by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
How to Deal With Other People’s Projections & Growing Real While Others Are Still Asleep
There comes a moment on the journey of growing real where something subtle yet profound begins to shift inside us:
We start seeing the patterns, stories, and scripts we’ve been unconsciously living by, notice the ways we’ve been performing instead of being present, and begin to acknowledge the ways we’ve avoided our own shadow self because we believed our survival depended on maintaining an ego that never truly represented who we are (almost always because of underlying shame, guilt, and/or trauma).
When this realisation dawns, it can be absolutely electrifying as the fog lifts, the mind sharpens, and life starts to feel more spacious as we finally become AWARE of our own realness and how we’ve been holding back from living and expressing it in the world.
Unfortunately, awakening to our own patterns doesn’t mean that everyone else around us is waking up too:
In fact, quite often the opposite can be true and so just as we’re beginning to develop presence, clarity, and a deeper relationship with reality, many of the people in our lives continue to operate on autopilot.
What this essentially means is that they’re still acting from their ego – a structure they unconsciously built to keep the shadow self at bay (because the ego and shadow are always involved in what I call the Shadow Dance).
In this state, they’re driven by emotional avoidance, shame, guilt, fear, unresolved trauma, and a lifelong habit of prioritising performance over presence.
Because the ego is always the opposite of reality, it clashes with the shadow, which contains the realness they have suppressed in order to feel ‘acceptable‘.
It’s in this gap between our awakening awareness and their ongoing sleepwalking that one of the most challenging interpersonal dynamics emerges – projection:
What this means is that when someone is still trapped in ego, they inevitably project their ‘stuff’ – their fears, fantasies, insecurities, hidden desires, and suppressed emotions etc. – onto the people around them and – if you’re the one who has begun to wake up to awareness – you will become a particularly convenient target for those projections.
If you’re not careful, you can get pulled into them, lose your centre, and end up getting hooked by the story they’re performing as you get pulled into their emotional movie and dragged down into the unreal again.
The irony of projection is that the more aware you become, the more noticeable and painful it can feel – at least until you learn to respond from realness instead of reactivity.
This article will show you how to step into realness and keep the reactivity and old patterns at bay when somebody is other people’s projections try to suck you back in.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Other People’s Projections: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- How to Deal With Other People’s Projections & Growing Real While Others Are Still Asleep
- How Projections Work (and Why They Happen)
- Why Other People’s Projections Pull Us In
- Step One: Recognise the Symptoms of Being Projected Onto
- Step Two: Name the Projection
- Step Three: Get Grounded and Regulate Your Nervous System
- Step Four: Stay Rooted in Your Frame of Reality
- Step Five: Don’t Fight the Projection
- Step Six: Returning to Your Vision
- Practical Steps for Staying Out of Other People’s Projections (Quick Review)
- Other People’s Projections: The Final Word
How Projections Work (and Why They Happen)
To understand projection in general (and, of course, other people’s projections), it helps to remember that ego and shadow are always at war in the great Shadow Dance.
The basic mechanics of this ‘dance’ look like this:
The ego is not real; it’s a performance. On the other hand, the shadow is real as it’s simply the aspects of ourselves we were unable to accept.
Someone who has not faced their shadow must pour enormous energy into maintaining the ego, and when they sense – consciously or not – that something threatens that ego, they resort to interpreting reality in ways that protect the fantasy.
This interpretation becomes the projection: a fabricated, filtered version of what’s happening, designed to allow them to avoid their own emotional material.
Because projection is unconscious, the person doing it believes in its validity completely:
They speak and act as though their fabricated version of events is objectively true which is why projection often feels uncanny or ‘off’ – not because it’s subtle, but because it is so confidently delivered despite going against the face of reality itself.
Here’s a quick story from my own life of when other people’s projections tried to suck me in:
I once knew a woman who was convinced she was psychic. In one of her ‘visions’, she saw us working together and also being in love. When I questioned it (because I didn’t feel the same way and really couldn’t see this ‘vision’ become the truth), she’d become upset and say that I was being arrogant in doubting her psychic powers or whatever.
