**How To Deal With Getting Projected Onto  — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/deal-with-being-projected-onto/

Heidi Priebe explains psychological projection, how to learn from being projected onto, and phrases to shift conversations toward subjective experience rather than arguing objective reality.

## Key Takeaways

- Projection disowns an uncomfortable self-truth by attributing it to someone else, often unconsciously.
- Being projected onto can reveal our own tolerance for misunderstanding and relational patterns.
- Arguing about objective reality is usually less effective than separating two subjective realities.
- Scripted phrases asserting each person's authority over their own experience can de-escalate conflict.

## What the video covers

- Introduces the video as part of a winter series on rupture, self-recovery, differentiation and repair, focusing on projection.
- Defines classic projection: disowning an uncomfortable self-truth by becoming convinced it is true of another person, using examples of ambivalence about a partner and procrastination misattributed to a boss.
- Explains projective identification, where projections are enacted so that they manifest into the reality one expected.
- Notes pop-psychology overuse of the term 'projection' to mean any claim about another's inner world.
- Argues projections are subjectively true for the projector, comparing them to a hallucinated purple elephant, so arguing objective reality is often ineffective.
- Suggests learning from being projected onto, including one's tolerance for being misunderstood and the urge to over-explain.
- Describes using a pause to notice bodily discomfort, citing Viktor Frankl's stimulus-response idea to regain choice.
- Discusses how being projected onto can reveal relational dynamics, such as being treated as an authority figure or wounding narcissistic patterns.
- Introduces phrases that reframe the conversation so each person is the authority of their own subjective experience.
- Recommends these phrases mainly when interactions become difficult, with care for preserving relationships that both people value.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Introduction and video roadmap
2. 01:27 Defining projection and examples
3. 02:55 Projective identification
4. 04:07 Pop psychology use of the term projection
5. 05:28 Subjective vs objective reality
6. 07:10 What we can learn from being projected onto
7. 10:15 Relational dynamics and authority figures
8. 12:50 Phrases to shift the conversation

Answers

## Questions about this video

What is projection according to this video?

Projection is the classic psychological process of taking an uncomfortable truth about yourself and unconsciously disowning it by becoming convinced it is true of another person. Heidi gives examples such as attributing your own ambivalence about a partner to your friends' dislike.

Why does the video say arguing about objective reality often doesn't work?

Because a projection is subjectively true for the person experiencing it, much like someone on acid seeing a purple elephant. Debating whether the elephant exists rarely resolves things, so Heidi recommends separating the two subjective realities instead.

What can you learn from being wrongly projected onto?

You can learn about your own relationship to being misunderstood, such as how much discomfort you tolerate and whether you rush to over-explain. It can also reveal relational dynamics worth keeping or changing.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

Hey guys, I'm Heidi Prib. Welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here. This winter on this channel, we're talking about rupture, self-reovery or differentiation and repair. And today in particular, we're going to be talking about projection. So specifically, what

00:17

Speaker A

you can do if you find yourself getting projected onto. So there are two main things we're going to cover in this video. One is what projection is and what we can actually learn from being on the receiving end of

00:29

Speaker A

it. So, we're going to go over a perspective that I rarely see covered, which is what we can learn about ourselves and our relationship dynamics by sitting with someone else's wrongly calibrated ideas of us. And the second thing we're going to talk about is how

00:45

Speaker A

to get that to stop. So if we do find ourselves in the position where somebody else's wrongly calibrated ideas of us are getting in the way of us being able to relate to them clearly or to be able

00:56

Speaker A

to relate to ourselves clearly, right? How do we unmuddle reality from perception? So we're going to go over some specific phrases that we can pull out in those situations in order to change how those conversations tend to unfold.

01:11

Speaker A

So, the first thing we're going to get out of the way in this video is defining what projection is. The classic psychological definition of projection is taking something that we think or feel that's either uncomfortable or potentially even destabilizing for us to

01:27

Speaker A

acknowledge as true about ourselves and unconsciously disowning that thing by becoming convinced that it's true of another person. So, an example of this might be starting to feel uncertain about the feelings you have for someone that you've been seeing. But instead of

01:43

Speaker A

owning your own ambivalence, you might suddenly become really convinced that your friends or your family members are the ones who dislike this person. So, the feeling of disliking is real, right?

