Big topic today. I’m going to cover a lot so stick with it because, if you get your head around this, it’s going to completely change your relationships. I have made significant progress repairing the fractured relationships in my life precisely because of this concept. We’re talking about projection.

"Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another."
- Psychology Today

I’m sure you can think of examples from your own life, of when you’ve been in an argument with someone who is being abusive towards you - yet they appear to believe their actions and perspective are justified. Even when we believe we’re doing nothing wrong, they are often still able to blame us for causing their frustration. This is defensive projection, and it works in both directions. It is a fully unconscious process and there are reasons for it. And, because it is unconscious, it falls outside our conscious control - people are unable to act any differently when this is at play, because they are unaware of it.

These projections come about when we’re holding uncomfortable emotional energy. When we feel shame, anger, grief, guilt, fear… these negative emotions can become too intense for our psyche to bear, so our unconscious seeks to offload the emotional burden onto people around us.

I heard a great quote from Teal Swan, who said “People will set you up to feel the way they feel.”

Your family member who dishes out backhanded compliments that make you feel insecure, is doing so, unconsciously, because they feel insecure. The man who aggressively tries to intimidate you is doing so because he feels threatened. Your child who throws a tantrum in the supermarket that leaves you feeling powerless is doing so because they feel powerless.

Now this is where it gets interesting. Because, a projection will only stick if there is a seed of believability in it, that you accept. That family member dishing out those backhanded compliments, they unconsciously want to offload that energy of insecurity and shame they are feeling. So, if they make a comment about part of your appearance that you already hold some shame about, you might well agree. In which case you will literally take on that energy from them. I’m going to ring an alarm bell here and go over this point again and again, because this is going to change your life if you let it sink in.

If the person you’re speaking to feels afraid, ashamed, angry… their unconscious will likely look to offload that energy. So they will send out hooks to see if you will accept the emotions. They will slip in an insult, or try to make you feel intimidated, and see if it sticks. But the thing is, you have to agree with what they say for it to land. And you don’t have to accept it.

Let’s look at it another way. If they made a comment about a characteristic that you feel confident about, you won’t believe the insult, so you won’t accept it and the projection won’t stick. It only sticks if you agree. Now, I realise how painful it is when someone manages to pinpoint our insecurities - it is triggering. But the point I want to hammer home is, if we can begin to recognise that any attempt by someone to insult or intimidate us, is actually an attempt to project their own insecurities and offload their emotional energy, then we will realise that the insult isn’t actually about us at all. All we need to do is create a little bit of space where we pause and think, “this is not about me”, and we will stop taking on negative energy from the projections of others. You don’t even have to think of the ‘right way’ to respond - you simply choose not to accept the energy.

It really is, decide you’ve not been offended, and you won’t be.

Hurt People Hurt People

One thing that’s become really apparent to me in the past year is how much our existing unprocessed shame and trauma and pain, drive the actions and behaviours we carry out that hurt other people. To the point where I now view these trauma wounds as separate entities to the person themselves. This is really hard to get a handle on, particularly when we get into more extreme situations of trauma, but please bear with me and I’ll help you visualise what I’m saying.

When someone unconsciously tries to project these negative emotions onto us, if they do land, we’ll be triggered and our trauma will respond - not us. You’ve probably heard of the common trauma responses - fight, flight, freeze, fawn… these behaviours are played out on autopilot - like a pre-programmed script in our unconscious. At some time in the past there was a threat to our safety, and we reacted on instinct. Because we survived, our mind saved that behaviour as a shortcut - that runs faster than our conscious awareness, to help us escape in similarly dangerous situations. It’s a survival instinct.

If we overreact and start an argument with a coworker, or shut down and give our partner the silent treatment, or leave the room suddenly when things get heated, these are all examples of trauma responses in action. It’s like the trauma has a mind of its own and is acting on our behalf. In this way, it’s very much like being possessed - our little demon of pain reacts when someone or something gets close to our unprocessed old wounds.

This is so delicate and nuanced, and we don’t yet have the full framework for this. Because, of course, the actions driven by these traumas can and do cause serious harm. Often, these behaviours can be played out in response to events that happened years ago - or even passed down from ancestors. It’s natural that we want someone to take the blame if they hurt us. But they know not what they do. Their actions were unconscious and, from their perspective, they are justified to ensure their safety and survival.

Let me give you a real-world example from my own life. A few years ago, post-pandemic, I had lost my job and split up with a girl I was in love with. I found myself very alone and isolated and, at that time, I felt all this anger and resentment towards my dad. I blamed him for not being more present in my life and not being a better role model. I believed his failures to be a major contributing factor towards my, seeming, inability to get my life in order. So much so that I asked him to come meet me for lunch, so I could express some things that we’d never addressed. I did my best to not make it sound like an attack but, after I said what I needed to say, I noticed my dad struggling to get his words out in response. He started sharing reasons for things that happened, that made no sense to me, and he started getting frustrated when he couldn’t communicate. I realised my dad was stuck in a trauma response. I’d touched a shame wound of his and his response was like that of a little boy being scolded. I sat with this, going over in my head for a long time and, what I realised was that the anger and resentment I was directing at my dad was actually an attempt to offload the shame and discomfort I felt, because my life was a mess. If my life had been great, I wouldn’t have given a second thought to my dad’s actions. Now, as I said earlier, projections only stick if there’s a seed of believability in them. I do wish my dad had been more present, and I know he has regret about it too. And my unconscious used that hook to try and offload some of my emotional burden.

