Projecting onto someone means projecting your own traits onto someone. People tend to project their negative traits onto others so they don’t have to accept responsibility for them. It’s an ego defense and blame-shifting mechanism that can be conscious or unconscious.
Projection and trauma
Conscious projection is a form of manipulation. You know you’re hiding your negative traits and behaviors from others. It’s easy to choose not to manipulate.
What’s deadlier and harder to deal with is unconscious projection. It usually stems from past trauma. Past trauma makes a person defensive. This defensiveness spills over into their adult relationships, causing significant problems.
Those who unconsciously project live in a distorted reality. It’s hard to change their minds and make them see the truth. They get caught in the same conflict patterns over and over.
Taking the ‘Am I projecting?’ quiz
Since it’s already a challenging task to make the unconscious conscious, this quiz requires that you be as honest with it as possible. When you go through the items, you may feel tempted to dismiss them and reinforce your need to look good. Watch out for that.
The test consists of 10 items on a 5-point scale ranging from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree. It’s completely anonymous, and your results will only be visible to you.
