Projection and its circular effect

[Gaining Strength]

I have been using EFT to get to the source of some of my most intractible seeming issues.  I discovered something about projection.

Have you ever had someone accuse you of being angry when you were not?  And no matter what you say, they refuse to back down.  Before long, if you don't get up and leave you find yourself angry indeed and then all the "stuff" behind the accusation actually sticks. 

Interestingly the person doing the accusation is themselves - angry.  This is an example of how overt projection works.

As I was getting at this information I saw that what happened to me as a child was that I took on the properties that were attributed to me (projected) and then I received all the penalties for the "crime" projected onto me. IOWs if it was projected onto me that I was angry and there were specific penalties or moral objections for being angry then I not only became angry but also received a punishment for it and a moral judgment.  The other thing about this in a black/white family is that I became - not angry about s.t. but - an angry person.  The issue was not an act but a being and as an angry person I deserved to be rejected and isolated and punished and ....

Once whatever the negative quality was projected onto me it was reason enough to punish and to push out into a permanent punishment, rejection state.  All of this eventually shut me down.  There was absolutely no way out.

The actual thing that happened in my family was not about anger but about getting something done.  But there was always sabotage.  In other words, I would be set up to get something done but I would not be given all the things that I needed to do the task and then I would fail and that failure would be fodder for humilation and belittlement and laughter for years and years to come.  This certain failure cycle got completely wound into my fiber.  I am thankful to be getting clear on this stuff.

It was a trap deliberately set and no way out.  This is a painful revelation.

Here is a phrase that comes to me, "No matter what you do it is not enough.  You will always fail."

I have long felt like a rat on a wheel, running, running getting nowhere.  Sometimes I used the analogy of a car with its wheel stuck in mud.  The harder you try to get out the deeper you get stuck.  That's what happened to me.

It is very painful to discover this stuff.  It is painful to uncover and reexperience.  Very, very painful.

[gjazz]

WK: yes, what you describe here is what I've always thought of as being made a simultaneous victim/victimizer.  You're minding your own business and wham!  You're accused of something.  Maybe being "angry," as you mention here.  And you're like, "huh?  I'm not angry."  And that becomes "not only are you angry you're making me angry, see what you've done to me..."  I.e., you've gone from being the accused to being both accused and finger-pointer, all through no actions of your own.  Ns don't take responsibility.  Not for their own feelings (so they project) and not for whatever repercussions those feelings engender.  When I encounter a person like you describe, I run for the hills. 

[ann3]

WK,

Your perception & realization is 10000000000000% accurate.

I also tap and think it's a good idea to tap on this because you have mentioned this often:

It was a trap deliberately set and no way out.  This is a painful revelation.
Here is a phrase that comes to me, "No matter what you do it is not enough.  You will always fail."

I think this is a theme for you (set up to fail & there's no way out) and if you work on these statements (and the memories of these incidents), you will eventually have a break thru and will eventually feel free and released from this.  By tapping, our brains eventually re-wire the memory & feelings connected to this & we can leave it behind and move forward.

w/love,
ann

[Gaining Strength]

When I encounter a person like you describe, I run for the hills.    I hope I will soon be able to recognize it quickly.  Up until now I have found myself sucked in - I guess to try to work it out on that unconscious level - That sucks!!!  I'd rather run for the hills

It was a trap deliberately set and no way out.  This is a painful revelation.
Here is a phrase that comes to me, "No matter what you do it is not enough.  You will always fail."
  Great idea Ann - have you actually tapped on this very thing.  I will definitely try it.  I can already tell that it will help because I sense a big resistance to it.  That's a great indicator of something that needs attention.

Thank you both for your feedback.

[gjazz]

WK: In my experience, my NF tried to make other feel crazy.  If you doubt your own sanity, you are more likely to cede some level of control over your own life to the abuser.  Recognize it quickly by listening to your gut.  "I'm not angry."

The one thing I think non-N's have over Ns is this: Ns are incredibly predictable.  They SEEM unpredictable only when you try to apply a normal human dynamic.  But I've heard over and over here that we know how these people are going to respond/treat us/treat others in any given situation.  So plan ahead.  Go in prepared.  Imagine the conversation and plan your attack, not defense.  Don't be afraid of these people, unless of course you have reason to think he'll hurt you physically. 

They are cowards.  They're pathetic.  They're sad.  They'll crumple in the face of real strength.  You GO!

[sea storm]

Gaining Strength,

I think this is a hugely important concept.  This is what Ns do in spades.  The big vortex that sucks in the victims has this instead of a personality.  They project so much onto the people who get close to them.  I think that most of what they do is projection.  If you end up feeling bad, often this is because of projection. I am sorry that you had to experience this as a child. It is so toxic.  Anything the N feels that doesn't feel good gets projected.

