jblaurie

Thanks for taking the time to replyI think you make a good example of this with what you said about writers being picky about books they like. I can relate this to a lot of things I do. Your question really left me thinking about why I wrote I have a hard time trusting peoples intentions. The thing is there is people I'm trusting every day so I don't think it is a generalised mistrust. I realised when I was writing that I was mostly thinking about one particular friend. I always felt his idea of friendships were purely for his own self interest. Lower self esteems as a means to reflect back his grandiosity. For some reason I must have blocked this memory out but I now clearly remember him openly telling me how If he could become friends with one of my collegues at work he could convince him to move in to their spare room so they could use him to build their new renovations. I think that is enough evidence to make someone question a persons good will. I think my constant 'self checking' of this was a way of now wanting to accept and trying to invalidate the fact this guy is probably not a good friend.Thanks, your kind words helped me realise something new

Hey fdr people I'm Jason This is my first post on here but I've been listening to Stef's videos on youtube for some while now... I'm having trouble with (at least what I think is) projection. I've been working on self knowledge for over a year and I'm slowly piecing everything from my childhood back together. The whole time though, I've focused on the shit things that everyone else is doing and a lot about my emotional defenses. I have only until now stopped and thought about the effects of my own actions on other people feelings. For example, latley I had gotten fed up with how a majority of my (ex)friends could not be trusted around each others girlfriends. In the past a few times they have slept with each others girlfriends, yet still look each other in the eye and pretend like they are friends. I always felt uneasy when I would bring a date and could 'sense' what ticks over in their minds. I would sit at home and get so angry about it! Anyways I just stopped hanging around those people and then suddenly occured to me (and i know this sounds silly) that I think like that too and have done those things! It's like I had blocked it out of existance! I think the whole time I was so angry at them was my way of projecting what I had done onto them and rejecting them for it. I wrote my old friend a letter finally acknowledging what I did was really mean and I'm sorry I hurt his feelings. I didnt seem to hate them so much after that even though they still did things that were mean as well? So the problem now is if I detect a nasty characteristic in someone I kind of get half stuck between not liking them for it, but at the same time questioning myself to why I identify and react to that charactistic so well?I have a hard time trusting people intentions a lot of the time My background: Im 26 now. I'm an only accidental child raised by a single mother. At age 5 we moved into a house with my grandparents and uncle. He is nearing 50 now and still lives at home with my grandma. My mum and him would constantly fight. My mum was always angry, raging and very controlling. My uncle was more passive agressive and manipulating. To my uncle I was a means of hurting my mum. Both of them would propagandise each other to me and have fights 'about' me in front of me. This one time my mum was ordering me to do something and my uncle flipped out and started smashing all my toys screaming 'this is what you fucking do to him!' I ran and hid crying. Neither of them even spoke about or acknowledged what they did afterwards and just swept all my broken things up in to a bigger box. Things changed after that and my mum became more fierce in her rage attacks, she beat me once and I ran out into the kitchen crying and my grandparents just stood there staring. My uncle came over and starts patting me on the back saying 'there there' in a weird tone almost like he was happy his comforting me could be used to gain leverage against my mum. The first times this happened I remember crying in terror, but the weird things is after a while I used to almost feel excited in anticipation of another fight. I think I almost wanted them to suffer. I once hid in the garden with a tape recorder so I could listen to it again later? I wanted to play it to my friends from school but tape went missing the next day, I guess my uncle found it. I think I became pretty emotionally numb after that, no real sense or concience or feelings at all, I would daydream a lot and escaped into a fantasy wold of computer games. We moved away when I was 11. I hated my mum and didnt want her anywhere near me, I felt sick if she even touched me and spent the rest of my time living there with a brick wall put up between us. Thankfully I don't speak to them anymore