Dear Chloe:

Thank you for the note about digressing. I will feel more comfortable when digressing again.

“Earlier this summer, I did share with her my intermittent feelings of loneliness…“-

It occurred to me when I read your original post for the first time, reading about your friend saying that you were “passively aggressively saying she wasn’t ever going to be good enough“, that she was projecting someone in her early life=> into you. Could be a passive aggressive mother who repeatedly gave her the message that she was not good enough.

Too often when we talk to people, they don’t hear us. They hear the voices in their heads, often the voices of parents who keep talking to them via self talk. This is one reason why friendships in adulthood are difficult to start and to maintain: people “hear” people who hurt them when they (don’t) hear us, inaccurately projecting other people into us, and they react appropriately to those other people.. not to us. This was true to me too, still is, but I learned to notice my inaccurate projections and correct them, truly seeing and hearing the person in front of me.

“I may struggle with how to navigate sharing of authentic thoughts (disappointment of a cancelled trip) while still supporting friendships.  I think that may be the crux of it- no matter how improved I get at communication, I still feel like sharing anything negative at all about my life, any type of dissatisfaction, I feel like that is a major roadblock in my friendships“-

– I think that sharing anything negative about your life is likely to activate inaccurate projections on the part of many people who experienced lots of negativity in their childhoods, people who never learned to notice when they inaccurate project.

“Either I need improvement communicating my burdens when and how appropriate, or I’m connecting with people who have difficulty hearing those“- people who inaccurately project (there are so many of us).

Here is a way to help the situation, maybe: ask a friend, current or future, about their childhood experience and you will know what of what you share with them is likely to trigger their childhood negative experiences. You can ask them if they are familiar with inaccurate projections and explain to them what it is, if they don’t know.

“when I had an incident with my parents that took me away from regular messaging for that week she responded very negatively, accusing me of doing it on purpose.  She never actually was able to hear and acknowledge that I was slightly absent due to my parents’ concern, she just determined her reasoning was correct and disappeared“-

– I read this quote AFTER typing what I did above this quote. This quote right here has inaccurate projection written all over it. She never actually was able to hear you and your circumstances because she was hearing a parent (most likely) taking attention away from her on purpose, giving her the silent treatment perhaps. And she reacted appropriately (disappearing) to the parent and to her childhood circumstances with the parent.. not appropriately to you and to your circumstances.

“I’ve run into this more than a time or two- I’ll need help or support, someone will offer to provide it, but then when the time comes… it becomes a full-out ‘you shouldn’t need this’ or ‘you should be able to do this alone’“-

– there are plenty of selfish people, projections or not…

anita