01:55

Speaker A

But your mind is misattributing its source. The call's coming from inside the house, right? Another example might be beginning to ruminate over the thought that your boss is mad at you because you haven't handed in your work fast enough, even though in reality,

02:09

Speaker A

your boss may never have mentioned anything about the deadline at all. And it's actually you who's growing frustrated with your own procrastination on this project. Now, one thing that's worth noting about projection is that it can become complicated because the way

02:24

Speaker A

that we feel about things influences how we behave, which then influences how other people respond to us, right? So, sometimes projections can move into territory called projective identification. An example of that would be once again if you secretly start

02:41

Speaker A

disliking the person you're dating but can't admit that to yourself for whatever reason because maybe they're such a catch in all of these other areas, you might start talking about them in a more subtly negative light than you were at the beginning. And so

02:55

Speaker A

the first time one of your friends or family members kind of winces when you bring that person up, your brain is going to go, see, everyone hates them. I was right. But what your mind is not consciously clocking is the role that it

03:06

Speaker A

played in creating that outcome. So this is called projective identification where we basically project so hard that we manifest our own projections into existence. And we're not going to go too deep into that today, but I just wanted

03:18

Speaker A

to pin it as a concept. Now the next thing I want to note is that the way that we tend to use the word projection in pop psychology doesn't always match the clean definition of it. So pretty often we use the word projection to

03:31

Speaker A

describe any instance where someone is claiming to know what's happening inside of someone else's inner world. So maybe for example you've seen a friend talk badly behind other friends backs before and then at one point maybe that friend

03:43

Speaker A

gives you a kind of weird or ambiguous reaction when you're saying something and so you might automatically go, "Oh, I know they're judging me. They're going to go talk badly about me behind my back." And then if we go up to that

03:54

Speaker A

friend and accuse them of that, they might go, "You're projecting." And that's not necessarily the classic definition of projection, right? But it fits the definition of how the term tends to get used kind of in everyday conversation. So for the rest of this

04:07

Speaker A

video, that's what we're going to be working with. Situations where one person is asserting certainty about another person's inner experience rather than staying curious or open to other explanations.

04:19

Speaker A

Now, projections are in one sense always true. Okay? In much the same way that someone who just took a bunch of acid might be seeing a purple elephant in the living room, right? Their subjective experience is congruent with what

04:33

Speaker A

they're describing to you. But that doesn't mean that in your subjective experience there is also a purple elephant. The problem is that if you're trying to resolve this on the objective level by just arguing back and forth about whether there is definitely a

04:46

Speaker A

purple elephant there, it's probably not going to work unless you have someone who is very self-aware about the fact that they are hallucinated. And the same is sort of true about projections, right? Arguing about objective reality is usually the first thing that people

05:00

Speaker A

try in order to combat them, but it's also one of the less effective methods for sorting through what's actually happening. So, a lot of what we're going to talk about in this video is how to cleave apart and make some extra space

05:12

Speaker A

between two different subjective realities rather than trying to keep the conversation focused on the objective realm. You're seeing a purple elephant and I am not goes a whole lot further in most conversations than there is no purple elephant and you are insane.

05:28

Speaker A

So before we get into how to have those conversations, the first thing we're going to talk about is what we can actually learn from being projected onto even wrongly. And you can feel free to skip this part if that's not what you're

05:41

Speaker A

here for. I did put timestamps at the bottom of this video so you can navigate to the second part easily if that's what you're looking for. But I do genuinely believe that there's a lot we can learn through getting projected onto

05:52

Speaker A

specifically three main things that we're going to go over today. The first is that being projected onto can teach us a lot about our personal relationship to being misunderstood and how well we do or do not tolerate them. So, I'll never forget this

06:09

Speaker A

workshop that I went to once where a fellow participant had misinterpreted something that I was saying in a share.

06:15

Speaker A

And it's funny cuz I can't even remember what that thing was now, but at the time it really stressed me out. And I remember immediately putting up my hand and going to correct what they had said.

06:24

Speaker A

And the workshop facilitator stopped me and said,"I want you to hold on to that thought." And I went, "No, no, no. I just need to really quickly clarify." And he went, "No, I understand, but I want you to sit with that experience of

06:40

Speaker A

feeling misunderstood for a moment. Notice what is happening in your body right now. Notice what your mind is naturally rushing to do to get rid of that uncomfortable sensation." and taking even one instance to be present with those feelings rather than

06:56

Speaker A

immediately trying to get rid of them had a lasting impact on how I dealt with being misunderstood.

