Projection ...

Yesterday I had a great talk with a friend about projection... how we take our own experiences, our own temperment, and our own reality to process circumstances and situations and how we then project what WE think about those circumstances another person is experiencing onto the other person ~~ creating disharmony in our relationship.

For example, when I was pregnant with Sean, several people made insensitive and somewhat bizzare comments to me about having a 4th child. My reality was that we always wanted four children and had worked :) quite diligently to have Sean. Most people's realities were that four kids was way-over-the-top and a handful they couldn't imagine. I finally realized that their odd comments (actually, many were quite rude) simply reflected their personal reactions to the thought of themselves having a 4th child. I figured this out in an unusually powerful and revealing conversation I had with a woman about 15 years my senior in the Oahu airport in 1997 ...

.....Me: Those are beautiful flowers ~ where's home?
.....Her: Cincinnati, our friends took a collection and purchased this vacation for my husband and I. It's been the first time we've been away alone without our kids in 25 years.
.....Me: How many children do you have?
.....Her: 19 ~ 9 of them biological and 10 of them foster or adopted.
.....Me: Wow, that's very cool. Just before we came on this trip I read an article about a family in Colorado that has 22 kids, I think 9 biological and the rest foster and adopted. It's quite a commitment of love.
.....Her: 22 kids! Oh my gosh - what were they thinking??

Okay ~ my thought had been that once you get far past a dozen kids, then there can't be a big difference between 19 and 22. Thus, her reaction really shocked me. And as I pondered it, I realized that her reaction was simply her internalizing the thought of having 3 more kids than she already did and it must have sounded overwhelming. Ah ha! Through her unexpected reaction to the story of the family with 22 kids, I realized the root of the insensitive comments I had expereinced during my last pregnancy ... people were just projecting their own feelings on to my situation. Their comments came across as being insensitive to me but the reality was they were simply a reflection of how they felt about themselves having a 4th bambino.

This morning, I awoke considering the socratic method and how it can be effective at helping to avoid issues of projection in relationships. I was reminded again as the Lord revealed some specific things to me that, as an expressive teacher type, my tendency is to do a lot of "telling" and I must keep in my mind, as well as my actions, that more "asking" would be of greater value.