Let them project 💁🏻♀️
Projections often have nothing to do with you and everything to do with people's own unhealed emotional wounds and unresolved feelings.
Have you ever had someone say something about you that was so wildly off-base it left you momentarily stunned? You know in your bones what they said isn’t true, but still a flicker of doubt settles in, especially because they said it with such conviction.
In these cases, you might be dealing with someone else’s projection.
What is a projection?
A projection is a psychological defense mechanism that involves a person misplacing their thoughts, feelings, or insecurities onto another. Instead of recognizing their own struggles, they assign them to you. For example, someone who is deeply insecure about their own intelligence might call others stupid as a way to offload their discomfort. Or a person who hasn’t worked through their own baggage about past relationships may transplant those issues onto a new partner, even though the situation may be completely different.
Other examples of possible projections include fear, anxiety, unrealistic expectations, judgement and criticism, unresolved past experiences, and deep-rooted core beliefs.
People are inevitably going to project things onto you and often these projections have nothing to do with you and everything to do with their own unhealed emotional wounds and unresolved feelings. This is why it’s so important for you to know who you are, so you’re not susceptible to internalizing other people’s untrue and sometimes harmful stories about you.
But how do we know when someone is projecting onto us versus when they’re pointing out something that we didn’t previously realize?
Identifying projections
There are no hard-and-fast rules for identifying projections. As with anything else in life, context matters. People are nuanced, situations are complicated. If you are specifically looking for something, your brain is likely to convince you you’ve found it and serve you the evidence for why that thing is.
However, there are still some basic guidelines for recognizing when someone is projecting onto you.
Check the source: Is this person generally self-aware and emotionally mature? Do they have a history of offering thoughtful, constructive insights, or do they often react from a place of defensiveness and reactivity? Are they someone who truly knows you, or is this a casual acquaintance making a snap judgment? Are they generally happy with themselves or is it possible they are misdirecting their insecurity? If the person has a pattern of misplacing responsibility or does not generally take accountability for their own feelings or role in a situation, then it could be a sign they’re projecting onto you.
Examine their emotional charge: Projections often come with an intense emotional charge, like anger, frustration, or even condescension. Someone who is offering constructive feedback usually does so with care and without an emotional agenda. But if their comment feels more like an attack than an observation, it’s likely a projection.
Look for patterns: If multiple people that you trust have given you similar feedback, then that could indicate that this is something you should actually reflect on. But if it’s the first time you’re hearing these things and it’s coming from someone who tends to be critical and emotionally reactive, that’s a sign that it could be a projection. If you’ve done a bunch of reflecting and can’t come up with any evidence as to why what they said is true, it’s probably not (and if you’ve received a lot of unprompted feedback that the opposite of what they said is true, you can trust that).
Trust your intuition: Nothing is more powerful than your intuition. While it’s true that sometimes we lie to ourselves in order to avoid facing an uncomfortable truth, if your gut is telling you their words aren’t accurate, there’s a good chance it might not be. Ask yourself if what they’re saying aligns with what you know to be true about yourself or if instead it feels disconnected from your reality. If it feels completely off, trust your intuition.
Know who you are: Developing your own self-awareness is key to identifying whether someone is projecting onto you. When you truly know who you are, you won’t be so easily swayed by someone else’s distorted perception of you. Instead of absorbing their narratives, you can confidently know that their projection is not your burden to carry. That’s their stuff that they need to work on, not yours.
The next time someone makes a statement about you that feels completely untrue, take a step back. Don’t let their projection plant seeds of doubt in your mind. Hold firm in who you are and let them deal with their own reflection. As long as you are living according to your values and can lay your head on the pillow each night knowing you did your best and are acting with integrity, their projections don’t matter.