07:03

Speaker A

So going forward I learned that there was an option to pause to notice what was going on for me and to be at choice about what I was going to do next which gave me a skill that ended up being

07:15

Speaker A

really useful in a lot more scenarios than I expected it to. So, in particular, in interactions with people who are not behaving in particularly good faith, it can actually be really useful to sit with our feelings of discomfort before rushing to overexlain

07:32

Speaker A

ourselves. Same with situations where emotions are just so heightened that it doesn't really matter what explanations are getting doled out. Everybody needs to pause and reeregulate before the conversation can go on in a way that makes sense.

07:46

Speaker A

So learning how we uniquely react to being misunderstood is one of the first opportunities that getting projected onto gives us. It gives us a sense of intimacy with our own fear or our own reactivity or our own contempt or

08:00

Speaker A

whatever it is that comes up for us when we have not been understood. And the longer we can sit with that discomfort, the more we reclaim a little bit of choice. As per that Victor Frankle quote, in between stimulus and response,

08:14

Speaker A

there is a space. So, anytime we learn to pause with some uncomfortable sensation, and for most of us, being misunderstood is wildly uncomfortable.

08:25

Speaker A

We're giving ourselves the opportunity to allow for more choice. The second thing that projections can give us insight into is the power dynamics that are in play inside of the relationship where the projection is happening.

08:38

Speaker A

So asking ourselves the question, what role is this other person putting me in right now? can often offer a lot of insight about our wider relationship to that person.

08:50

Speaker A

So maybe they're naturally relating to us as an authority figure and disowning their own authority. And a good question to ask ourselves in that case might be, is that normal for our dynamic? Are there any ways in which I actually

09:03

Speaker A

collaborate with them on seeing me as an authority? and how did we end up there?

09:08

Speaker A

And then we can look at whether that's a relational dynamic that we want to keep online or change.

09:16

Speaker A

Or maybe someone's feeling really desperate for your approval. So by convincing themselves that you are thinking or feeling whatever it is that they're thinking or feeling, that might make them feel like their inner experience is okay.

09:30

Speaker A

Which, by the way, is very often the projection that's happening when we're experiencing lirance. So we're going okay if I can get this other person to approve of me in this way that I have not yet learned to consciously approve

09:42

Speaker A

of myself then it means that I am okay and I am good. And that can often be an intermediary step for learning to like and accept ourselves in areas where we maybe didn't receive mirroring early on.

09:56

Speaker A

But of course, learning that someone else is kind of using our approval to regulate their own emotional experience or identity can be very uncomfortable.

10:04

Speaker A

Or it could feel kind of burdensome if we have a lot of codependent patterning online. Some part of us might automatically start taking responsibility for helping them regulate through that projection because we're kind of used to that feeling like our

10:16

Speaker A

job. Or it can even feel really flattering or safe to any narcissistic wounds that we might have online. If the primary way that we know how to relate to other people is through being treated like an authority figure, then a dynamic

10:30

Speaker A

where someone's continuously projecting that role onto us might actually feel a lot more safe and secure than actual secure connection would. So, in any case, examining the role that we're being put in and how closely it does or

10:45

Speaker A

doesn't mirror the underlying dynamic of that relationship can be a super interesting and fruitful practice that can lead to a lot of insights about the power dynamic as it has unconsciously taken form inside of that relationship, including if and when it might want to

11:01

Speaker A

shift. And before we move on, the third thing that we can often learn through being projected on to is where we ourselves might be behaving inongruently without realizing it. So this becomes particularly prevalent in situations where you notice that multiple people in

11:19

Speaker A

many different contexts have projected similar things onto you. So, back in my more actively fearful avoidant days, I had this tendency to feel things quite strongly, as I still do, but to be incredibly secretive about my emotions because I had that avoidant patterning

11:36

Speaker A

online of thinking that if I shared my feelings, particularly any feelings of wanting to be close to people, it would necessarily weird them out and drive them away. And so it kind of ended up patterning out that the closer I

11:48

Speaker A

actually wanted to be to a person, the more neurotic I would be about trying to hide my feelings around them. And it took a lot of rounds of people telling me across multiple different contexts.

11:59

Speaker A

So either people I was interested in romantically or people I was interested in as friends that they thought I either disliked them or didn't want to be close to them. For me to notice just how inongruent I was being,

12:13

Speaker A

right? I was aiming for neutrality, but there is this way in which I was totally overcorrecting for my positive feelings and actually coming across as rejecting.

