PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION

5 Powerful Real-life Examples of Karma

“Learn to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” — Leonardo da Vinci

Projective identification is a concept in psychoanalysis that was introduced by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. It describes a defence mechanism that causes an individual to project unwanted and subconscious emotions and qualities that are not acceptable to the self, onto another person, and that person to appropriately and justifiably internalise these projections.

This is essentially what karma is. Our actions arising from our assumptions and internal beliefs, whether good or bad, come back to us eventually because with projective identification, we force other people to behave the way we expect them to.

I will demonstrate the subtle ways karma manifests itself through projective identification with real-life examples.

1. Externalising Blame

We always call people who externalise blame, a**holes. Because despite all the pain they cause, they never take responsibility, they never feel guilty and they move on with their lives. Right?

Well, not quite. Think about the cost of externalising blame and what it actually means. If you always blame others when things go wrong, very quickly, you will start to feel like a victim all the time. You will feel angry and resentful because you believe everyone is mistreating you.

“Life isn’t fair — why is everyone against me?” will be a common thinking pattern in your mind.

Also, we all externalise blame to varying degrees, but are not usually aware of this. I had experiences in the past where I was often blamed unfairly and eventually, I grew up to be a very defensive person who externalised blame almost all the time.

I would refuse to see my contribution to any problem, because an admission of guilt meant defeat that would lead to being abused. This eventually took me to a dark place where I felt the whole world was against me and everyone was trying to manipulate me somehow.

I was not happy — I was resentful and angry.

When I decided to go to therapy and learnt to take a good look at myself, slowly I started changing and my relationships with people began to improve.

I realised, if you are defensive, you will cause other people to feel defensive.

If you expect the worst of people and act hostile towards them, sooner or later they will turn hostile back.

When I started to see my part in problems, I stopped being vindictive, admitted my part and learnt to forgive people even if they hurt me. I was finally able to let go and move on from past trauma.

Being able to recognise your contribution to an argument and feeling guilt and remorse, is to your benefit. If you fail to do so, you are doomed to spend the rest of your life in a constant victim mentality, which is a miserable existence.

People who externalise blame suffer constantly. They don’t just walk away with no damage as most people think.

In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one. ―Epictetus

2. Blaming the Victim

People assume those who blame the victim lack empathy. Well, true, but it’s a little more complicated than that. While they do tend to lack empathy, where victim-blaming really comes from is the belief that one can and should control their environment.

In other words, if you are the type of person who blames the victim, you will also blame yourself when you’re victimised, because you have an inner belief that you should have prevented it from happening somehow by, for example, being more cautious or less trusting.

I was also guilty of this.

I criticized people for “allowing themselves to get victimised”, but I criticized myself much more harshly than anyone. I could not even admit my own weak moments to myself because I had no tolerance for feeling vulnerable.

I was obsessed with never showing any weakness to anyone because if I did, anything that happened to me would be my fault for exposing vulnerabilities.

I criticised other people’s victimhood because I was angry at myself for having weak moments in the past. Anything that reminded me of those moments allowed me to project what I couldn’t admit to myself, outwards because it’s easier to be angry at others than at yourself.

When I started to let go of the silly notion that I should always be in control of my environment, my way of looking at the world also changed. I felt freer to act how I wanted for the first time.

I accept that I might get mistreated again in some way in the future, but now I know that I will be able to move on from it because I have a much higher tolerance for being vulnerable, which means I won’t be affected as much as I would have been in the past.

I also won’t blame myself since I no longer think I’m responsible for others’ behaviours.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you. — Brain Tracy

3. Fear of Abandonment

A lot of people who’ve had abusive childhoods, often continue to anticipate rejection and abandonment in future relationships. They project these feelings and the anxiety resulting from them onto their partners; they feel anxious because they expect to be abandoned, which causes them to be hyper-vigilant and look for any sign that their partner may abandon them.

When they spot anything that indicates possible abandonment, they panic, get angry, become controlling and over time, their abusive behaviour causes their partners to abandon them. They essentially end up forcing their partners to behave in a way that turns their world view — the unshakable belief that everyone will abandon them sooner or later — into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

While I have never had a fear of abandonment, I have dated a lot of people who have it. This, in my opinion, is one of the most self-destructive personality traits I have ever seen.

