Do I Really Project My Insecurities onto Others?
When I used to hear “experts” say that if there is something about someone you just simply can’t stand, it’s because it’s reflection of how you perceive yourself, I used to wave off such thinking and dismiss it as bunk. I simply didn’t understand this line of thinking.
To me, if someone was annoying, or had some other pleasant quality that I didn’t like, what in the hell did that have to do with me?
Well, recently, I’ve come to rethink my confusion and have started to see the validity of such a statement.
The past few weeks have been a bit intense internally because I’ve been discovering a lot of buried emotions within me that have given me more cues to my behaviour patterns and have connected the dots in why I did the things I did in my past.
One of the things I noticed was a tendency I had to look at disdain at any women I was involved with at the turn of a dime. I wasn’t with any women at the particular time when I noticed this, but my mind went back to the times when I did, and for the first time in my life, I was able to see it had nothing to do with the girl but had everything to do with me.
We all have ways to cope with the uncomfortable feelings that stem from the negative beliefs and insecurities we have about ourselves. We either try to suppress the feelings altogether so we don’t have experience them, or we self-medicate through numerous methods, some of which include drugs, alcohol, sex, porn, accumulating wealth, etc. etc.
I realize another way to deal with our uncomfortable feelings that stem from our insecurities is to project them onto others. In my case, I would take the disdain about myself that was living inside of me and project it onto the other person, by making her the object of my disdain. Redirecting this disdain I had for myself on to the other person was a way I used to avoid feeling those feelings.
Now I know what people mean when they say, “You’re projecting,” though I think that phrase can be sometimes overused by people who are confronted with ugly truths about themselves and don’t want to face it.
Either way, not only am I glad to have gotten this awareness, but I am also happy to have acquired the tools over the last two years to deal with my “self-disdain” so I can continue to heal and have more healthy relationships with women.
This is The Viable Alternative.
Hope this helps,
Ike Love
