This is Delicious Dignity, where we cultivate a self so potent, so clear, so vital, so truthful that our life is all the more luscious for it. Let's call ourselves into being, shall we? Hello, lovelies. My god, how long have I been sitting with this episode series? I really wanted to flesh it out because if I was doing a PhD, this episode series would be my thesis. To my knowledge, no one has ever connected these issues in the way in which we're gonna talk about them. This is the series I would gift any woman. Almost as soon as she's born, as soon as she pops out of her mother's womb, I would love for her to listen to these four episodes because this is something I've struggled with, really struggled with my whole life without ever knowing. It had a name and a science behind it. And because I didn't know it was a thing, I thought I was going crazy. In pop culture, we've acknowledged trauma, childhood issues, how we were raised. We understand that early development affects so much of who we become as adults and all the issues that we face as adults. And this has their place. But I think also that healing has only been seen in this hyper-individualistic light. And we need to start seeing the individual in the context of society, in the context of the world. A lot of psychology and spirituality focuses on internal forces, and that is very true. This is something we do need to focus on, but I feel like it puts a lot of pressure on the individual to balance themselves on this tightrope without ever acknowledging that there's a whole world out there that they have to reckon with. How do we stay sane in an insane world? How do we interact with others? What do we need to be aware of when we do interact with the world? These are the questions this series is going to answer. And it's for anyone really who's asking or struggling with the question of who am I? What is my true authentic self? How do I build a strong sense of self and a sturdy center? And to do that, we have to connect a few concepts to show you this net, this pattern of fuckery that I'm calling it. But it's basically a pattern that literally pushes you out of yourself. It causes you to abandon yourself more often than you would like. And maybe you've noticed it, maybe you haven't. But in these four episodes, we're going to connect at least seven concepts: projective identification, introjection, empowered women, empaths, sensitives, nuzzark, curses, the evil eye, the just world hypothesis, and even egregors. And if you don't know what any of those things mean, that's fine. You're in good company. That's the whole reason why we're doing this series. Because as I've said so many times on this podcast, awareness is half the healing. And sometimes it's the only healing. Just knowing that these things exist and that you are indeed not crazy is a way to really build that strong sense of self because we've been trained to blame ourselves for a lot of what goes on in the outside world. And we'll get to all of that in a minute. So this episode series is for you if you feel dumped on, if you feel heavy, weighed down, you're kind of out of light, like you don't have a lot of light left, you're tired. Of course, there might be biological reasons for that, but I'm talking more on a soul or a spirit level. And you know when you're feeling spirit wary or soul wary, right? It's for you if you experience such a deep disconnect with who you know yourself to be and who other people think you are. When you're struggling with questions of what thoughts are mine, what thoughts are not mine, when you're struggling with differentiating between yourself and others, and when you are indeed noticing that you self-abandon a lot of the times, you need to know these concepts because it's confusing and you can feel like you're under a spell. It can also feel like something is very wrong with you, like you're a stranger to yourself. It can be a mind fuck. That's why I call it the pattern of fuckery. And because this disconnect happens so often, and a lot of times it happens with the people closest to you, you think that there must be something wrong with you. Maybe you're a narcissist, maybe you need more therapy, or maybe you're just confused. It's not your fault. You just need to understand some concepts. If I was to go back in time and teach the five-year-old, 15-year-old, 25-year-old girl version of me, these are the four episodes I would make her listen to as part of her mandatory from maiden to crone therapy. This is foundational knowledge for you being a woman in this world. And I think that to really feel your own dignity, these four episodes are a must. So for this episode, we will start with two concepts to start it off, right? There are about seven or eight or nine concepts that we have to go through, but for this episode, we're starting with two concepts. And the first concept is projective identification, and the second concept is the empowered woman. So because this is so new and nobody's ever connected the dots in the way in which we're going to do in these four episodes, I want to give you stories, real stories from my own life, as well as maybe give you some made-up situations and I'll, or make it made-up stories, and I'll tell you