My life as a Projector Screen?

It might be noted that this is an ongoing pattern in my life: since I was a child, I've been the recipient of ongoing projections and insults. Though I had a "healthy" home-life (if you consider communal households where nudity and honesty and acid-taking were the healthy norm), school was hell for me. Not only was I tormented continuously from preschool till junior high and beyond, but I was often "the" outcast in any given school. I suppose that's a sort of rockstar status, hahaha. But really... - though I was teased for my funny-looks, my supposed stupidness, my "airhead"-ness (that monicker stuck for some years) - what I was really teased for was my emotional vulnerability. I finally realized that the teasing continued because they could always get a reaction.

Hmm, if I stop reacting, there won't be anything more to tease about! I figured it out, but in the process, started suppressing my own emotions, stuffing them inside my own shadow-pocket, pretending everything was "okay."

Many years later, after much much intensive healing, I figured out that I had been a projector-screen for the emotions that the other kids had long suppressed - had long-ago been trained weren't acceptable. Since I was raised by such openhearted hippies, it took me longer to "learn" to suppress my emotions. But fortunately I was able to unlearn also, and in the process of unlocking my shadow-pocket, discovered the deepest well of creative juice I'd ever imagined!

So here now, many years later as I still sometimes receive the projections of others, I'm able to recognize that it's not about me. But I can be a projector screen for others' suppressed stories. So here's the invitation: anytime you find yourself thinking negative thoughts about anyone besides yourself, take a moment and ask inside, "what am I seeing in them that I don't want to see in myself? What traits of theirs have I blown out of proportion so that I may see them in myself more clearly?" Not only is this an amazing tool to learn about ourselves, but it also helps us become more understanding and loving towards others. "Oh, I hate that in her so much because I haven't accepted it in myself. Ahh, now I can soften and accept it in both of us - we're both human." Compassion is born in the hot-box of reclaiming our own projections.