subject: How To Unpack Your Relationship Baggage [print this page] First of all let's look at how some of our emotional baggage gets unpacked unwittingly in relationships in other words, how it gets flung out of the suitcase! Often what happens in this situation is something called projective identification. Sounds complicated but stay with me.
It's a defense mechanism that can cause a lot of problems in relationships and it goes a little something like this: you have a painful experience of a relationship (either with a parent or a former partner), it leaves you with painful feelings and emotions that are difficult to experience or stay with, so instead of processing it, you ignore it. It gets locked away in a secret place ready to cause mayhem later on.
Then, joy of joys! you meet someone new but bit by bit you begin falsly believing that they have the same traits as the previous person in your life who hurt you. Those unprocessed feelings and emotions from the past get projected onto the new person in your life. You begin relating to them in ways that alter your new partner's behaviour and then, guess what, it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.
How does that work? Let's look at some examples:
The paranoid person who behaves in a sneaky, suspicious way so that the people around him do start watching his every move.
The girlfriend who behaves in unpredicatable ways that makes her boyfriends frustrated and angry to the point where she thinks all men are angry.
The person who behaves as if all the people around her are needy and helpless by jumping in to do everything until no-one can do anything without her.
Projective identification is one of the reasons we're attracted to certain types of people. A lot of the clients that come to work with me have realised this, they've realised that they are the common denominator in all the relationships they've had that haven't worked out.
Projective identification is a very subtle, mostly unconscious process. But here are some questions or things to look at that can help you identifiy it for yourself:
1. Make a list of all the adjectives you can think of that describe your current partner.Then really scrutinize it.
2.Do any of those adjectives ALSO describe someone from your past? Try and be as honest with yourself as you can
3.Question again whether those adjectives really do describe your current partner
4.How did you feel at the beginning of the relationship?
What were your first impressions of your partner and to what extent have they changed over time?
5.How much of what you saw initially was true and how much of it was you making assumptions, fanatsizing about the perfect relationship or seeing only what you wanted to see?
6.Is your partner 'just like' someone else from you past your mother, father, your first long term boyfriend...?
7.Look again at that list of adjectives and ask how many of them really describe you, or ways you wish you were, or ways you are uncomfortable being.
It's not an easy task to do, allow yourself plenty of time, making sure you won't be disturbed. Above all, remember to be compassionate with yourself while your doing this. It's an exploration into understanding yourself better, it's definitely not something to beat yourself up about or judge yourself over.
