When Someone You Love Uses Projection, and Why this is so Difficult for Trauma Survivors
For trauma survivors, the most important thing when being in partnership is safety, trust, and the confirmation of reality. However, projection denounces reality.
Projection is the process by which unconscious discomfort can lead people to attribute unacceptable feelings or impulses to someone else to avoid confronting them. *(psychology today)
An example of projection is a partner in a relationship that has a history of physically acting out, yet accuses the other partner of being out of control.
It’s easy to determine that someone using projection as a defense while in an argument is doing so to be mean, harmful, and manipulative. Even if those tend to be side effects of this way of engaging, the intent isn’t usually to cause harm even though it does. When projection is used as a defense, it is born out of self preservation. It flies in the face of reality, and it is all an effort for the person to not have to face what is real. For the person utilizing this defense, facing why they are acting out requires them to look at the history of their own mistreatment, great disappointments, and ways of being unloved.
How to Know if your Partner is Using Projection
You can say assuredly that you know your partner loves and cares for you, but upon reflection, you have wondered why you have felt an unrest. The more you grow to love yourself, the more you have taken notice that, in this partnership, there are times you haven’t felt loved and cared for in the way you had wished for. Maybe there has been less inclination for closeness and intimacy, less conversation, more arguing, or less interest in sharing time or space. This has been organically happening, but steadily moving in that direction, and all you can feel is the anticipation and worry of being alone. The fear associated with this fracture you might not understand yet, but you wrestle with a certainty that much of this is your doing.
In times of discord, you approach conversation with your partner armed with articulate and pointed expression about your emotional experience. You are clear in your explanation of your emotional distress, your goals of discussion, and your anger. With every argument, comes in tow the wish of connection, feeling understood, and the hope of a big resolve. You wish it so badly that often the fight persists long after it should have ended, but with no resolution in sight, the panic sets in, and the desperation to be understood keeps you fighting. Towards the end of the argument, you find yourself feeling uncertain, off kilter, like a version of yourself that you can’t stand. You feel primitive and desperate, self doubting, self loathing, self blaming, and in question if you ever made any sense at all. You feel defeated, ashamed of your hopefulness, and in wonderment of how this could have gone so terribly wrong. You know that a disagreement is supposed to be an opportunity for growth and understanding, yet you wonder why at the end of these interactions, you feel so disillusioned. You wonder why you are in conflict about getting closer, and ultimately retreat into yourself. You can’t understand why these moments of connection don't result in any kind of resolution. You start to find yourself wondering if disengaging almost completely is a better choice.
If this sounds at all like your experience in relationship, you might be in a relationship with a partner who utilizes projection.
For children, projection is a developmentally appropriate as they are forming a relationship with their conscience. An example of projection with children might look like a brother instigating and provoking his sister, and when she gets upset, yelling at her and telling their mother about how bad she is, disregarding that he provoked her, and thus not having to look at what motivated him to do that. The new story in this scenario becomes about his sister being bad and the interest becomes more about who does and does not get reprimanded.
In healthy development, this defense resolves as children grow up and learn that not only does this way of engaging not feel good for them, but it doesn’t foster joyful, reciprocal relationships. As children continue to grow, they become more able to tolerate looking internally and utilizing their conscience as their friend, knowing that their behaviors and feelings have meaning, and can sit inside themselves and know what is real. However, if using projection is reinforced and there is secondary gain, meaning (as in the previous example) the brother keeps blaming the sister, and the sister keeps getting in trouble, and nobody is curious about what precipitated these events or the feelings or motivations of either child, or the brother learns that using projection protects him from reprimand or from having to look at more painful and shameful feelings about himself, maybe he keeps depending on this form of self preservation. And as time goes on, it’s reliability gets reinforced, and it becomes a way he operates in the world.
The History of a Trauma Survivor
Part of what makes an experience traumatic for is the absence of confirming reality. Without a witness to affirm that this behavior was harmful to you, there is no other avenue but to internalize it. This is not just essential for survival, but also as a way to keep intact your steadfast love for the people who either harmed or did not protect you, and to go on with the normal tasks of life.
But what happens to you? How do you make meaning about what has happened? What happens to the rage and sadness and disappointment that you might feel when being harmed?
Often, you becomes symptomatic, and determine that there is something wrong with you. This is the framework you bring with you as you enter the social world and manage friendships, relationships, careers, and adult life. It is easy to imagine how much strife it would likely cause a person to try to go out and live a normal life where everything is fine, if your version of fine included being abused.