Beneath all of the mystical language and spiritual theatrics, however, the truth was pretty simple:
The vision was a mask for emotions and desires she wasn’t ready to own and so she dressed them up in something that gave her permission to avoid the realness beneath them.
This is an extreme example, but the structure is universal:
A projection is always an interpretation of reality used to avoid reality.
(Write that out on a post-it note and stick it on the fridge).
The difficulty is that, when someone is projecting onto us, it’s tempting o play along with their performance to keep things smooth – especially if we’re too empathetic or conflict-averse because of our own ego ‘stuff’.
The truth, though, is that moments like these are where awareness must deepen into mastery and we become more grounded in our own realness instead of taken away from it.
This always depends on how REAL we can remain in ourselves and with ourselves.
Why Other People’s Projections Pull Us In
If someone projects onto you and you don’t know how to stay grounded and real, then you’ll be pulled into their unreal frame of things:
What this means is that you’ll start doubting reality because you’’ll feel pressure – sometimes subtle, but sometimes overwhelming – to support the unreal story they’re throwing at you.
This is bad news because, once you enter the performance, the dynamic becomes frustrating, draining, and confusing.
This pull into their projection happens because the nervous system senses a threat:
Projections often come wrapped in emotion, tone, and intensity because they carry the weight of the projector’s shadow – shame, guilt, fear, rejection, etc. etc. etc.
If we’re not grounded, our body reacts with fight, flight, or freeze and in this kind of reactive state, we’re more vulnerable to being pulled into someone else’s frame of reality instead of staying in our own.
To stop this, we have to see projections for what they are:
Unreal narratives created by an unreal ego.
They reflect nothing about you as a person who is more aware – in fact, they’re not personal at all; they’re just survival mechanisms expressed through unreal behaviour.
Here are some steps for you to take so you can avoid being pulled into other people’s projections and stay real:
Step One: Recognise the Symptoms of Being Projected Onto
Most people don’t realise they’re being sucked into other people’s projections until they’re halfway through an argument they never wanted or trapped in a dynamic that feels strangely familiar.
Thankfully, being projected on always comes with symptoms, and the earlier we notice them, the easier it is to stay out of the pull:
The first symptom is a subtle sensation that something is ‘off’ – this might feel like a tension in the body, a pressure behind the eyes, a heaviness in the chest, or simply a sense that you’re being invited into a performance instead of a presence.
You may also find yourself confused by the other person’s certainty despite the unreal things they’re coming out with or their emotional tone in general. In short, you may sense that what they’re saying does not match what is real in any way, shape, or form.
This kind of projection can happen between two people, but in family units or groups it can also expand into collective performance:
This is when unspoken rules, alliances, and patterns create a shared unreality and it’s where things like the Drama Triangle come into play – prosecutor, victim, rescuer roles shifting around to support the group’s collective emotional avoidance.
Whenever you feel yourself being nudged into a role that doesn’t reflect who you are – villain, saviour, problem, solution, emotional sponge, or [whatever else] – you’re likely inside someone else’s projection and need to find a way out (which means returning to reality).
Step Two: Name the Projection
Once you recognise it, the next step is to name it – not literally out loud to the person (unless it’s appropriate and you want to), but internally to yourself.
This is a really important step because naming creates distance and prevents you from becoming hypnotised by the story that the projection is wrapped up in.
You can call it a projection, a story, a script, or – one I like to use – Disneyland.
Either way, the name doesn’t matter – what matters is that naming it allows you to hold your own frame and prevents you from you falling into their narrative.
It reminds you:
“This is not mine – this is just their ego trying to avoid their shadow“.
In short, by naming the projection, we create just enough separation to stay conscious instead of being sucked into reactivity and acting on autopilot ourselves.
Step Three: Get Grounded and Regulate Your Nervous System
Once the projection has been spotted and named, we need to anchor ourselves and nothing keeps us real like grounding.
