Projections – Beliefs in action

By Sharon Tawfilis MA LMFT

Our minds are very powerful and come up with all kinds of beliefs to make sense of our lives, relationships, and the world. Many of these beliefs were created when we were children and we don’t remember creating them. The longer we have lived the more opportunities we have had to create beliefs. Through our experiences in life, we make decisions about “the way things are” in an attempt to navigate our feelings about circumstances and relationships. Oftentimes we are trying to avoid difficult feelings or negative situations from repeating themselves.

Beliefs can be pro-self, like “people should always be nice to me”,  or based in self-hatred like, “I don’t deserve to have what I want”. The “pro-self” beliefs can have an impact on us that we do not want when things do not go according to our belief. When someone behaves in a way that I judge “someone not being nice to me”, then I create a judgment about the person or the situation based on my belief that I deserve to be treated a certain way. Having a judgment “pro-self or self-hating” creates conflict. Our energy flow gets blocked by our judgments as we try to create using force-energy based in fear that we will not get what we want because we are not able to control a situation in our lives. We are usually trying to avoid difficult feelings when we do this when in fact we are creating more difficulty.

We project our beliefs onto people and situations much like a projector onto a screen. We see what we want to see as a result of our beliefs which inform us about what is going on. When we project on to people we have an effect on them. Parents have an impact on children when they project onto them. If a parent was raised with the belief that children need to be told what to do and how to act, they will project onto their child that they cannot trust their own judgment. When parents project certain characteristics onto their children they also have an impact. If a child lies to a parent and the parent gets upset that their child lied to them and starts to project onto that child that he or she is a liar they will create a child who lies. If, on the other hand, the parent and child work through the conflict that led to the child telling a lie to the parent, they will heal the conflict at the time it occurs and not bring it with them into the future thus keeping the loving, trusting aspects of the relationship intact. In the other scenario where the parent has a judgment about the child, it will anchor the past into the present and both parent and child will bring it with them. Parent will bring the belief that people or children lie and the child will bring the belief that he or she is not trusted or that he or she must be a liar since his or her parent said they are.

One can see how as these situations occur in childhood and the child forms beliefs about themselves, relationships and the world, there are many opportunities for creating false beliefs which get lodged in the unconscious. Encouraging our children to access their intuition will help them to have a tool for self-discovery. Through meditation and guided imagery parents and children can create building blocks for receiving helpful guidance.  Parents and children can learn to go within for answers to life’s questions along the way.

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