Protection from Projection

Composting the sh*t that may come your way

Being a leader in this time is risky.

This thought has been swirling around in my mind for the last several weeks, and I finally needed to capture it – for my own reflection as well as to share with you. As with all of my articles here, I invite your thoughts and stories, your feedback to feed-forward, into deeper collective learning.

I have been thinking about how anyone who decides to step out of their comfort zone, and bring forward their gifts, their voice, their power and passions, to share with others towards love, healing and justice, is a leader. More directly, Margaret Wheatley, author of A Simpler Way and Leadership and the New Science, said, 'A leader is anyone who wants to help at this time.' In both of our understandings it seems, personal willingness and working with others are at the heart of leadership.

To me, both dimensions require courage and fortitude — because the moment I step out to do anything, then I also unwittingly become a target for peoples' criticisms, projections, and cancellations. Herein lies the risk and is perhaps why so many people avoid and/or leave leadership. Not only do they suffer in suppressing themselves and hiding their power, but also we all suffer, because we miss out on the incredible talents they can bring to our world. Each of us hold a particular key in this moment, and I believe that by bringing those keys together, we will unlock the alignment, healing, attunement, creativity, imagination, and transformative action, that we need for the Great Turning, as our beloved elder Joanna Macy puts it.

Why does this projection happen? And how do those who are leaders — which, in truth, could be anyone — become aware of it, not get caught in it, and find ways to heal from it? This last part is especially important, because the most violent forms of projection often leads to social punishment and the disintegration of the very gifts the person is trying to share in the first place.

I will never forget what Haas, one of the participants at the 2015 Law and Social Change Jam, shared with me. This was after a powerful optional session that I offered around identifying and making space from the inner critic, where a lot of healing happened for several people at once. He said, “You need to be careful, because you are a light-worker; you work to bring out the light in people. You need to know that the forces of darkness therefore are always going to be coming for you, to restore the balance. It's not personal. It's just how the universe works.”

I took this to heart, and I have felt projections coming at me many times in my life. Most often, it happens when someone holds expectations of me being able to read their mind and understand them implicitly, because they think that's what I have done for them before. I haven't. I simply was present at some point in their lives — and/or they saw me present with another person — and they think that I can always do that for them, without them having to share anything with me, much less make a request for my support or my time. They forget that I am a human being, with my own understanding, my own meaning-making system, and that I cannot read minds. And so they project their frustration, anger, resentment on me, for not meeting them in the needs they have. I have so many examples of this happening to me, many with people who I considered to be good friends.

Let me be clear. As much as it hurt me in the moment, I don't blame them. I always want someone to read my mind. It would be sooo nice and convenient. Really. I could be understood automatically and not have to stretch and be vulnerable. I would never need to ask for support. I could just be chill in my comfort zone and have all my needs magically met. That would be awesome!

It's something I really had to work on in my relationship with my beloved, Austin. Let's take a small example. I want him to walk by the kitchen and see the dirty dishes in the sink and know that I want him to clean them up — without me asking for support, nor giving him the opportunity to say yes, no, later on, etc. I would get frustrated when he didn't do what I wanted, and then turn that frustration out on him. This story would repeat itself in other arenas of our relationship, like with money, time, intimacy, and community. When I could finally slow down, I would realize that I was operating in the field of expectations and assumptions, rather than in the field of intentions, agreements and consent, and this was leading to the breakdown.

I can't tell you how many conflicts I have meditated that basically start here, with the thought that 'the other person will get what I mean/want/need and act accordingly'. Invariably, though, the other person doesn't. Not because they are belligerent or uncaring or stupid, but just because they don't read the cues the person thinks are so obvious, or anticipate the needs that the person thinks are so glaring. The other person simply has another meaning-making system in operation at those moments — not better or worse, only different. If there is no conversation, no checking in with what is really happening, then the relationship eventually ruptures. However, when both parties are willing to slow down, share and listen, they can also begin to see how these expectations of mind-reading might be at the heart of the conflict, and how they can shift into more explicit slowness, check-ins and consent. Healing can then happen from there.

