Projections

Projections

I am really sick of dealing with people and their projections. Although I try to be careful not to project my own stuff onto others, I know that it is sometimes not that easy not to do so.

Yet, I am responsible for my behavior towards others. No one owes me a thing, but in turn, I owe no one anything either.

It is simply common courtesy to be respectful of others and consider their boundaries, but when I share my personal experiences that have nothing to do with anyone else, then I have to wonder the problem … like why do people feel a need to attack me for sharing my personal story.

I am more than aware that I live in a world where people have to deal with a lot of stuff. The world is a “stuff” kind of place, and there is always something to deal with everyday.

Yet, I am finding more and more that projections are the “stuff” I no longer want to deal with when it comes to other people … particularly people I do not know and people that do not know me. I have dealt with projections from people I have known for far too long, and I am really tired of it.

Learning To Detach

If I had to describe myself, I would say that I am pretty much an absorbent sponge. I compare myself to the capacity a sponge has to absorb water. I soak in a lot.

Like a sponge, I absorb everything around me through all of my senses … the good and the bad. In short, I feel everything so very deeply. I take in so much that I sometimes find it difficult to know when I am dealing with my own stuff until I realize that I am not dealing with my own stuff.

Whenever I find that my peace is disturbed, then I doublecheck my surroundings and the circumstances to determine what or who has disturbed my peace. I battle anxiety, and I do my best to keep it at bay by removing as much disturbance to my equilibrium as possible.

Absorption on a “feeling” scale for me can hurt and has hurt … causing me deep emotional pain. For years, I would find myself so wrapped up in other people’s stuff – their pain, their issues, their problems, etc. – that I could not even deal with my own stuff.

I would often sink into deeper realms of depression because of my absorption of other people’s stuff to the point that I could not cope. I had to learn to eventually detach, and for years, that was very hard for my empathic self to do.

But now, I find it necessary to detach. I find it absolutely a must to detach. I must separate myself from taking on other people’s stuff by practicing the necessity of walking away.

This part of my journey is still a work in progress for me because I spent so many years accepting disturbances to my peace. It was as if somewhere in my psyche I had been programmed to allow it.

The Art Of Detachment

I will never forget the lesson I learned from a dear friend and mentor. In many ways it was a painful lesson, but my friend’s words of wisdom were the sharpened blades I needed to reflect upon and become a better person. I am thankful that my friend was patient with me. She knew and understood having walked the road to surviving her own decades of trauma.

My friend taught me the art of detachment specifically during a period when I was an unfortunate energy drainer. Despite the problems and trauma that I was working through at the time, I was not an easy person for my friend (or others) to even want to be around at times. Yet, I was not aware of this.

In fact, I was so unaware that I had become a source of irritation for her that I only recognized there was a problem when I noticed that she was not always around when I felt that I needed her. It turns out that she viewed herself as a dumping ground for my problems whenever we would talk because I had gotten into the habit of projecting all of my stuff onto her.

I am so glad she chose to tell me. I am so glad she gave me a mirror to look at myself and see that my own projections onto her were causing her severe stress. Although my feelings were hurt, it was a strong reflective realization that my projections needed to stop. I needed to look internally at myself and find a way to heal that did not also take away the healing chances for others.

I had to check myself and learn to work out my problems in a different way. It was completely unfair and disrespectful of me to project my issues onto my friend. It was also unfair of me to place my projections onto her because doing so weighed her down with not only my problems but made it difficult for her to deal with her own problems.

Most often, people do not realize that by projecting onto others, we stop exercising our capacity for empathy regarding others. Our projections are a focus mainly on ourselves and our issues. Empathy makes it so that we consider the issues of others in place of ourselves.

If it were not for my dear friend giving me that hard honest talk about myself and this issues of my projections, I may have lost her friendship. That would have been a very sad and unfortunate price to pay for not paying attention to how my projections were affecting her. I am so glad I grew up and accepted correction without offense. I am so glad that I placed myself in her shoes.

Receptive But Unmovable

I consider myself to be receptive and reflective, but sometimes, it is hard to be receptive and intuitively reflective when I know someone else is projecting their stuff onto me. I will clearly know it is their stuff because projections [in my experience] always come to me out of nowhere and feel like a load that I must carry, breakdown, and then disseminate.

As empathetic and understanding as I want to be to a person who projects their stuff onto me, I have to draw the line and enforce clear boundaries to protect myself from another person’s projectile vomit of problems. It is indeed a draining experience.

In fact, it is completely irritating to me when someone’s projections come at me out of seemingly nowhere. My body reacts with immediate tension inside of my stomach, and I resort to a need to begin defending myself even when there is absolutely nothing that needs defending. It is as if I start embracing for the impact of hurling negativity my way.

Those are the times I want to be receptive but unmovable because I soon discern by the person’s projections that they have an unspoken expectation for me to change regarding something other than what I am doing. This for me is a triggering trauma response because I was always conditioned to make changes to myself based on someone else’s ridicule of me.

Twitter Projections

From time to time, I post my thoughts, understandings, and lessons learned about narcissists, narcissistic abuse, and narcissistic personality disorder on my Twitter feed. Anyone who sees my posts are free to respond whether they follow me closely or not, and I enjoy the interactions and different perspectives I receive from others.

In posting, I also know that my posts are not exempt from someone else’s critique(s). However, as far as my personal experiences go and how narcissism relates to my life, critiques from others is a mute point unless the one critiquing my posts is actually me.

