If there’s ever an energy that can help us to see our blind spots it’s the energy of the mirror.
Think of your car: you are literally provided with at least 3 distinct mirrors to literally be able to catch your blind spots, for your own safety. On the mirror, the cliché phrase, “Objects in mirror may appear closer than they are,” ominously warns us already of the distortion explicit in the mirror.
But the literal mirror is not the only one that we can use in our lives; the concept is fodder for another incredibly profound and useful tool, not to be underestimated, which is how the mirror works in our life on a psychological or emotional level.
So, I want to distinguish for a moment that in psychology there is a term called “mirroring”, which is NOT what I am going to talk about here. Namely, that term refers to a parent or a caregiver, and eventually a coach or therapist “mirroring” back to the child or to the client lovingly. It is a need we all have to be accurately mirrored, to have ourselves reflected to ourselves accurately & lovingly. But, once again, that is NOT what I am going to talk about here.
What I am talking about here is the psychological concept of “Projection”, which I see as the energy of the mirror occurring in real life, in our relationships, and the process of withdrawing that projection we have onto others. As Don Miguel Ruiz puts it in his famous, “The Four Agreements,” as cleaning our smoky mirror.
I want to be clear and say that the work we are going to be doing with the mirror is NOT about excusing bad behavior. This is NOT, as I’ve seen out in the “New Age” world about only hanging out with one kind of person—rather, about how we can grow & enrich ourselves from each encounter & diverse ones, too, nor is it about getting TOO radical and then completely excusing someone else’s behavior just because it’s mirroring something in you. We can simultaneously hold someone accountable to his or her behavior AND learn and integrate the lesson for ourselves. This work is empowering & may lead us to have to have a difficult conversation and/or set boundaries with someone.
There are 4 Principal Ways that I see we can be affected by the Energy of Projection:
1) People who Trigger/Bother/Annoy Us.
We all know this one. We are all familiar with this. Someone bugs the *#(# out of us—how they eat, what they say, what they wear, whatever. Even how they talk to us or .. fill in the blank, but we cannot stand them for whatever reason.
2) People we Idolize or Idealize.
You know this one, too. If you can’t think of someone in your day-to-day life, a coach, a mentor, a teacher, or even a parent or spouse, then think of a movie or rock star (someone in a leadership position) that you admire.
3) Our Mother/Father Wound
It is no news that we internalize a lot of the behaviors, attitudes, and even belief systems, of our parents. What we don’t like in them—we can usually find in ourselves. And vice-versa: what we would like to see in them, we can usually draw out in ourselves. ☺
4) Falling in Love
Ahhh…the pièce de résistance: as Jung & other psychologists have pointed out, falling in love is often merely a projection of our “opposite”, missing qualities (the ones we have not developed in our own self yet) onto the other. We feel whole once we find our “other half”. SO much richness to be explored here, whether we are in relationship or not in one currently…
In any of these cases, what can happen is that we either try to control the other person, we wish they were different, we feel “victimized” by the other person, we avoid them, or, conversely, we think we can never be like them, they are so different from us, we see them as “out of our league” and amazing. Like rock stars.
In Sanskrit, the word “maya” means magic & illusion and there is this sense that –in a nutshell, without going into full-on research/philosophy mode here—that the world of matter is a world of illusion and that, basically, all we see with our eyes and react to is an opportunity for us to learn and grow from—about our own selves. There is no out there, in other words, or even an other, just “in here” and our own selves to grapple with.
As we dive into this work of owning our projections, we work with our unconscious, with our Shadow, with our Anima & Animus, and with clearing up some of our blind spots. It’s a continuous work, rich and powerful. It’s a tool that I have used since I first learned about it and the more I grow with it, the more I continue to use it and it becomes easier and easier to spot the blind spots and to work with them. I find it very empowering. I use it in both my personal life, as well as with my 1-on-1 clients and groups.
I invite you to notice this week: Who in your life triggers strong reactions – positive or negative? What might they be mirroring back to you about yourself?
And if you want support in exploring your own projections more deeply, I’ve created a guided worksheet that walks you through identifying what you’re projecting and how to work with it. Download the free Projection Work Worksheet here (requires email signup): https://delicate-sound-6743.kit.com/projection