I have been tapping for awhile now and it helps a lot.  Even though I feel afraid and lonely I still love and approve of myself.  There are some good sites for learning this.  I think it helps me to move forward.

Now I see how pathetic it is for a parent to act as if their child is bad and flawed and cant do anything right or even ok. Even one episode of this is destructive but to have this done constantly leaves me thinking that it is a miracle a child survives this.
It is sickening to realize that my mother did this do me and brainwashed me ad nauseum.  There is a way out of this entrenched belief system, Thank God.

Sea storm

[Gaining Strength]

For the two plus years I have been here I have written so many times about my struggle to get past the paralysis that keeps me bound.  It took me about a year to recognize that part of the binding shackles was shame and then it took another year to find a way to overcome that shame. 

The next trick was figuring out why the paralysis persisted still.  I went through many concepts and permutations and frustrations and came up with a number of factors. 

Today I find myself facing head on the memories of the profound shaming, criticism and belittlement for anything and everything that I did or did not do.  It began early and was taught to my brothers.  They joined the fray.  The power of this all is astonishing - the power to destroy.

I have little if any contact with my father and middle brother.  I am in contact with my mother and with my oldest brother, I exchange occassional e-mails and phone calls, mostly concerning my mother.  The NC alone has done nothing to free me.  I internalized this shaming and humiliation into a cellular level as such a young age.  The job of shifting that immediate physiological response is not an easy one but is essential and necessary to making the change and the healing.

So much of my shut down, has been an unconscious attempt to avoid the pain, to shut down the anxiety of the anticipated humiliation, anticipated rejection, anticipated sabotage.  I can not longer allow my life to continue to be wasted.  There is so much to be done - so much healing and so much living. 

I have missed what this place once was.  It is the only place I have found in my entire life where people understand the force of the damaging wounds of growing up in an N family.

I was driving this morning thinking about the concept of forgiveness and remembering that some people at other sites have suggested that THE barrier to my healing was forgiving the wounders.  (Mind you this person is a kind and caring human who knew next to nothing about my life, my experiences, my pain.)  I tried her suggestion for some time and got some relief from it but today I was thinking about it again and it was still sticking in my craw.  Why? I wondered.  I am a firm believer that lack of forgiveness eats away at my heart, my being.  Why did her edict still bother me.  Then I saw it - as bright as the morning sun - forgiveness cannot come before acknowledgment of the offense. It cannot. 

Now, needless to say, my parents have not, will not, perhaps could not EVER acknowledge ANY offense toward me.  So where will it come.  I has come from here, from people here, both directly and indirectly by reading story after similar story.

The kind, caring but ignorant person who TOLD me to pray her prayer of forgiveness, no questions asked, did not take the time nor the interest to acknowledge the destructive offenses that I had experience, endured.  She does not understand that forgiveness cannot be given until there is some acknowledgment of the offence. 

The only place I have ever received that acknowledgement is here.  I cannot bear to watch this community die.  It is like losing a dear love one, searched for longed for and found at last only to lose them.  It is truly painful.

[sea storm]

Gaining Strength,

I am so touched by your thoughts.  Forgiveness is a long way down the road for me. I am still busy eating myself alive with shame and guilt.  There are times when i feel lifted out of it all and they are more frequent.  Grieving the loss of my childhood, the loss of what a family if supposed to be, grieving the person I could have been if I had not been constantly criticized and victimized by the peculiar brand of envy my mother had which came out as contempt.  cripes...... Forgiveness is very nice.  But fake forgiveness is syrupy cold and crazymaking.  Grit your teeth and bear it kind of being a good girl forgiveness. That is all I could manage.

I find that I am characterizing my Ns in a different way now and seeing them as cardboard characters who could be in a Charles Dickes novel. I am takins away their power.  This is very, very good.  Sometimes I exaggerate his behaviour or my mom's and my sister and i laugh our heads off.  It isn't forgiveness but it puts things in a different perspective.  We have big laughs over my X waiting for an executive consulting job where he can have a private jet and then playact how he can bullshit his way in the job and deligate everything until he is left to do nothing but channell change.

There is nothing that says we cant move to another place and keep up this talking on the internet.  There are some very smart people here who could figure out how to do it.  We are pretty self regulating now.  I like the way we mostly ignore toxic comments. Mine included.

This place has been a life saver that is for sure.  There is something really beautiful about some of the things that have evolved here. I suppose one could track the changes that people make.   For me, When it all came down and I was Dand D  I was shattered. I clung to this place for my lifeline.  I found such a deep well of understanding, non judgement and experience . 
Is it possible to keep the format and keep it simple.   