People need to take responsibility for their healing, but they are not to blame for their trauma. At the same time, when we realise that our unconscious actions have hurt others, we should absolutely take ownership and do our best to make amends with people we’ve hurt. If you are blaming or judging anyone, there’s a projection in there. And what I want you to see is that the grief, sadness or anger you feel, is separate from the blame. The blame is your unconscious attempt to offload the uncomfortable energy you’re feeling. Putting all our cultural conditioning aside for a minute, at a fundamental level, we are dealing with a dense emotional energy that is too much for us to hold. That needs to be released - we need to scream and shout, and cry for the things we’ve lost. But we can do those things - we can express those emotions, without needing to offload them back onto another human being. If we don’t release them intentionally, we will project it - we will pass that energy onto someone else, until it gets released. Reclaiming our blame and our judgment, and expressing our heavy emotions openly, without directing them at anyone else, is the most healing thing we can do for the world.

Now, as I say, I don’t think we even have the proper language for this yet, or maybe we’ve lost it, but we need to find a way to collectively depersonalise our trauma like this. Become aware of it as a separate entity, like that demon, so we can work to help each other release those wounds through compassion and acceptance. When we punish people for their actions that are driven by these unconscious forces, that are outside of their control, all we do is create shame, on top of an existing wound, which compounds the issue. This doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself if you are threatened, or we can’t take steps to protect society from people whose actions are harmful. We can do these things while also understanding that their actions are symptoms of a trauma that needs to be healed. And trauma is simply an energetic block that remains stuck in the body, that distorts the natural patterns of our behaviour.

Emotions: Energy in Motion

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
- Nikola Tesla.

I want to explain a bit more about emotional energy. Because, if you can start to get an understanding of the way it flows between people, rather than focusing on the specific material details of a situation, you will begin to be able to self-regulate your emotional state.

Emotions are literally energy in motion, and they all have a different frequency. Dr. David R. Hawkins and the Institute of Noetic Sciences demonstrated the existence of an energy field generated by different emotions. He proposed a scale that assigned distinct frequency values ranging from shame which scored 20, at the bottom, all the way up to enlightenment at over 700. Emotions like fear and anger have lower frequencies, and emotions like love and joy have higher frequencies.

So higher emotions are energy that moves through us at a faster rate. When we are happy, inspired, in love, we feel full of energy, we move faster, we feel high. Negative emotions are slower. More dense. We even refer to them as feeling heavy. And in the same way that denser objects have a greater gravitational pull on their surroundings, denser emotions have a stronger energetic pull too. They slow us down and create blocks in our system. It’s now widely understood that trauma is stored in the body and this is what it means. Those denser emotions slow down the free flow of energy.

Let me give you an analogy to help you visualise this. Out in space there are huge clouds of material, of molecular gas, of matter. And, as this matter comes together, the more that gravity pulls it together, the denser it becomes. And the denser it gets, just like those dense negative emotions, the stronger the gravitational pull on surrounding matter. At a certain point, this gas will collapse under its own gravity, heat up and give birth to a star. A glowing ball of fire. In the same way, our trauma, our pain and suffering can be compounded and become more and more dense until it spits out fire. We project that trauma out onto the people around us. The emotional burden of that pain becomes more than we can psychologically bear, so our psyches look to offload it - we unconsciously look for someone to take the blame - to help us shoulder that energetic load.

Now, in much the same way that the gravity of a star will continue to pull objects into it, those stuck negative emotions are dense and exhibit a strong pull on everything around them. That trauma wants to get energetically fed. It’s pull can be very strong and it knows how to get at your energy. Now, there are slight differences depending on which trauma response people are exhibiting when they interact with us but, generally, we respond in one of two ways - either feeding the energy or disconnecting from it.

Let me give you an example, if someone seems to be stuck in a sort of victim mentality, that’s usually related to a freeze or fawn trauma response. Their nervous system is often largely dissociated and they might struggle to take decisive action to improve their situation. It is hard work to escape from that place. The trauma is heavy and weighing them down. And, if you try to get involved, the pull of that trauma will compel you to rescue, or enable, or validate it, to perpetuate its existence. As much as we want to help, most of the time, if we pour our energy into someone else’s trauma, all we are doing is feeding it.

Now, as I said, the alternative response that many of us might take if we become aware of this dynamic, is to disconnect - step away and stop giving our energy. Sadly, it’s not as simple as that. As I said, these trauma wounds are strong and know how to get at your energy. If you try to step away, it might project and attempt to offload some of that energy onto you - making you feel guilty for not helping, or twisting things to paint you as a persecutor - even to other people, as a tool to gain their sympathy.