Projection often arrives with emotional charge – anger, fear, guilt, expectation, etc. – so regulating the nervous system is crucial:
Slow breathing, dropping into the body, relaxing the shoulders, feeling your feet on the ground – simple acts like these activate the parasympathetic nervous system and bring you out of fight-flight-freeze (which the projection needs you to be in to keep the illusion going).
When you’re regulated, you can respond with awareness and so you don’t get seduced into the emotional logic of the projection – instead, you don’t abandon yourself to make them feel better and you stay present.
Step Four: Stay Rooted in Your Frame of Reality
Grounding sets the stage for the next step: holding onto your own reality instead of merging with theirs and this is where realness meets resilience.
The projecting person is offering you something that you either CHOOSE to take or that you CHOOSE to decline:
I find it helpful to imagine it as a black bin bag filled with emotional gunk – basically, they’re holding it out and insisting it belongs to you. But it doesn’t. It’s their bag, which means it’s their ‘stuff’ and their responsibility. Not yours.
What you need to remember and embrace is that you don’t have to take the bag, no matter how passionately they extend it to you and try to convince you that it’s yours.
Stay with the truth as you understand it by staying in your frame and not accepting the invitation into theirs (the black bag of gunk):
Trust your clarity, stay rooted in your awareness, presence, and values and realise that when you hold your frame with calm confidence, you remain awake, and you prevent the projection from pulling you back into unconsciousness.
Step Five: Don’t Fight the Projection
If you try to fight a projection head-on, you will lose – not because the projector is right, but because the argument keeps you inside their frame and takes you out of reality itself.
In short, fighting the projection strengthens it because it invites more defence, more performance, and more ego on all sides.
The better approach is recognition without entanglement:
See the projection as a dream that they’re treating as real – this doesn’t mean that you have to insult the dream or attack the dreamer as you can still acknowledge the person without feeding their unreality.
Instead, you can respond with clarity and kindness while refusing to animate their story with your energy (as long as you stay grounded in your own realness).
Step Six: Returning to Your Vision
The final and most grounding principle is this:
Know yourself, know your direction, and know your vision because as long as you’re connected to your own real path – your goals, values, and way of being in the world – other people’s projections lose their power.
They cannot pull you off the road unless you stop walking it.
Realness is a direction, a commitment, and a lifestyle and so when your vision is clear, you don’t need to defend yourself against projections – you simply return to reality and keep moving.
Read my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want to find the strongest possible foundation in yourself so you don’t get pulled into other people’s projections.
Practical Steps for Staying Out of Other People’s Projections (Quick Review)
- Pause and Scan:
When something feels “off”, take a slow breath and ask yourself:
Am I being invited into a performance? - Name the Projection:
Internally label what’s happening:
“This is a projection”
“This is their story”
“This is Disneyland”
Remember that naming creates distance. - Ground the Body:
Slow the breath. Drop tension. Feel your feet.
Let the parasympathetic system switch on.
Remember that grounding keeps you conscious. - Return to Your Own Frame:
Remind yourself of the truth as you understand it.
Mentally hold your own reality with clarity and confidence.
Visualise the “black garbage bag” and remind yourself that you can CHOOSE not to take it. - Respond Without Entering the Projection:
Stay calm. Stay factual. Stay present.
You don’t need to fight their dream, nor validate it – you simply CHOOSE not to enter it. - Re-align with Your Vision
After the interaction, reaffirm where you are going in life and use your goals, values, habits, and identity to anchor back into reality.
Other People’s Projections: The Final Word
Growing real is a profound transformation that changes how we relate to ourselves, how we move through the world, and how we meet others in their unawareness.
The more real we become, the more clearly we see the unreal in others – not as something to judge, but as something to understand and master:
When we learn to stay out of projections, we protect our awareness, sustain our presence, and continue walking the path towards a more awake, grounded, and truthful life.
Let others perform whilst you stay present; let others project whilst you stay real.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to grow real and to find a solid foundation in yourself to keep unreality at bay then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you find your own real path.
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