Love,

Sea storm

[gjazz]

In my case also, this behavior was taught early and my brothers were indoctrinated.  Belittling women was constant.  My youngest brother still relates to me only through criticism, all the ways in which I'm an abject failure, all my opinions that are laughable.  but he's changing.  Slowly, but surely.  My other two brothers saw the light some time ago.  A bulb went on when they'd visit my father and he'd put their wives down constantly.  I don't know the answer, GS, except to somehow get to the place in your own head where it stops mattering so much.  I know that's a long hard journey, certainly one I'm not finished with.  I have almost no contact with my father and little with my brothers, though I get along fine with all three brothers when necessary.  I enjoy seeing the older ones.  The youngest I still must steel myself for a bit.  He's incredibly successful and equally judgmental and I'm always glad when it's over, but I don't avoid it.  My father, I avoid.  Take care.

[Hopalong]

Shame...unwarranted undeserved self-polluting toxic chronic shame

SUCKS
and y'all don't deserve this feeling

This feeling doesn't even line up in the slightest with who you ARE, warts and all

This feeling is like a mosquito buzzing you long past the first frost

Your rational challenges to the feeling, over and over, will eventually drown it.
It's only a reflex, a groove in the brain. Overcome by a deliberate habit of daily, hourly repetitive
POSITIVE messages as there once were negative. From yourselves mostly, and from seeking out
3-D and 2-D others who will tell you the positive truth.

It won't take years, because you are reprogramming yourselves as ADULTS.
It can't win, because you're determined.

(And 2 steps back + 1 step forward always equals Forward.)

love
Hops

[gjazz]

Has anyone considered how projection, which creates shame, is caused by shame as well?  Agree?  Disagree?

[Hopalong]

Agree. Absolutely.

Because if we actually FELT compassion for our selves, the full sperchul forgiveness...
then we'd not need to disown or offload our own dark sides.

Hops

[gjazz]

My father projects like mad.  He's always telling me (and others) what I (they) feel, think, mean.  He has a need to control not only the conversation but the underlying emotions.  I wonder, often, about his own upbringing.   All I ever hear is that he was the golden boy, but this projecting cannot come from strength, it comes from weakness and/or fear.  Maybe he felt he'd never live up.  Maybe it was something worse.  I've seen pictures of my F with his own F, when my F must have been in his very early teens.  He doesn't have the arrogant swagger or cruel twist of the mouth he has in later photos, after his father died.  Instead he has a face that seems to have dissolved into itself.  He looks--ashamed.  Miserable.  The sort of look I'd expect to see on a boy standing next to his abuser and trying, hopelessly, to present another face to the world.

[sKePTiKal]

gjazz:

in my (mostly bpd) mom's case, it's not so much shame that she feels/felt that she needed to project... as much as a profound emptiness of being. The shame was just window-dressing... as were all emotions... for her. Remember the vampire analogy? These people feed off our very real emotional reactions... because they can't feel their OWN (or don't want to). So projection becomes a way to provoke that emotional reaction...

Shutting down and not feeling anything (like GS's paralysis) was my way of not giving my mom anything to fuel this sick cycle. It was the only control/protection that worked to thwart her... like GS again, I've been struggling with the INTERNALIZED "mom" - like an inner critic/vampire - and also trying to peel that off of me, like some diabolical slime that freezes/burns simulataneously. Separating that from "me" was the first step... then I had to "prove" with facts that this inner vampire was WRONG, wacko, and completely deluded about who I am.

I've noticed that some people seem naturally immune to projection. They laugh it off. Maybe they have an innate sense of their "self boundary" that some others - like myself - never developed or were denied... perhaps through a lack of a healthy maternal attachment as infants. (Carolyn had a great thread on this... might have to go resurrect it...)

Hope I can get back here from work today.

[gjazz]

PR: I have a bipolar aunt--my mom's brother's wife.  She's been ill most of her adult life.  I'm trying to think if she projects, but I don't think she does, so much.  In her case, she must always be right.  The ultimate Authority on all things.  And she's the Most Important Person, no matter the situation.  I find being around her very draining.  Not just the being right, but the sort of vacuum you describe here, it's just exhausting, like being sucked into a vortex and trying to hold onto the edges to avoid the force of the pull.  I'm better at ignoring her than my mother.  She is more empathetic.  I lost some empathy for my aunt when my uncle lay dying of cancer and she said things like, "He can't expect me to cook his meals and wash his sheets.  I have a busy schedule."  Meaning shrink appointments and tennis.  She's never worked a job and their kids were grown, married, living in their own homes.  She was too busy.  My brother drove all night to get there in time to help.  He came back--again, driving all night- and looked at me, and I could see he'd never forgive her.  I'm trying.  Sort of.