Jung

In life, we all find ourselves in situations that we’d probably choose to avoid if we could. We think things that are unthinkable. We resist our reality, deny that we have any choice over the life we find ourselves living and we totally deny the parts of ourselves that we reject, instead, projecting them onto others in the form of judgment and blame.  When ever we can look at someone and say, for example, “My mother is selfish, insensitive, arrogant and ignorant,” we are passing a judgment and projecting.

Following Jung’s theory of the Shadow, this indicates aspects of our own persality that we just can’t accept. We possess these qualities, but we make them wrong and deny them, using incredible amounts of energy to resist them and keep them hidden away from ourselves and others. The problem with resistance is that it virtually guarantees that we will create more of whatever it is that we resist. It’s like a universal law of some kind. It’s something we should all be taught in third grade, like multiplication. I didn’t coin the phrase, “What you resist, persists,” or “What you can’t be with won’t let you be,” but they sum it up in an annoyingly trite but true way.

I was crocheting some baby socks for my newest granddaughter a few days ago and working with very fine, delicate and twisted yarn. I’d pull and untangle a little at a time, enough to make the next few rows. Then, I’d get to the knots again, and push and pull here and there, trying to loosen the knot just enough to keep crocheting a few more rows. It was difficult to discern which fragile string I should pull to loosen the knot. Push, pull and wiggle this one, wiggle that one…maddening! The more I pulled on the knot, the tighter it became. The tighter it became, the more stuck I was in the process. I repeated this process over several days, even thinking about starting at the loose end of the yarn and winding into a ball, in other words dealing with it, but, of course I didn’t do that! That would be actually dealing with the dang thing.

Eventually, I had to admit that the more I pulled on or resisted the fact that there was a knot in my yarn the more it drove me crazy and kept me from moving forward with something I actually enjoy doing, creating something for someone I love. I finally accepted the fact that I was going to have to stop trying to push past this knot and deal with it. As long as I resisted it, it existed and really annoyed me. As long as I couldn’t be with it and deal with it, it wouldn’t let me be. And with all the power of my humanity, I managed to project onto the yarn! It was stupid, flimsy, stubborn, stuck, hard to work with….hmmmmm.

It was a process to loosen the knots and look at the problem through the eyes of acceptance, but there would be no forward motion until I did. As I worked through the tedium of the process, I realized that this knot was actually a gift. It gave me the inspiration for this blog and what I think is a great analogy.

We always have the choice to let go of our resistance and embrace the unembracable. Now, that’s a thought worth thinking.

False responsibility Part I

I speak with clients daily who struggle to know when they are helping someone and when they are enabling someone to continue poor or destructive behavior.

Most of us want to be as supportive of others as possible, often to a fault. We see this frequently between parents and children. The line becomes blurred here because our children come to us in a state of total need and complete dependence. Supporting them, doing for them, providing for them is a natural part of the relationship.

This behavior can also be seen between spouses, siblings and friends with disasterous results. Once we position ourselves as the savior, the martyr, the provider or the one who is responsible or to blame, we have eliminated any other possible dynamic within the relationship.

When we do for others what they could and should do for themselves, we cheat them out of their god-given right to learn from their own choices. By letting go of our false responsibilities, we free both ourselves and others to learn our most important lessons.

Part II: What we get out of false responsibility

People pleasing is one of the greatest epidemics known to mankind. It seems that we will do whatever it takes to please others and make them like us. Another motive for people pleasing is to avoid conflict, confrontation or our own truth.

We have been taught from an early age that we should be nice and in order to be nice, we attempt to please as many people as possible an any given moment. And if you are saying to yourself at this moment, that you never try to please people, I am going to assert that you are , in fact, a people-pleaser and are unaware of it.

When we are caught in the people pleasing mode, we completely abandon ourselves and our own needs. This leads to a loss of personal power and ultimately to resentment and anger. When we say yes when we really mean no, we build up a residual resentment against the very people we are trying to please.

A typical example of this is the husband or wife who martyrs him or herself for the good of the other. This results in a set of unspoken expectations. When the other person fails to meet these expectations, resentment accumulates. Eventually, the resentment is so huge it can be difficult, if not impossible for an individual to see beyond.

When the wife of 40 years looks at her husband and sees only the ways he has disappointed her over the years, she is caught in the trap of people pleasing. She becomes blinded to the reality that this is the person with whom she has spent her life, her partner and friend. She has covered up his vulnerabilities as a fellow human being. Both her eyes and her heart have been covered over by the imagined wrongdoings of her husband.

