I think projections are really blind spots. Because what I see when I’m projecting, are all my unresolved issues from past events, literally covering up what’s currently going on.
It’s like I’m having a conflict with my own reactions to people from the past, except I'm in the present moment, with someone who isn’t really the person I’m imagining he is.
He may be similar, because when people need to resolve the same conflict for so long, they often find similarly behaved people so that they might win the battle at last.
But he's not the source of my pain.
He might be adding to my pain. But most likely, he's over there, experiencing the same kind of situation as me—but too busy projecting his own unresolved issues to even notice what's going on.
Both of us, seemingly in the same room, yet arguing with ghosts from our respective pasts.
I think a lot of toxicity in relationships is the result of blind spots.
Two people reacting to their interpretations of what’s happening, breathlessly defending their own perspectives, without recognizing that the experience of being invalidated happened years ago. One person yelling, "Stop Yelling!" The other person interrupting, “You're not listening!”
The only way I know how to get rid of a blind spot, is to discover what I’m not seeing, by looking inside of myself. To shift from needing someone to understand me, to doing the work of understanding myself.
Instead of expecting my partner to validate me, and feeling like my life depends on this to happen, to journey inside of myself to understand where this need came from. And why it’s so concentrated.
Who did I need validation from? And when did I not receive it?
As I go deeper, I can locate the origins of my own feelings of rejection. And I can actually travel back in time to all those incidents when it happened.
It’s amazing to me how these memories are stored in my tissue, like bookmarks. Like chapters that weren’t finished and still need my attention:
Boys who didn’t show up when they said they would.
Stepmothers who said I turn people off.
A girl in fourth grade who made fun of me for asking if I could be her friend.
When no one wanted to be my partner in acting class.
When my mother wouldn’t let me hold her hand.
When my father suddenly wasn’t there.
Each of these memories of rejection fueled the need to be validated over time. And every time I felt rejected again, it felt even more invalidating.
But by going deeper and discovering where the pain originated, I learned I could validate myself by validating those hurt selves I once was.
And when I can soothe my own pain in the places where it exists inside of me, I find I’m not as triggered when interacting with someone who might be activating those old bookmarks.
Because instead of having a blind spot, I can see clearly now where that need for validation came from.
When we take the journey inward to heal our own pain, we won’t be dependent on others to do this work for us.
-JLK