Last Tuesday night, my brother Manish, a group of friends and I were riffing on why we think projection happens so frequently to leaders. Really interesting ideas came up. One person shared that there are mommy wounds and daddy wounds and teacher wounds, and/or wounds with any other authority figure in our lives, that get triggered and lead to projections. Another shared that massive challenges like institutional racism, systemic trauma, capitalism-induced inequalities, climate change devastation, etc., can feel insurmountable — but what feels manageable is taking down one person who made some mistakes and needs to be punished for it. That is a task that can be accomplished (especially with 10 of their friends behind them).

Someone else shared the converse is true, too. Many of us have been taught to look to our leaders as heroes, to save us, to provide the solutions, to make everything right, and so we want them to be infallible, perfect, super-human. We put them on pedestals so high that if they make the smallest error, they fall 1000 feet — never to be redeemed. “Rise so high, in mud you will lie,” I think is how it was framed in a Marvel movie I once saw.

Another person shared that projection happens because we are afraid to let our own light shine, and so when we see someone else shining theirs, we need to dim it in some way, sooner than later. It is a protective mechanism that my inner critic employs to keep me from sharing my own power and/or to boost my fragile ego by making someone else more inadequate than me. In a previous article, I wrote about the sickness of perfectionism culture and how it is pervading our world. Sometimes, when a leader is taking the risk to share their gifts, others can actually become bent on finding the flaws to tear them down. Those pesky inner critics and their escape valves!

All of these reasons felt aligned with my own experiences, as I have both been projected on, and done my own projecting, for these reasons. My early 20s were a particularly notable time for my own hyper-criticality, with my idealism running high and having much less on-the-ground practical experience to help me regulate.

I also think projections happen because most of us don’t learn the difference between giving feedback and being critical. When I give feedback, I see myself investing in the relationship, and in the person and who they are. My feedback reflects ways that I think they can grow and be even more of their true selves. I care for them, and I am there to support them in the learning. I want to work/live/be in generative connection together, and giving this feedback makes that possible.

Conversely, when I am being critical, I am invested in finding the chink in the armor, so I can break the whole thing apart. I block out the wholeness of the person, as well as their gifts and strengths, and hone in on the things they didn't do perfectly right. My brother and I reflected on how this kind of hyper-fixation on what’s wrong is seen as intellectualism and was a lot of the means and ends of our liberal arts education — one that we are continuously working on unlearning.

Not only are feedback and criticism conflated, but with all the fear around conflict, people don't learn how to give feedback until WAY down the road. I call it 'death by 1000 paper cuts.' If, at the first sign of something feeling a bit off or confusing, I go to the person with curiosity, and share what happened for me and ask what was happening for them, and set up some next steps that we agree on together to address the situation, then that paper cut heals. Of course, we can have another issue later on— because conflicts are inevitable — and yet, there is no build-up, no story, no evidence of a 'pattern', because we are working things out as they come up. As my friend Amadeo reminded me, all of nature operates with feedback systems, giving and receiving information and gently course-correcting along the way.

However, time and again, I have seen that the feedback is rarely given at that early stage. Usually, it is avoided, because my inner critic talks me out of it: “It's no big deal. Why are you making this an issue? It's only going to make things awkward if you bring it up, and you don't want to do that. Just ignore it and move on. It’ll be fine.” Sometimes, organizations and projects actively avoid giving feedback to each other, because they claim they don't want to be negative or hurt anyone's feelings. So, they do not create mechanisms where people can hear from each other in direct and timely ways and course-correct. Perhaps, this 'oversight' relates again to the conflation between criticality and feedback.

Unfortunately, what happens is a mess. In the absence of generative feedback, he person never learns what's not working for other(s). Not surprisingly, they continue to do whatever they are doing in that same way, unintentionally slicing the skin. One paper cut very quickly and exponentially grows to 1000. At that point, the wounds feel so big — we are literally bleeding out — and the story has been so well-constructed, with tons of evidence, that it feels intractable. Usually, this is when I, or someone like me, gets called in to help, and to work on the mindsets, skillsets, and structure shifts needed to create a more collaborative, feedback-friendly, conflict-facing culture.

Whatever you believe about why projection happens — and I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments — for now, perhaps we can simply agree that it does happen. What can we do to both protect ourselves in the moment, heal after, and prevent more projections from happening?

In the moment, it has helped me to generate a healthy reflective boundary around myself. I ground my feet down, take deep breaths and try to feel rooted and held by the earth. If I am face-to-face with the person, I step to the side — not to leave them alone, but to allow the energy they are directing my way to go out and not land in my body. I try to find a way to stand by their side, to listen to them and see if we can look at the story together. This is moving from the opposite side of the fence to the same side of the fence, a classic move in diplomacy and negotiation tactics.