What began, as people pleasing results in a separation from those we love the most. We have to be true to ourselves within our acts of kindness. We have to understand that saying yes when we mean no is not the road to happiness and well-being. It is the road to loneliness and isolation.

Standing in one’s own power means to be confident and courageous enough to be honest and say what we mean. We all want to be liked by others, but the truth is that regardless of what we do, half of the people will like us and the other half probably won’t.

What is really important is that we love our self enough to risk the opinions of others. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “To thine own self be true,” for when we cannot be true even to ourselves, we cannot be true to another.

Projection of the unconscious psyche is often the most difficult concept we must digest in our experience of awakening. It’s counter-intuitive to consider that literally everything in the depths of our unconscious psyches is seen outside ourselves in a projected form. This continues until the day we finally begin to consider that it is at least possible that we are projecting and that much of what we are seeing, judging, blaming and reacting to in others, in very real fact, exists within our own unconscious minds.

Projection and our lack of understanding about it causes untold suffering. Our lives suffer on every level and in every experience because we consistently project our own unwanted, rejected or denied qualities onto others. In short, we don’t see others as they are, we see others as we are. Because we don’t understand this, we suffer in our relationships, careers, spirituality, how we experience fun and joy and most of all we suffer because we limit our own potential.

We assign meaning to what other’s say or do based on our own unconscious deeply held beliefs of who we think we are and our beliefs. This dynamic of the phenomenon of projection is a true gift, because without it, we could never see what is real within us. Without it, we would never begin to step into our own powerful presence and we would never have any choices. We would be stuck inside a hall of mirrors, mocking and rejecting the distortions of our own image, rejecting these unfamiliar aspects of ourselves over and over. Sadly, this process of denial of our true nature and rejection of our selves becomes the definition of a lifetime. The cycle of projection is without end as long as we are unaware of it.

We can only see ourselves through reflection. Externally, that means that we would have no idea what our physical body looks like without the reflection of a mirror, water or some other reflective surface. We can only see our inner selves through the projected reflection of our reactions to others. What we react to, positively or negatively, in other people or situations is always about us.

I often say that things either affect or inform us. That’s my quick way of analyzing where I am coming from in any situation. As an example, I met a woman last summer that very quickly began to tell me all the dynamics of the group I had just entered. She informed me about who could be trusted and not, who was greedy, who had the ‘affair’ and who I was to simply avoid. As she talked, I began feeling really uncomfortable. I listened for a bit, taking it all in before I heard my internal dialog kick in. First, I thought she might be a very insecure person. That was a possibility. At this point, I was comfortable in knowing that this was merely information. I did not feel the need to form a self-righteous position and make her wrong. I made the decision that it would probably be in my best interest to limit our contact, and I have. This informed me.

A few short years ago, one of two things would have happened. I would have either joined in her observations and become her friend and our wounded egos would have validated each other in our self-righteous positions that said we know everything about everyone and we can judge them. Or, I would have formed my own SRP about this woman and made her wrong and judged her as a bad person because she is such a nasty gossip. I might have even passed my judgment of her on to someone else. I would have been totally affected.

Being able to observe my own action or reaction to a person or a situation has given me an incredible perspective from which to evaluate whether I am projecting my own unconscious ’stuff’ onto another or merely noticing the behavior. There is much freedom and power in cultivating the ability to be the observer in one’s own life.

If I had been affected by the woman mentioned above, I would begin the projection process by making her wrong, stupid, nosy, petty, etc. In my judgment of her, I am projecting my own disgust and rejection of the wrong, stupid, nosy, petty person inside of me.

Come on, there’s a stupid, nosy, petty person inside all of us. So what? Can we love ourselves anyway? Only when I can accept that I possess those qualities as well, can I allow another to have them without making them wrong. It’s none of my business. It’s not my place to judge her.

It is my job to notice when I have been petty, nosy and a gossip in the past, forgive myself for it and get on with life. I can make a huge difference in how I experience this group just by making that one choice. I can also have an impact on others in the group by choosing to show up as authentically tolerant and willing to see each person as whole and complete and enjoy them just as they are. I can never do this until I can accept my own flaws and weaknesses. I can only do this when I am willing to stop being embarrassed by my humanity.

This, too, is projection. But, that’s another blog!