In my first serious relationship, I walked away in 4 short months even though we had been friends for 3 years prior to the relationship.

Why?

His constant and extreme paranoia that I would cheat and leave him one day was unbearable.

The problem was, even though I had my own issues when I got into the relationship, initially I had no intention of abandoning him. Because we had been best friends for a long time, I was actually serious about making it work.

But, his paranoias were so deeply ingrained that nothing I could have done would have changed the end result.

But this was what happened when you didn’t want to visit and confront the past: The past starts visiting and confronting you. — Bret Easton Ellis

4. Fear of Enmeshment

Similar to the above, fear of enmeshment also comes from early attachment issues. It is closely associated with fear of intimacy, as it comes from having been vulnerable in a past relationship and the other person taking advantage of that to control you.

From as far back as I can remember, I had this unshakable belief that love and intimacy were weaknesses one should avoid at all costs. I was terrified of being controlled or dominated, which made me avoid forming any long-term relationships. I still struggle with this now.

How projective identification works here is when you have beliefs such as “love is a weakness”, it makes you distant and overly cautious in intimate relationships.

When partners sense your distance and get anxious, this leads them to control behaviours. The need for control comes from fear and anxiety, and the more distant you are, the more anxious people feel.

Then, their increasing controlling and protest behaviours confirm to you that love leads to being trapped, which makes you more distant and your partner more anxious and therefore controlling.

There is also the whole issue of us attracting people who are similar to us — people who conform to our world view. If you have a fear of enmeshment, you will attract people who have a fear of abandonment. Your distance and their attempts to control you, are what’s familiar to you. It’s what you’ve known from childhood and you will repeat that relationship structure for the rest of your life.

This is called repetition compulsion, which, in psychoanalytic theory, is an unconscious need to reenact early traumas in an attempt to overcome or master them.

Often when someone hurts you, they aren’t hurting you because you are you. They are hurting you because they are them. — Karen Salmansohn

5. Inability to Trust

Trust is essential to the development of healthy and secure relationships. Those who failed to develop interpersonal trust in their early childhood carry this lack of trust onto their future relationships. People with lower levels of trust tend to be hyper-vigilant in relationships. They may monitor and occasionally test their partner’s degree of support and responsiveness.

Some signs of trust issues:

• Never believing what other people say
• Keeping people at a distance
• Jealous behaviours
• Avoidance of commitment
• Excessive wariness of people
• Inability to forgive
• Being overly protective

I struggle to trust people. I examine carefully what they say, how they say it, their tone of voice while they’re saying it and any inconsistencies I can detect.

I also like to keep a distance from them, especially if they have shown that they have the potential to hurt me or mistreat me somehow.

I once went on a date with a very genuine and nice guy.

As usual, I tried to spot any issues he might have, any red flags or any warning signs and there really was nothing I could find.

The problem was my paranoia kept increasing throughout the night because according to my world view there HAD to be something wrong with him. I thought I was missing a red flag even though he showed none.

At the end of the night he wanted to walk me home and I got very annoyed with this and stormed off. I felt that he was too nice and this niceness was to cover up something.

In contrast, men who are manipulative are my comfort zone. If I spot red flags in someone, I feel calm immediately. Because I’m aware of any potential threats, I know they are not to be trusted and I feel confident that I can defend myself.

If there are no red flags, however, I have this constant paranoia that I’m missing something. In the end, my innate belief that people cannot be trusted, leads to its own confirmation.

People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. — Edith Wharton

What to Do About It:

Personally, just becoming more aware of things changed my life tremendously. I still struggle with a lot but it’s easier now because most of the time I can notice when I’m projecting my own assumptions onto others.

I’ve learnt to take a step back and analyse situations instead of just reacting, which gets easier every time I do it.

It’s difficult to change what’s deeply ingrained in you, but with practice and time, I believe it’s possible to make a significant difference.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. — Wayne Dyer

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