Are you projecting onto others?
Self-projection is a defense mechanism in which people attribute disliked traits and impulses of their own to other people to avoid inner conflict, stress, shame, or other emotions that are unappealing or unacceptable to them.
So how do you know if you’re projecting onto someone?
Since projection is an unconscious reaction, you may not be immediately aware that you’re doing it, but you can try to be more conscious about how you relate to, and react to others.
The behaviors below are a few of the more common ones you may exhibit when you are projecting:
1. Being hypersensitive to comments or actions that aren’t directly about you.
A lot of people “read into” things too deeply and jump to assumptions if they’re feeling insecure or vulnerable. This is particularly true if something in the present triggers unwanted emotions such as shame or anger that are based on past experiences.
So, if you find yourself overreacting to phrases spoken or situations instigated by those around you, pause and ask yourself: “Is this reaction justified? Or am I projecting experiences from my past onto what’s happening now?”
2. Criticizing others around you.
Do you find yourself being overly critical of everyone around you, and never turning the same critical eye toward yourself? According to Everyday Health, this is a classic sign of projection.
For example, do you criticize your partner or children for never doing any housework, but you don’t take the time to analyze how many of the household chores you do on a regular basis?
In a scenario like this, stop and try to view the situation from all perspectives. Perhaps you feel you aren’t putting enough time or effort into keeping the house clean and tidy because you’re exhausted from work and other life responsibilities, and you feel shame and guilt about it.
In this case, you are projecting your shortcomings—and the emotions you feel about them—onto other people and deciding that they aren’t doing enough.
3. Overreacting to things with strong emotions.
Do you occasionally get sudden waves of emotion that seem disproportionate to the situation or issue at hand? For example, do you feel the desire to swear at your boss and quit your job if your work is corrected or criticized?
People who are prone to projection often have emotional reactions that are intensely out of proportion to whatever triggered them.
They are reacting to the past root cause of that emotion rather than the current situation.
4. Feeling that you “know” things about people you haven’t interacted with.
People sometimes attribute various behaviors or traits to those they don’t know in person or have barely interacted with.
You may project traits you either value or despise in yourself onto people you barely know.
For example, you may take a dislike to a coworker at your office, deciding that they’re lazy, judgmental, or arrogant, even though you hardly know them. You’ve simply decided that’s how they are based on an arbitrary whim or cognitive bias.
5. Noticing repeated patterns of behavior in other people.
Do you find that you keep having the same experiences with different people over and over again?
For example, do you keep seeing the same behaviors in coworkers no matter how many different jobs you do? Or that your housemates or partners always end up behaving the same way?
If that’s the case, it’s likely that you’re projecting the same traits onto them rather than them all behaving the same way.
Many people end up projecting insecurities, blame, and other feelings or traits onto those around them, especially if they have difficulty resolving those issues themselves.
6. Defensiveness based on assumptions rather than facts.
If you’re dealing with low self-esteem or have dealt with excessive amounts of criticism in the past, you may become instantly defensive in various scenarios.
For instance, let’s say your superior at work asks if you were the one who wrote the report for that afternoon’s board meeting. They’ve been completely neutral in this inquiry, but your go-to response is to ask them what you’ve done wrong now, or to claim that someone else worked on it in order to avoid criticism.
7. Making assumptions to cope with a fear of the unknown.
If you’ve ever had an anxiety or panic attack, it’s likely stemmed from a situation in which you haven’t had all the information necessary to calm you.
When we don’t have all the answers to our questions, we experience something known as “cognitive distortion”—a thinking trap or error in which we fill in the information gaps with worst-case scenarios in an attempt to plan for self-preservation.
In simplest terms, we make assumptions and then start spiraling based on them.
This is where projection based on past experiences comes into play. You take past experiences and overlay them onto a completely different person or scenario as a means of avoiding potential discomfort or harm.
8. Criticism due to self-loathing.
Sometimes, people insult or abuse others about a particular trait of theirs, and then later discover they also have that trait.
According to Psychology Today, an example of this is if someone who has internalized homophobia projects feelings of self-hatred and shame onto other people. They might use homophobic slurs and treat same-sex couples with contempt because they’re incapable of processing the conflicted feelings within themselves.
Similarly, someone who dislikes certain physical traits in themselves will often insult those who share those traits.
9. Blame-shifting.
This type of behavior often manifests when someone wants to avoid punishment. Maybe they were punished severely as children when they made mistakes, so instead of taking accountability for their missteps, they project that behavior onto another in the hope that they’ll be punished instead.
Blame-shifting can also be employed if a person doesn’t want to take responsibility for their behaviors or personal choices.
A classic example is an abuser telling those they’re mistreating that those people “made them angry” or that they wouldn’t have had to hit them if they hadn’t provoked them, instead of acknowledging that their behaviors are entirely their own responsibility.
People with personality disorders often use blame-shifting as a means of processing personal behaviors they know deep down are unacceptable. For example, a narcissist who’s been lying through their teeth might accuse their partner or child of lying instead.
10. Making baseless accusations.
This type of behavior usually stems from insecurity or inferiority. The one who feels insecure will project their insecurity onto another and accuse them of things that have no basis in fact.
They might do so to feel better about themselves if they face any kind of rejection—either of themselves or their interests.
For example, let’s say someone is feeling insecure about their looks. They may accuse their partner of watching dirty videos or talking to other people romantically behind their back, even though their partner has no interest in anyone but them. Their insecurity will make them project the worry of infidelity onto their partner.
11. Unfounded jealousy.
Personal insecurities and subsequent projection bias may stem from negative experiences that occurred at any point in life. These can result in a person showing unreasonable—and often unfounded—jealousy towards a person or situation.
For example, let’s say a man didn’t have much when he was growing up, and thus developed a fair amount of anxiety related to scarcity.
If he sees a friend’s child receiving items that he always wanted but never had when he was growing up, he might feel an unhealthy amount of jealousy and resentment toward the kid.
Deep down, he may be fully aware that his envy is unjustified and even unhealthy. As such, he’s projecting shame that he’s feeling about this jealousy in addition to feeling the envy itself.
12. Rumor-spreading.
This stems from insecurity and may be used to alienate others in an attempt to elevate oneself.
Let’s say Leslie was hoping to get a promotion at work, but Rania got it instead. Rather than acknowledging that Rania might have earned said promotion through her own diligence and hard work, Leslie projects her own insecurity and inadequacy onto Rania.
She may imply that Rania got promoted by stealing Leslie’s work and claiming it as her own, or that she slept with someone in management to get special favors.
By doing so, Leslie is unconsciously seeking to elevate herself in her peers’ eyes while degrading her rival.
She’s also undermining her rival’s position by calling her competence into question.
