Projection: Hurt people, Hurt people |
“Projection isn’t just a weapon—it’s a cage. It wounds those it’s aimed at and shackles those who wield it, trapping them in their own unhealed pain.”
“Pann’ni paam’mi gasan ni bek’kis dinni” is such a psychologically apt description of the concept of projection. If we seek the ChatGPT definition of projection, it says, “Projection is a psychological defense mechanism in which individuals unconsciously attribute their own unwanted thoughts, emotions, or traits to others. This process allows them to avoid confronting aspects of themselves that may cause discomfort or conflict.”
Now, why do we need to talk about this more? Because it’s one of those problems that have always existed but gone largely unnoticed due to a lack of wisdom, knowledge, and vocabulary. And as I always say, “If it doesn’t have a name, it can’t be seen, and when it can’t be seen, it’s not there.”
For generations, we’ve had to put up with people’s—often those in positions of power—unexplainable anger, hostility, antsy behavior, shaming, and bullying. We were never taught that these behaviors were often not about us but about them—a desperate attempt to offload their own emotional baggage onto unsuspecting targets. The concept of hurt people hurt people is not new in the world of bullying, invalidation, and gaslighting. More often than not, in an attempt to make oneself feel better, we project our own fears, insecurities, and anxieties onto others. It provides a temporary relief, a momentary high of self-righteousness, a feeling of power—at the cost of someone else’s mental peace.
Professor Sigmund Freud was the first to study projection, and he suggested that it is an unconscious or sometimes even conscious attempt to reduce personal anxiety. When we are not emotionally available or self-aware, we are at risk of projecting onto others—and being projected onto in return. If you are not in touch with emotions like sadness, guilt, shame, joy, and fear—if you don’t acknowledge them—even the smallest things can feel like a threat. That’s why people snap in anger so easily. But what I fail to understand is why anger is the only emotion society finds acceptable, especially in men. Why is it that sadness, vulnerability, and fear are considered weak, but rage is allowed—even celebrated?
Projection is rooted in past trauma and childhood conditioning. As a child, if something you did was ridiculed, criticized, or frowned upon, you learned to hate that part of yourself. You developed an aversion to it, buried it deep, and tried to forget it ever existed. But buried wounds don’t heal; they resurface. One day, someone else comes along and exhibits the very trait you learned to repress. Suddenly, you are triggered. But instead of dealing with your feelings, you do what you were taught—you pass on the shame, the ridicule, the disgust. And just like that, a cycle of inherited trauma continues, passed down through generations, through friendships, through workplaces, through entire cultures. Projection poisons every relationship it touches.
People who project often come across as highly disagreeable, difficult to be around, and emotionally unavailable. They struggle with maintaining close, meaningful relationships. Many of them may sometimes also exhibit narcissistic tendencies, and while my therapist tells me I should see them as individuals with issues rather than as villains, I refuse to see them as victims. Because while they may suffer, their suffering makes others suffer too.
Projection distorts reality. It forces people into constant self-defense mode, always scanning for threats, always ready to strike first before someone else can expose them. It is the root of blame games in relationships, coldness in friendships, toxicity in workplaces. And when people with deeply ingrained projection tendencies feel seen for who they really are, they lash out, either by attacking or by retreating into avoidance, creating an endless cycle of misunderstanding and pain. Projection steals joy. People who struggle with it can’t enjoy life, but they also ensure that the people around them don’t either. They externalize their own suffering until the environment around them is just as miserable as they feel inside.
Projection works on a spectrum. It can manifest in seemingly small ways—like someone who would have been ridiculed for bad table manners ridicules someone who might have messed up in the moment—or in big, life-altering ways—like a parent pushing their own unfulfilled dreams onto their child, or a boss blaming employees for their own incompetence. Someone struggling with projection would attack, needing to invalidate the other person just to validate their own past wounds. It’s a compulsion. And when you are in close proximity to someone who constantly projects, your life becomes a living hell.
Now, add to this the “Sigma” or “Alpha” culture, where men are taught that emotions are weak—but somehow, anger is an exception. We have convinced ourselves that suppression is strength. But how is it that we hire psychologists and crisis managers in corporate settings to handle conflict, but in our personal and social lives, we still lack the same emotional intelligence? We don’t live in the wild anymore, where anger and aggression kept us safe from lions and fires. We live in a civilized society—at least, that’s what we claim. If we were truly civilized, we wouldn’t still be eating raw emotional trauma and passing it off as justified rage.
Being on the receiving end of projection is an invisible battle—one where others’ fears and insecurities are unfairly cast upon you. Over time, this constant misrepresentation breeds self-doubt, forcing individuals to carry emotional burdens that are not their own. Society offers little protection; instead, it gaslights those who are projected onto, making them question themselves. The child labeled “too sensitive” learns to suppress emotions, the friend called “too much” begins to shrink, and the employee accused of having an “attitude” starts second-guessing every action—all to accommodate the insecurities of others. But projection is not just a personal issue; it is a collective one, fueling cycles of emotional harm across relationships, workplaces, and entire communities. If we fail to name and challenge it, it will continue unchecked.
So what now? Do we just sit back and let projection continue to poison our relationships, our workplaces, our societies? Do we keep pretending that the harm it causes is just the price of being human? That’s the easy thing to do. That’s what we’ve always done. But at what cost? Projection doesn’t just damage the people it’s directed at—it warps the lives of those who rely on it, trapping them in a cycle of avoidance, fear, and misplaced anger. A person who projects is never truly free. They are constantly running from themselves, distorting their own reality to avoid confronting their deepest wounds. And in the process, they push away the very people who might have offered them understanding. But the ones who bear the brunt of this distortion? They live in a state of constant doubt, second-guessing their own experiences, shrinking themselves to avoid becoming a target. They become the collateral damage of someone else’s internal war.
And still, we act like this isn’t a crisis.
Maybe we’re too comfortable with dysfunction. Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that some people just have “difficult personalities” instead of recognizing that unhealed pain is shaping the way we treat each other. Maybe we’d rather keep swallowing the narrative that “hurt people hurt people” and leave it at that, as if pain justifies cruelty. But ignoring this doesn’t make it go away. If anything, it makes it stronger. Because the less we acknowledge it, the deeper it seeps into the way we live, the way we work, the way we love. And one day, we wake up and realize we’ve built entire lives around avoiding ourselves.
The question isn’t whether projection is a problem. It’s whether we’re willing to stop pretending it isn’t.