When our internal needs prevent us from judging others in a healthy way, what is called negative projection appears, a series of defense mechanisms that attribute our own deficiencies to others, including our own needs. In situations of emotional conflict, we attribute the feelings, or thoughts of others that are unacceptable to us.
Feelings or thoughts that are not accepted as yours are projected because they cause anxiety or distress, directing them towards someone or attributing them as if they were totally alien.
- Much of the work devoted to personal development is to free yourself from these projections.
- Putting a defined line between how we describe what is happening and what is really happening.
- In this way.
- We avoid distorting the facts by overcoming the conflict that really exists only within us.
“We don’t see others as they are, but as ourselves. “Emmanuel Kant
The external projection of our own personal needs that cause us anxiety or anxiety manages to maintain a good concept of ours. Self-esteem and advocacy mechanisms play a key role in self-defense. So-called self-defense mechanisms are strategies to use without realizing them, whose function is to preserve our self-image and self-concept.
Our brain seems to have developed different ways to protect our body from what we think is too painful or unacceptable, defense mechanisms are strategies to stop the discomfort of certain experiences and the feelings associated with them, these mechanisms protect us when we do not want to recognize an aspect of ourselves that we do not like or that breaks the concept of ourselves that we have created.
The problem arises when these mechanisms appear automatically because they are used over and over again, so it becomes difficult to give up this habit. It is normal to sometimes use these mechanisms, but we must know how to identify and combat them so as not to distort reality according to our own ego.
These defense mechanisms can be counterproductive, introducing significant distortions into our own perception and making them more difficult to identify because they are easily camouflaged among our most realistic perceptions.
Our defense mechanism is to appear strong when we are fragile and fragile when we are strong.
Others act as a mirror for our mind, in which we see reflected different qualities or aspects of our own being, when we observe something that we do not like in someone, feeling discontent and rejection, it can indicate that this aspect also displeases us. The psychological projection makes us think that the defect exists only there, in that other person.
Psychological projection is a mental defense mechanism by which a person attributes to others his or her own feelings, thoughts or impulses that he or she denies or finds unacceptable. When our mind understands that there is a threat to mental health, it will attribute qualities unacceptable for a subject outside of us.
In this way, our mind is able to get wrong and get rid of any other threatening content, projections that are valid both for negative characteristics, such as hatred, resentment, envy, and for positive characteristics, admiration, idealization, affection. , when we over-criticize others, we can criticize ourselves.
“Everything that bothers you in other beings is just a projection of what you haven’t solved in yourself. -Bouddha-