Projection and counter projection contribute to confusion.
What is “projection”?
We see the world and assume, that we see facts.
However, often enough our assumptions and filters shape “our reality” and we cling more to our inner narratives, than to hard circumstances around us. Our inner mindset shapes our experience. We are more prone to “create” a story that suits our needs of assurance and efficacy, than to allow contradictions to disturb us.
We are “projecting” our perception to some extent.
Projection and counter projection contribute to confusion.
An example
One example for this effect is easily spotted, when we meet other people, see and interpret their ways and manners.
We have no chance to know one another completely. However, we need to make do, with the limited information, that we can obtain. Our brain fills in the blank with previous experiences and tries to emulate a coherent, believable concept of the other person.
One challenge here is, that we are generally unaware, about the amount of “blank-filling” or editing we subconsciously do.
As you can see, projection can distort any communication.
The role of emotions in communication
Emotions play a large role in any communication.
Some are expressed deliberately, often they are only shining through “between the lines”. We pick them up via verbal and non-verbal communication clues. One way to perceive the emotions of another goes via the “mirror-neurons”, neurons in our brain, that allow me to sense your emotions to some extent. Again, this process is mainly unconscious and functions on “autopilot”.
In another post, I have illustrated, how emotional maturity depends on a large extent on our age. We develop from neonatal narcissists, to egocentric toddlers, to competing school kids, to fiercely autonomous teenagers and finally (hopefully) grow into stable and cooperative adults.
Professional emotions
Imagine you wake up grumpy after a bad nightmare. When you start your work on that day, you can’t allow any negative emotion holding reign on your attitude or actions. You have to learn managing them in a way, that is neither harmful to your health, nor disrupting your professional role.
The attitude you are aiming for is “open neutrality“. This would be a sort of middle ground of emotional tension between:
- Asleep versus freaking out
- Completely closed up versus dominating all space at all the time
Your patient is important, but you cannot eliminate yourself out of the communication-relation.
What is “counter-projection”?
With these two concepts “projection and emotions” we can explain a specific communication obstacle: the counter-projection of the patient’s emotions on to you.
As I have described in an earlier post: patients and their parents are most often quite fearful during the consultation. But sometimes, they come with anger instead of fear. This anger might be directed at you, but is most often not originally caused by you.
The patient sees you and projects their previous experiences towards you.
And then, they react to their image of you, rather than to you as a person. When you observe that their attitude or response is out of line, with any signal you are sending (emotional neutrality would be critical here), you might be able to understand this specific bit of their inner story-line. In this situation, your emotions are stirred up, by their projected emotions. So just listen to the emotions, that want to bubble up, without giving in to them. They have more to do with your patient/ parent than with you.
In a nutshell:
Projection and counter projection contribute to confusion.
By developing emotional maturity, your emotions might become additional sensors, to perceive the world, rather than forces, that push you around blindly.
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