When you have no other vantage point than to assume that the reason for being harmed is because you somehow caused it, then this is story that sticks. You believe you can somehow control it because if you believe you caused the person who harmed you to lose control, then maybe you can stop it from happening again. Maybe if you don’t do ‘the thing’ that you believe caused the eruption, maybe you can keep only the loving part of this person and never have to face the other part. This kind of thinking in childhood gives way to becoming an adult who brings with you the same framework in your relationships. Children tend to grow up to be adults who have significant difficulties with trust, are hyper vigilant to other’s emotions (to maintain a stance of 10 steps ahead), and tend to internalize and take on any blame sent your way.
What Projection Looks like in a Partnership with a Trauma Survivor
If the reparation of a trauma history requires the confirmation of reality, then being in a relationship with someone who utilizes projection is the affliction. Trauma survivors all have once thing in common: your mind had to try not to know something to be able to engage in life in a somewhat normal manner. If the trauma happened while you were very young, it is likely you either didn’t identify what happened as trauma, or if you did, you had to diminish its impact. You were accustomed to being in relationships with people who couldn’t confirm reality for you. In fact, the denouncing of reality was likely a fundamental part of your development. This is often what differentiates an experience from being traumatic versus negative. If you are harmed, and there is a witness who validates it as harmful, the experience is integrated consciously into your minds. You can say, what happened was bad, but I am not bad, and can go forward knowing what goes where. When the confirmation of reality doesn’t happen, reality is fractured, there is no sense what goes where, there is no meaning behind what just happened, and the only thing that can makes sense is that if something bad happened, you must have earned it.
Trauma survivors are accustomed to feeling blamed and at fault, and unconsciously seek out relationships that will repeat the same dynamic. You do this because there is a draw to master a helplessness of a very painful time where you felt diminished. The fantasy is that if you can make this person understand, then you have succeeded. If you repeat it, then you don’t have to remember how terribly painful it was. If you repeat it, then you maintain your status of victimhood, remaining misunderstood, blamed and faulted all over again in an effort to not have to know what happened in your early life.
When a partner projects, it denounces reality. Whether you speak neutrally or loudly or eloquently doesn’t matter when your partner’s shame is louder.
(This was also true when you were abused.)
If the work of a trauma survivor is to reconnect with your body, to sense a feeling in your body, locate where it is coming from, understand it’s meaning, and speak loudly about the truth of it, then being in partnership with someone who utilizes projection means you are assured of what is real, and then being told it is not.
(This was also true when you were abused.)
If the reparation of trauma means only inviting in relationships that no longer cause harm, then being in a relationship with someone who utilizes projection means you are having to say ‘everything is fine” when it is not, speaking up in an effort to be heard but ultimately facing aggression, and feeling a sense of connection with your mind and body only to be told you are mistaken.
(This was also true when you were abused.)
You have Identified that your Partner does Utilize Projection. What Might you Feel?
As a trauma survivor, often it takes time and good, hard internal work to be able to identify what happened to you and the complicated relationships that were created around it. Sometimes it takes much longer than you might expect to identify patterns in your relationship that are not healthy for you because of how long it took to untangle your own history. Coming to this insight might evoke feelings of great disappointment, fear, shame, anger, and panic about what this realization means for you. It is necessary to remember that this isn’t your fault, it isn’t something you set out to do, it wasn’t intentional or consciously created, and awareness only reveals itself when it is ready to do so. Please forgive yourself. Shaming yourself is also another way to protect you from knowing what set you up for this in the first place.
Now what?
Drawing conscious awareness to your closest most intimate relationships are difficult, often because they are spanning over a long period of time and you are invested in this person, relationship, and life together. As a trauma survivor, it has been a long history of searching for safe people and safe places, and it is likely for a long time, you felt convicted that your partner was one of those people. Learning that there are elements of your relationship that are not serving you will create a sense of urgency and a need to do something, anything to get away from what you just learned. This is to protect you from your helplessness.
(This was also true when you were abused.)
Get support.
Good psychotherapy helps. Recovering from trauma means sitting with the truth. The reparation through the therapeutic relationship combats a long history of going it alone inside your head. The therapist /patient relationship will help you get in touch with your perceptions, internal feelings in both your body and mind, and will confirm the reality that you struggle to keep conscious. Over time, the reparative work in a trusted, kind, healthy treatment will help you repair your fair weather relationship with your good gut, and will remind you how to depend on yourself and your interpretations of the world.
Take the fight out.