when they're made up, to give you illustrations of the concepts that we're talking about, because stories are what help you anchor this experience into your own life, and you can see your own experience better when you are given a story. Okay? So let's begin with this particular story. So some time ago, I decided to work in a store to do readings as an intuitive reader. And the reason I decided to do this is because I thought that I would meet people where they are at. And a lot of people come to stores for readings, especially the, you know, those spiritual stores for an intuitive reader. And that's how I sort of justified it in my head, saying that, you know, instead of waiting for people to come to me, I will go to the people. And this is where people go, so this is where I will make myself available. And, you know, I did the interview, they hired me, everything was fine. It was pleasant. And this is after the interview. I mean, I was hired, it was so pleasant. I talked with all of my colleagues, we had fun, we joked around, I offered to help for free for a lot of times, and it was received really well. It was a really good, solid first few weeks that I was working in this store until the manager of the store came back from her vacation. Now I was hired primarily by the owner of the store, and I did uh test readings with some of the colleagues that I would have been working with in the store. That's how my interview went. The manager of the store was nowhere to be found because she was on vacation. So when she came back from vacation, there I was. So she wasn't there when I was hired, she wasn't part of the hiring process, but she came in after I was hired and a few weeks in. And after she came back, everything just went downhill for me. I felt the tide turn against me. It was suddenly there were all these rules that came out of nowhere. Nobody told me about them when I first joined. I was repeatedly told I was a distraction and that I behave badly. And that was almost a constant thing I was being told now. I got these two very long, emotionally winded, nasty emails from the manager who never spoke to me one-on-one. But she would always, but she would send me these emails. And my response to this was being stunned, like a deer in headlights. You know, have you ever seen a deer in headlights? They just freeze when they see the car coming at them. And I had this initially, I had this freeze response because who I was and how things had started was completely different from how they were currently going. I knew myself and I was seen initially to be someone who was fun, who was pleasant, who was interesting to be around, and who was extremely helpful. And my help was even wanted and celebrated and appreciated. And now all of a sudden, I was a bad person and I was this distraction, and it was just so it was, I was stunned. I was in shock. Okay, that's the only thing I can say. And over time, I was being told I was a distraction when a distraction to the colleagues from doing their job is what I mean. When they were doing the exact same things, and even worse. So if I talked to a colleague, I was told I was being a distraction. But if they talked to each other, that was okay. Sometimes they would blare music in the store when customers were there, and that wasn't seen as a distraction. There was a colleague that would smoke weed where to the point to which she really couldn't even have a conversation with the customers, and she would make them feel weird or awkward. It was just awkward to talk to somebody who is high. And this is how I knew, based on how this was going on, this is how I knew it was a projection. How they saw me was not accurate, but it still felt like a shock, right? Because it was such a deep disconnect and it was so not who I was. This is how I knew it was a projection by looking at how the colleagues were actually behaving with each other, how the manager was behaving with them. But it was not the same, you know, the way she was behaving with me was a complete disconnect because that was nowhere near anything that I was doing. All I was doing was talking to my colleagues. So around this time, like about a few months in, I started to realize okay, this is not my fault. This is a projection. She does not like me for whatever reason, and now she's almost turned everyone against me. So I kind of understood that this was happening. But then something else started to happen. I started to feel this compulsion to talk to my colleagues, almost like a burning desire, like I was being pushed to talk to them, even though sometimes I didn't want to. It almost felt like the more they said that I was a distraction, the more I felt like doing it even more. I felt compelled to do the exact thing they were telling me I was doing, but I was not doing. It's almost like I couldn't stop myself. And this created unbelievable amounts of anxiety within me. And please note, I'm naturally very introverted. I get my energy by being alone. So it doesn't make any sense that I would be compulsively trying to talk to these people. The other thing that I felt that was very unusual is I felt sick all the time, nauseous. And I am not someone who gets nauseous, and I was feeling nauseous almost