12:23

Speaker A

And so sometimes gathering data about what people are getting wrong about us can actually be incredibly helpful in allowing us to bridge that gap between our inner and outer worlds.

12:34

Speaker A

So, Young had this concept of hooks that he talked about when he talked about projection, which is essentially that anytime we want to project something onto someone else, whether that's positive or negative or even just neutral projections, there's usually

12:48

Speaker A

some way in which a certain person is, that gives our projection a hook to grasp onto. For example, if we are really prone to disowning our own helplessness, it's really intolerable for us to think of ourselves as helpless

13:01

Speaker A

in any scenario. We might end up walking around the world constantly projecting helplessness onto other people, but there's a method to who we choose to project onto.

13:12

Speaker A

So maybe it's people who hold themselves with a certain posture that looks kind of defeated or who speak with a certain tone that to us kind of indicates they might be a little more downtrodden or whatever it is, right? So we're probably

13:25

Speaker A

not going around projecting helplessness onto the most confident and capable person in a given room. But the idea here is that if various people are projecting similar things onto us, it can serve to give us information about what the most common hooks are that

13:40

Speaker A

others perceive in us. And if those hooks are way off base from what's actually happening for us, which by the way might not be the case, right?

13:49

Speaker A

Sometimes the average of how other people see us is a little bit more accurate than the way that we tend to think about ourselves, particularly if we have a lot of either dissociated or unintegrated parts to our identity. But

14:00

Speaker A

I digress. Getting projected onto in similar ways can give us the opportunity to see some of our blind spots andor do some repair work between our inner world and the way that we are expressing ourselves. So it gives us information

14:15

Speaker A

about where we might be behaving in congruently and by extension why we might not be getting everything that we want out of our close relationships.

14:25

Speaker A

So, with all of that out of the way, we're now going to move into the second part of this video, which is how to combat projections in real time. So, there's this book by a man called Eric Burn called Games People Play, where he

14:38

Speaker A

looks at and makes very explicit the kind of unspoken agreements that tend to underscore people's conversations and interactions with each other. And there are all types of underlying agreements.

14:48

Speaker A

But the reason that it's important to think about this when we're talking about the concept of projection is because the moment we start arguing back and forth with anybody about whether their projection of us is true or untrue, the unspoken agreement at the

15:04

Speaker A

heart of that conversation is that we need to work together with that person or we need to get the buyin of that person in some way in order to determine what is happening in our subjective reality.

15:16

Speaker A

And so all of the strategies that we're going to talk about next are going to be aimed not at winning these types of conversations by convincing the other person that your experience is truly the one big objective one, but rather how to

15:30

Speaker A

subtly reject the premise of the conversation altogether and invite them into a different conversation that happens under a different premise which is you are the authority of your subjective experience and I am the authority of mine.

15:47

Speaker A

So, we're going to talk about some of the statements that I have found to be pretty effective in making those distinctions.

15:53

Speaker A

The first one is a very simple, very clear that doesn't resonate for me. And the important thing here is actually not to go into explaining why it doesn't resonate for you. As soon as you do that, you're back in game number one

16:09

Speaker A

where you're trying to convince the other person that your experience really is what it is. And here's why. Right?

16:16

Speaker A

When we simply disagree with someone's projection of us and we don't explain why, it puts them in the position of realizing that if they want to know why we disagree or what doesn't resonate with us about what they said, they are

16:31

Speaker A

going to have to ask us. And as soon as they ask us about our perception, they're accepting the new premise of that conversation, which is that we are the ones who are holding the information about what's true for us. So

16:46

Speaker A

this is a very simple and non-combative way of asserting ourselves as the authority over our own experience, right? The same way other people are authorities of theirs.

16:57

Speaker A

So, another version of this phrase that might work in a similar way is my experience is different than what you're describing. So, we're very subtly pointing at the fact that we have a different experience than they do, but

17:09

Speaker A

we're also subtly inviting them into a conversation where they're welcome to learn more about what's actually going on for us if they're wanting to know.

17:16

Speaker A

So, this is a simple way of weaving more differentiation into a conversation if it's lacking that. The next phrase we're going to talk about is one that I don't know if I've ever actually used out loud, but I do use it in my head a lot.

