“We have become masters of projection, pushing the responsibility for our own thoughts outward, so that the consequences of our own thoughts become someone else’s problems.” (Darren Main)
Often it really feels like I’m a magnet for people to dump their crap onto, projecting their own life’s misery outward, blaming me for their own personal drama and baggage of life. It’s been that way ever since I was a kid with an alcoholic mother doing it to me with regularity. Nowadays, I find myself struggling immensely with this, with taking ownership of someone else’s problems.
For example, just because I’m still unvaccinated from COVID, doesn’t mean I’m the cause of the virus, or the cause of anyone’s death from it, or an anti-vaxxer, or an evangelical who doesn’t believe in this specific vaccine, or anything of the sort, because I’m none of those whatsoever. Yet I’ve been accused of being each of those things many times over from others, all because I remain presently unvaccinated, where most never take the time to really understand or accept my personal situation.
Another great example is this. Just because I’m outside at times for hours every single day, cleaning up my yard and two others, and even sweeping a good portion of street around me of debris, doesn’t mean that that the noise I make doing so during the normal hours of the day is the true source of two neighbors’ anger at me. It’s merely a projection they place their anger on.
One final example is what I wrote about in a previous blog where I made an honest mistake on the road one day, narrowly missing another driver in the process. It brought out road rage from them, where they ended up pursuing me for a good 15 minutes, doing their best to scare me, when none of their toxic anger was about me whatsoever.
Lately, it seems like the world is filled with this, with one person after another blaming someone or something else for the source of all their anger and frustrations of life, when the real source of it is themselves. It’s taken me a long while to see this because I once was that person who always looked outward in anger for my inward anger.
I typically get great reminders of this in my current relationship with my partner Chris. At times I fall back into this illusion and find myself projecting my anger onto him, and he with me, when in reality, we’re both broken individuals lashing out at each other.
In the end, I believe the only way to fully deflect this, is to keep working on my own inner peace, as truly, when one is filled with true inner peace, it doesn’t matter how much anger and projection is thrown my way, because when it is, that peace will help me see it’s not about me, it’s about them.
Gracious and most Heavenly God, I pray for help in seeing the true source of all my anger and frustrations of life isn’t about anyone else, but me. Help me come to peace surrounding all my circumstances of life, so that when others project any of their unwarranted anger my way, that Your peace will help me rise above it all, enough so that I’ll no longer own anyone else’s baggage in life.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
