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We very often make up stories about other’s reactions that hook us into believing that we are somehow responsible for their reactions. It really has nothing to do with us.
After 20 years of marriage, Jane decided to divorce. One her oldest friends didn’t agree with her decision and the nature of their relationship seemed to shift. Jane struggled with managing that shift and came up with all sorts of explanations, rationalizations and reactions to explain away the changes in her relationship with her friend. What she initially failed to recognize is that, while her experience was tangible, her friends’ motivations were not. Jane’s reasoning and rationalization, no matter how sound, was based on a phantom premise, an assumption with no basis.
We make choices. Our choices have consequences. Good, bad or indifferent, we make up stories to explain—or explain away—the reaction of others to those choices. This is the heart of ego projection.
We very often operate under the misguided notion that our choices have a direct impact on the reactions of others. At first blush that might appear rampantly narcissistic. What it is, in fact, is predictably egoistic.
While our choices can, of course, have a direct affect others, those choices do not have a direct affect on others reactions as we experience them. In Jane’s case her friend was not reacting to Jane’s decision to divorce, but responding, on the one hand, to her own programming as an Irish Catholic, and on the other, to her frustration with her own situation. Jane herself discovered this after months of agonizing because she finally just asked.
We create our own reality. That reality can be fraught with anxiety and fear when it is not grounded in truth and authentic understanding. When we fail in our efforts to understand what’s going on around us, and rely instead on our assumptions and the lens of our expectations, it becomes fairly easy to fall prey to our own misperceptions. There are a few different strategies to ward against this trap of misperception.
The first of these is recognizing that it’s not all about us – there’s that predictable egoism. If we hold space for the notion that people come with their own baggage and, very often, how they respond to us is informed by that first, we will find ourselves seeing things from a much more realistic perspective. That more realistic perspective not only eases our own self-imposed burden, but aids us in the developing compassion.
That compassion is a two-way street. It’s not simply about recognizing and acknowledging the vulnerabilities of others, but it is also about doing the same for ourselves. This unburdens us not only from the judgment we mistakenly assume others are passing on us, but the judgment we are likely passing on ourselves, as well. Developing self-compassion on the road to other-compassion helps us to be more accepting of our own choices. As long as no one is dead, bleeding or on fire, there are no bad decisions.
Holding space for others vulnerabilities and developing self- and other-compassion support us in developing a more authentic understanding of the world we create for ourselves, as well as more authentic interpersonal relationships by reducing the noise we introduce through our initial misperceptions.
Jane questioned her friend and, in doing so, came to a realization that there was a lot more going on than just the two of them not seeing eye-to-eye. Her effort opened up a dialogue between the two women that helped Jane to understand why her friend had become so distant, supporting her realization that it really had very little to do with her choices. It also helped the friend to confront some of the concerns she had been avoiding over several years.
Not taking the reactions of others personally and recognizing that the responsibility for those reactions is a rather lopsided balance can serve to make our lives simpler and considerably less stressful. If we take a moment to think about how much energy we put into worrying about how others are responding to us and make a conscious decision to stop doing so, it’s quite likely that we would find ourselves with a whole lot of time on our hands.
© 2012 Michael J. Formica, All Rights Reserved
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