Now pay attention to the fact that I’m still referencing the trauma as independent from the person. I don’t believe people have any control over these actions. Trauma has a power all of its own. But, it is possible to heal and this leads me onto a third approach. The third way is to be able to stay connected and present with the traumatised person, without shaming or judgment, and without trying to fix things. When we rush to fix, we disempower the person we’re trying to help. Now, this is different from being there, when they ask for specific assistance, and are actively trying to make changes. If we come back to our star analogy, we have to stop feeding the trauma and give it the time and space to burn out, without pouring more fuel on the fire.

I just want to add a caveat here… There is a point, if someone has suffered greatly, when that dense ball of trauma might fold in, like a black hole. I believe the moments of great evil we witness in the world are times when a person’s pain is so great that they wish for the world to suffer the way that they have. There’s a threshold, beyond which, a person is so identified with their pain that you are now practically dealing with a shadow - that will consume you too, if you do not protect yourself. I’m not going to say there’s no return because I do believe there’s always hope but, often in these instances, we may need to keep at a distance for our own safety. But at the same time, we can still hold compassion for another severely hurting human and wish them healing.

Now, I know all this is incredibly hard. That trauma will try every trick in the book to get you to react. Our response when we are confronted with the trauma wounds of others should be to realise that the projection is nothing to do with us - no matter how barbed or cutting it may appear. We need to train ourselves to be strong and stable enough to weather those storms, and remain steadfast in our understanding of another human being who has suffered greatly. If we can stay connected and accepting, without feeding that trauma, it will naturally begin to soften and come into resonance with our own system. It’s a battle - your positive energetic force vs their trauma. If you remain grounded, their energy will soften and match yours. If you get shaken, your energy will come to match their trauma.

Looking at it from an evolutionary perspective, our nervous systems have learned to be able to detect the arousal state of the people around us - at an energetic, emotional level, through hormones, pheromones, body language and so on. So, whenever a situation arises and we’re not sure what’s going on, or systems are looking for cues from everyone else to decide whether we are safe, or if we need to be on alert. If there’s a danger and someone is projecting a state of panic, we’ll all accept that emotional energy to prepare us for fight or flight. But if one of us maintains a state of calm, that’s stronger than the panic, the rest of us will be reassured and match that. Whoever has the strongest nervous system state in the group wins and the rest of us will come into alignment. So if you can stay grounded and connected in the face of someone’s trauma projections, their system, will, come into energetic resonance with yours.

Raising Your Vibration

Let’s talk some more about the frequency of emotions. If we go back to our scale, to raise your vibration literally means to experience more joy, love, bliss. And you can change your life immediately by choosing to give your time to moments, activities and experiences that will bring you more of those feelings. In fact, in the same way you can choose not to accept the negative emotional energy that people attempt to project onto us, we can actively choose to experience more joy whenever we want. We often tell ourselves that we need an external reason to allow us to feel that way, but as you’ve seen here, it’s our internal perception that determines the emotions we experience. We do not see the world objectively - the meaning we assign to any particular event is entirely subjective. In which case, we are completely free to choose our response. Now, that doesn’t mean it will be easy, especially if we have years of conditioning to unpick but, the more we choose joy, the more gratitude we express, the more we can appreciate every single moment of our lives, the more we will continue to ascend to higher levels.

In fact, enlightenment simply means to accept reality completely as it is. If we don’t wish for anything to change, how can we experience anything but joy for our existence? Which seems so obvious when you think about it. Things can’t be other than they are. And yet, every thought that occupies our mind is a desire for something to be different. Wishing we could rewrite the past, or anticipating wholly imaginary outcomes for the future. Everything we think is a denial of reality. That’s a definition of a mental illness.

Instead, if we can cultivate an acceptance of more and more of our life experience - if we can have faith that we will be completely fine and find our way whatever happens to us, we will continue to experience more joy, love, bliss - more peace. If it’s real, it is a welcome part of our universe.

There’s a reason why Jesus’ opening sentence from the Sermon on the Mount was, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. It’s because, those of us who life has brought to our knees, those who have suffered deeply, experienced trauma; if it doesn’t completely break us and we find our way back, we can find ourselves in a place of renewed appreciation for life. We no longer have extravagant needs and desires - we experience profound joy and gratitude at the simplicity and magnificence of existence. Our lowest point is the direct gateway to the highest. We are happy with whatever life brings - we accept reality as it is, and we will share that joy with everyone we can. This sounds pretty close to enlightenment if you ask me.

And this is why I still have hope for humanity, despite the pain and suffering we are witnessing in the world. Actions and behaviours that are all being perpetuated by lifetimes of unprocessed, compounded and projected trauma wounds. As heart-wrenching as it is to witness such suffering, I firmly believe that pain to be a potential gateway to our ascension - if we can collectively begin to see, and reclaim, our projections. And if we can remember that those projections of others are never, really, about us. When we truly understand that fact, we will naturally show grace and compassion for another broken human who is suffering, just like the rest of us. I have faith that we are beginning to develop the language and understanding to do just that.