyche is easily invaded.
Not invaded in a dramatic way,
But eroded.
The human starts orienting around someone else's inner world instead of their own.
They explain themselves,
Defend themselves,
Reshape themselves,
And eventually lose contact with what they actually knew to be true.
In this language,
The ego becomes possessed by the projection rather than grounded in the self.
This is why knowing thyself matters so much.
Not self-knowledge as a list of traits,
But inner authority.
A relationship with one's own motives,
Shadow,
Values,
And limits.
When that relationship is strong,
Projections still arrive,
Like I said,
But they do not take over.
They can be observed rather than absorbed.
An example I can share with you is that I was raised by a narcissistic mom and she always told me I was angry.
So she would unconsciously poke at me,
Do things that made me angry,
Because she couldn't tolerate her own anger,
And then I would blow up in anger.
And then she could say,
See,
Look,
You're angry.
I'm not angry.
You are.
And this is a simple example of projection,
Especially as it relates to a child.
So what we notice in our own lives often lines up with this exactly.
As we recognize projections,
We stop trying to correct them.
It becomes important for us to step out of relationships where people are relating to an image of who they think we are instead of who we actually are.
That exhaustion you feel with some people is classic projection fatigue.
It comes from being asked implicitly or explicitly to carry someone else's unresolved psyche.
There's a type of person that can play the victim,
And this is someone who unconsciously identifies as the victim and often splits off their own aggression,
Responsibility,
Or power and projects it outward.
Others then become the villain.
This is not usually deliberate.
It feels completely real to the person doing it,
Though.
That is what makes it so disorienting to be around.
Reality literally gets inverted.
We are cast into roles that we did not choose,
And no amount of clarity fixes it because the relationship is not actually with us.
This is important because prolonged exposure to this kind of dynamic can lead a person to lose confidence in their own reality.
This is why stepping away from people like this,
Whether it be friends or even family,
Is not cruelty.
It's self-preservation,
And it is so extremely important for your well-being.
What stands out is that we do not harden.
We clarify.
It becomes important for us to stop trying to be seen by people who cannot and don't want to see us.
This is individuation.
It's not fixing others.
It's not fighting projections.
It's simply standing in what we know about ourselves and letting what does not belong to us fall away,
And this is why it's important to know thyself.