If I am grounded and present after they have shared, I try to mirror back what I am hearing them say, for example: “I hear you are upset with me. I hear you thought I knew the difficult position you were in. (Or, I hear you think I don't care about you; I hear I used a word that you have bad feelings about; I hear I touched you in a way that you did not like; or, fill-in-the-blank of whatever happened.) Do you want to share more with me about how that made you feel? Do you want to let me know why this is important to you?” I do my best to become a listener with curiosity, instead of holding up the screen on which they can project.

I also tap into my own dignity. I try to remind myself that the action that upset this person is something I did, not something I am; it's a changeable behavior, not an immutable identity. I do my best to receive the learning opportunity and release the vitriol that might be coming with it. That part is not mine. The learning part is. I shake out my body, take a shower, hug a tree, or anything that helps me release the negative energy that has been thrown my way.

I can also hold multiple truths. Usually, my action made sense to me, even if it came from me being hangry or tired or reactive in some way. I don't need to defend myself, and I don't need to collapse on myself either. I can hear their upset, and honor my dignity, and when the time comes, if they are able to listen, then I can share my understanding, too. I can be forgiving with myself and with them. Usually, at this point, we are able to honor each other, learn together, and move forward.

Sometimes, though, the person is not interested in hearing me, not curious, deciding that they would rather be right than be in relationship. At that point, I grieve the loss and try to release it. I don't need to hold onto the relationship, if the other person is not willing to see my humanity. I want to be with people who can recognize my fallibility, my imperfection, who have grace for me to make mistakes and learn and evolve from them. As I shared at the recent Asian Diaspora Jam, if I can give others a mountain of grace, I want to receive at least a handful back.

In that conversation, Minna, one of my wonderful teammates, was talking about how poop is a metaphor for the energy of blame, judgement and projection. If I release this poop frequently, letting it return to the earth and compost, then my energy is freed up. I learn, I grow, I heal, I evolve. If instead I store it up with my inner critic — which is the most powerful lawyer in the world, because it can assemble an airtight case with a landslide of evidence in a second — then I get constipated and eventually throw that poop on to someone else. It is like ‘Little Poos Everywhere’, we riffed — all these projections being passed around a community, hurt people hurting each other. Not a pretty sight. Minna and I laughed as we thought about ‘Tiny Beautiful Poos’ as an option instead — how working differently with our own sh*t could shift everything and lead to much more healing and well-being all around.

Total prevention of projection is impossible, of course, because each of us will have our wounds and inner critics, and they will show up. At the same time, as a member of a community, I can also help mitigate and slow down the expansion of projections. I know I sometimes want to back my friend up, defend them and their point of view, and take on the ‘enemy’ with them. Then, I slow down and remember what I have learned through YES! Jamming and conflict mediations: that there are always more sides to a story, that everyone presents themselves initially as faultless and the 'wronged one' in the conflict, and that that is very rarely the case. In Hindi, we have a saying: “It takes two hands to clap.”

I recognize how important it is for me, as a friend or colleague, to bring support and perspective. Can I help them slow down and get to what's underneath the projection? (Maybe it’s that mommy wound, fear of their own light, pedestal-ization, expectation of mind-reading, etc.) Can I help them let go of the victim-perpetrator-punishment model and think together about learning, healing, and clarity as options instead? Can I support them to have a conversation with the person or people involved, and check out their stories and evidence, instead of cementing their narrative? Can I be willing to join them as a kind and loving witness to the process, if desired?

In organizations and movements, I suggest introducing the difference between criticality and feedback, and strengthening the mechanisms for giving and receiving timely feedback with directness, kindness and curiosity. I also find it helpful to talk about the inner critic and the violence of perfectionism and the need for spaciousness and graciousness with mistakes. I believe we can invite people not to freeze themselves or others and welcome ourselves and others as evolving, change-able beings. When the heat is on the rise, I think we can help it slow down instead of fanning the flames til it engulfs us all. With all of this, I think we can help reduce the pervasiveness of projections in our world.

I like to imagine the fantastic compost that would come from this poop. With it can grow more of the love, truth, leadership light, and interconnection that our world needs. Let’s pull down the projection screens and face this sh*t together.