When you are mistreated, it is natural to want to scream and yell. You are human. The injustice you must feel when seeing or experiencing something harmful brings up some very old, often untouched feelings and memories. It is innate to want to fight, especially if this is with a partner who you share space with. The fight is always about a wish, and you will always scream louder the more desperate you are for change and understanding. There is always a hope that after the fight will be a repair, and you are starting to comprehend that that isn’t often what is happening. There is nothing wrong with your anger, in fact, it is your healthiest part. But what you do with it is where the work is.
Predict.
Learn to predict the dynamics that foreshadow the fight. Is there tension? Are you feeling aggression either from gestures, body language, witnessing interactions with others? Check in with yourself, are you angry? Are you feeling a draw towards engaging in a hostile way? You are naturally vigilant to these sensations, so use them.
Write.
When you are trying to find a calm space, sometimes being alone with your highly emotional sensations can bring up a lot for trauma survivors. The urge to get active can feel essential, but this urge is acting as a way to protect you from feeling helpless.
(This was also true when you were abused).
The act of yelling or acting out might contradict a time of being a helpless, silent, muzzled child. Getting active might feel like it protects you from remembering a time when you were passively getting harmed. But take all your efforts not to act out, and instead start to write. Write so you know you are not alone. Write because you have your good, intact mind and can tune into yourself and make sense of what you are feeling. Write to make things clearer. Write to get your feelings out in a safe way to a person you know you can trust fully: yourself. Write because you will see how capable you are of processing your emotional states. Write because you are doing for yourself what no one could do for you when you were being harmed.
Orient yourself.
After you have found your way out of a highly emotional state, orient yourself to what is real. Trauma survivors struggle with what is the here and now and what was back then. Remind yourself of what is real now, and what was true for back then. Try and separate the feeling states from the present, and try to understand where the intensity belongs.
Fact check.
Think back to the argument with your partner. Separate out where it all got tangled. Look closely at your part. Pay close attention to if you were provoked and lured into a fight or if you instigated this interaction. If it was you, try to look closer at what you were hoping for. What was the wish? What was the goal? What did you want from your partner? What made you step into the fight when you know how that ultimately results. Forgive yourself for having a desperation for connection. Trust yourself to know that you sometimes struggle to know any other way of engagement with this person when you are angry. If it was your partner who provoked you, try and look at where you took it on. Was it instant? What was happening prior to the argument? Know that when your partner is utilizing projection, they are trying to preserve and protect themselves. People who utilize projection will often spare no one; they will go to any and all lengths to stay as far away from their internal world and what it reveals to them, and they will defend themself at any and all costs. In these moments, you aren’t a loving partner to this person, you are a threat. And you can’t reason with someone in that state of internal panic.
Reengage.
After all of your self and situational analysis, you can ask yourself what would be best next step. Only you can know the quality and intensity of these engagements with your partner. Speaking the truth is always corrective for trauma survivors, but sometimes the person on the other end poses the risk of retraumatization. Regardless, if your partner utilizes projection, than you will not get far engaging them in conversation about something they did wrong or how bad you think they are. Their mindset will quickly shift into fight mode, and you will find yourself losing yet again. If there is a truth of your own that you want to speak loudly, remind yourself that this is not a conversation. This isn’t an invitation to engage, but a corrective moment in your healing. Remind your partner that this isn’t about them being ‘bad.’ Remind your partner that it’s important that you can say how you feel. Remind your partner that you don’t want to fight. State your feeling about yourself. And then close the conversation. Leave the physical space and tune in.
If you find yourself actively engaged in a disagreement with a person when it is clear they are utilizing projection, your primary goal is to diffuse and disengage. Check into your body: do you feel under attack? Then trust yourself and remove yourself. Sometimes certain phrases like “I guess we just disagree.” Or “It seems like we just have a difference in opinion” might feel not aligned with the intensity swirling inside of you, but it will diffuse the conversation, neutralize it, and offer you an exit. The goal when someone is projecting onto you is to not make yourself vulnerable to being harmed. As a trauma survivor, you are vulnerable to unknowingly walking into situations that will reactivate being victimized, and the good hard work you are trying to do for yourself is to re work a life in which there were no boundaries of protection. Sometimes the kindest things you can do for yourself is to know what is real and what is actually happening so that you can make a confident decision how to proceed.
“The most revolutionary thing one can do is to always proclaim loudly what is happening.”
If you are a someone who would like to learn more about your own history and what made you vulnerable to complicated relationships, psychotherapy can help. Please feel free to contact me and I would be more than happy to talk.