People are free to disagree with information I express, but my experiences are my experiences, and those experiences are all true to me. My main point in sharing is to unchain my voice and share my story and not get into a verbal boxing match regarding my level of expertise on the topic.

Yet, when I see responses to my posts that are not only disagreeable but downright argumentative and biting in discourse, then I know that I have either struck someone’s last nerve, or I have encountered the response of a trolling narcissist, a sympathizer, an enabler, or a flying monkey.

Usually, it is, in fact, almost always the latter [a trolling narcissist who has become offended with my words] because anyone who has dealt with a narcissist in some capacity will know how a narcissist picks apart posts based on the level of their narcissistic injury regarding that post.

Normally, a non-narcissist will actually respond that a particular post I made was triggering to them, but the person never ever criticizes me, reduces to name calling , or goes on a projection rant. In general, people are genuinely nice, reflective, and add to the content furthering my own insights.

Once I read a response that appears to go off the deep end, rants about circumstances that have nothing to do with my post, or bewails me of starting my platform in the first place in an effort to silence my voice, then I have to sit back and shake myself free of someone else’s projections.

I use Twitter to post about my experiences and share commonalities with others. So, why should I change my story or the information I share because the person hurling their projections onto me has problems? Their problems are not my problems. I would prefer that people keep their projections to themselves, but I am aware that this is not always going to happen.

Even more so, I notice that it does not take long at all for other dissenters to jump on the post of the disgruntled projector and aid in further verbal assault. I always find it interesting that these responders are usually never people I follow or who follow me, and if they do follow me, they appear to wait for the opportune time as if they have an ax to grind for the sake of grinding it.

Nevertheless, the projections from these posts always comes out, and I am either left with the decision to defend myself or back off and ignore responses. Those are the times I wish I were not so empathically sensitive to even the tone and connotations of words in text form. I experience the same affects as if the person were talking to me face to face.

If I choose to defend my posts, I usually address the response as a way to determine the feedback I will receive. I want to make sure that what I am discerning regarding their projections is usually correct. I also respond to stand my ground about my experiences and shut the responder down. I think it takes a lot of gall to blast someone about their personal experiences just because something said is not liked at all.

But for the record, I refuse to be bullied anymore. My voice is unchained, and my story is my story. I have earned the right to tell of my survival. If people do not like my story, my shared experiences, and my learned knowledge, then there are so many others stories they can go read and dissect.

Furthermore, when I am met with more resistance over my own personal experiences with possible narcissists or dissenters that I have encountered over my personal experiences of what I have learned, then I know exactly who I am dealing with in terms of responses. I cut them off because frankly, I owe them nothing. After all, they stopped to comment on my posts and mind my business when they could have kept on scrolling.

Additionally, when I discern that my replies to someone else responding to my posts has hit a nerve, then I know that the response is nothing more than a set up to wreak havoc on my page because the angst responder is simply unable to get back at their actual target. I have come to realize that narcissists and/or abusive people will actually follow their target’s followers in an attempt to start trouble.

This is the main reason I do not respond to my DMs. I do not wish to be triangulated in other people’s projected problems. I want my platform to be a place of peace for me and everyone else. This cannot be the case if I do not choose to detach from their instigated drama. I must do what is best for me.

The Practice Of Detachment

At this point, I still need to work on practicing detachment when it comes to my interactions on social media. Sometimes it is difficult for me not to want to be bothered by someone’s sudden issues with my tweets especially when the person is making attempts to insult my intelligence as if I have no idea what I am talking about, to critique the wording of my tweets, or to actually correct my point of view regarding my personal story.

Basically all of the posts I make about narcissists all correspond to particular narcissists or narcissistic types who have been in my life. When I post any fact that I know, I always have one of those narcissists or narcissistic-like characters in my mind. The majority of the time, I take note that projections from others usually have to do with the issues they are having with someone else that they know who follows me.

For the record, I choose to maintain my anonymity and share my experiences with a bit of obscurity by not giving the real names of the narcissists, enablers, flying monkeys, or others that I share about. This way, I protect and respect their identities and leave space for them to deal with their own personal issues as they choose without public scrutiny. Despite the fact that I am no contact with the narcissistic people of my past, they were and some still are all people I love and care about. I still have a level of empathy that respects their privacy.

Needless to say, I am recognizing and understanding that detachment from such drama on social media keeps me in a place of peace. So ignoring, blocking, and muting people have become permanent ways for me to distance myself from the madness. I admit, taking these actions has not always been easy because of my past as a people-pleaser, but my main purpose on Twitter is to learn from other like-minded survivors and overcomers of narcissistic abuse and not be subjected to abuse.

Although it really should not amaze me that there are people who do not have the same objective even though they may like or respond to my posts, I admit that I am often slapped into shock when I see that their objective completely differs from what I consider the norm. There are indeed people who troll the platforms of others looking to cause drama, looking to instigate dissension, and looking to promote chaos and division. Therefore, their projections are all the more commonplace.

Despite all that, I can choose to engage or not. So I have decided that detachment will be my choice. My goal is to remain as narcissist-free as possible. This includes being free of anyone who emulates the bulk of the nine traits of narcissistic personality disorder. At any rate, I refuse to deal with other people’s projections. My story is mine, and my voice will remain unchained so that I continue sharing it.