17:28

Speaker A

If I feel like someone is either not engaging with me in good faith or is trying to bait me in some way through misrepresentation or if someone's just disregulated in a way that I feel like is causing them to

17:39

Speaker A

not see me clearly. And that phrase is what you think of me or how you're choosing to represent me inside your own mind is none of my business.

17:49

Speaker A

So this one functions pretty cleanly to sidestep the muddling of subjective and objective reality, right? It moves the whole conversational frame from I need your agreement in order to trust my own perception to your agreement on what is

18:03

Speaker A

real for me is irrelevant to my self-perception. I'll let you keep your perceptions about me and I'll keep mine.

18:10

Speaker A

And I just want to stop and make clear here that ideally this is not the frame that we want to be holding all of the time. Right? When we are inside of those safe enough connections, receiving feedback on our blind spots can be a

18:22

Speaker A

huge gift. But if we do feel like someone is misrepresenting us in a way that they're really refusing to let go of, and it feels kind of lose-lose to try to fight back against it, this can be a really good backpocket mantra to

18:34

Speaker A

just repeat to ourselves internally or even say out loud, "What this person thinks of me is none of my business. It is much more about their relationship to themselves and whatever I'm triggering inside of them is about their

18:48

Speaker A

relationship to me, the flesh and blood human being. And of course, we don't want to use this dismissively either, right? So, someone's coming to us and telling us about what's true for them in a way that's relational, that probably

19:01

Speaker A

isn't the time to pull out the whole how you feel about me is none of my business. We want to use this mostly if we do feel like we are truly getting engaged with in bad faith or if someone

19:11

Speaker A

is just hellbent on holding on to a certain idea of us that it feels like we've kind of reached an impass on. All of us always kind of have two different relationships happening with anyone we're close to. One is them, the actual

19:23

Speaker A

person, and the other is the version of them that we think of inside of our heads. Those two people are never the exact same, no matter how close that vin diagram comes to overlap. And so there are moments where it really helps to

19:35

Speaker A

remind ourselves of that. Third strategy for combating projections that are happening in real time is simply and clearly stating the double bind that you're finding yourself in. So I feel stuck because I feel like the only way to stay close to you or to resolve this

19:52

Speaker A

with you is to admit something that isn't actually true for me. And I don't want to do that. I don't want our relationship to be based on dishonesty.

20:02

Speaker A

And I find that when this move is made in the right context, it can actually be a really sobering one, that gives the conversation something to ground itself on, especially if the relationship is one that's happening in good faith and

20:15

Speaker A

that both people really do want to preserve, right? Because it walks that line of showing care and respect for the other person, but also care and respect for ourselves and our own integrity. So it kind of directly invites somebody out of

20:29

Speaker A

their own projection without shaming them while also making clear that our inner realities are not up for negotiation. So we're once again inviting somebody into a different type of conversation that is more egalitarian.

20:43

Speaker A

And if they so choose to, they can meet us there. And the fourth and final and most overt strategy that we're going to talk about today when dealing with projections in conversations is just making a clear boundary statement.

20:57

Speaker A

So I am not going to continue this conversation unless I am being treated as the authority of my own experiences or my own feelings or my own thoughts or whatever it is that the other person has decided is up for debate. So this is the

21:14

Speaker A

art of keeping psychological boundaries intact. It overtly switches that frame from I am willing to collaborate on figuring out what is true for me to I am unwilling to collaborate on figuring out what's true for me. So you can allow me

21:30

Speaker A

to speak for myself or I will stop engaging. And this one like the second one is one that I think most of us hope that we don't have to end up using at any point because it tends to be the kind of

21:42

Speaker A

phrase that we need to pull out only when an interaction is becoming very difficult.

21:47

Speaker A

But sometimes it is going to be necessary to be that clear and that direct with people, especially if we feel like we are continuously not getting heard when we try out subtler ways of asserting ourselves. All right, so I am going to leave this video at

22:02

Speaker A

that for today with the note that projections are such a vast and interesting topic that I feel like we could do an entire series on them alone.

22:10

Speaker A

So if you like hearing about projections, you can let me know what else is up for you around this topic in the comments section. But in the meantime, any questions, comments, thoughts that are coming up as you've gone through this video, please leave

22:21

Speaker A

those below as well. I love you guys. I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you back here again really soon.

22:35

Speaker A

[music]

Topics: projection projective identification psychology misunderstanding boundaries communication self-awareness relationships conflict resolution Heidi Priebe

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