all the time I was in this store. Sometimes it felt like I was being attacked by a thousand spears as soon as I entered the place. It felt like I was under a spell that I just couldn't get out of. Spell, compulsion, confusion. Why did I behave like that? Why do I feel like behaving like that? It was so much anxiety. And I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong. That's what that's the question I kept coming back to is what am I doing wrong here? Why am I behaving like this? Why am I feeling like this? And that, my friends, is the finest example of projective identification that I can give you. Projective identification is a psychological defense mechanism where somebody unconsciously places an unwanted feeling or a part of themselves they cannot accept onto someone else and then behaves towards that person in a way that pressurizes that person to actually feel and act out the feeling that was projected onto them. So it goes beyond regular projection. See, with basic projection, you can attribute your feeling to someone else or something else. But with projective identification, you pull the other person into actually embodying the thing that you're projecting onto them. In episode nine, we talked about true feedback or judgmental projection. Is it you, is it them? What's valid, who to trust? That's what we talked about in episode nine, and it was all about projection. And that's what I thought was happening in this store. But it was so much deeper than that. I was being pulled into behaving the way that I was being projected upon. And that's when I thought something was wrong with me or that I was going crazy. So let me just reiterate that in a simpler way, okay? Person A has a feeling they cannot tolerate. Maybe it's rage, shame, jealousy, envy, neediness, whatever. They project it onto person B. Person A interacts with person B in a way that induces that very projected feeling in that person. Person B starts to actually feel and sometimes act the way this person A has been feeling. Person A then points at person B and says, see, this is who they are. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, let me give you another example. This is a made-up example. Okay, so let's say somebody deeply ashamed of needing help constantly tells one of their friends, you're so dependent, you always need people to rescue you. The friend who wasn't particularly needy, maybe just had needs, starts feeling embarrassed and small around this person. So the shame now has been transferred to the friend. Where in fact it was person A that had been feeling that shame around neediness. Here's another example: a manager who's terrified of being seen as incompetent micromanages a very capable employee, second guesses every decision they make, subtly undermines their confidence, eventually the employee starts making errors and doubting themselves. The manager has essentially installed their own fear of incompetence onto the employee. Do you see? Do you see how messed up this can get? And do you see now why I wanted to tell you about this? So there is this person, I can't remember what his title was, but he contributed to projective identification by classifying this as a kind of pressure. Uh his name is Thomas Ogden, and he described how the projector creates a subtle but persistent pressure on the recipient. It's through tone, behavior, framing. Sometimes it's so subtle that you can't even pinpoint a specific thing, which again contributes to you feeling like you're going crazy. And this pressure then eventually creates the recipient, makes the recipient begin to feel an act in accordance with that projection. And that's why it's so difficult to identify it in real time. Because the feeling that you feel when you have been projected upon and now you're acting it out, you feel like it's completely genuine and self-generated. You think that you're just angry or ashamed or anxious, you think that you're just incompetent or unworthy or whatever, but you don't realize you have actually been maneuvered into feeling that way. Even if that person is unconsciously doing it, it is still happening and it still has an impact on you. Then Wilfred Bain came in and then uh started expanding on projective identification, where he includes the concept of container and contained. So the projector is the contained. They are full of raw, unprocessed emotions that they cannot for whatever reason process. So then the recipient becomes the container, someone with the capacity to receive, hold, and process that raw, unprocessed emotions in the contained person. So that was very important. This is the container is someone who has the capacity. The recipient of the projecting is someone who has the capacity to receive that projection. And we're going to talk about what that means. Now there is something called healthy containment, and the way Bayan gave his insight, he said that it isn't always pathological that if you see this for with a mother, especially a good mother, she'll do this often for her infant. She receives the baby's distress, processes it internally, and then returns it in a tolerable form. And he calls that healthy containment. He said that it becomes destructive when the container is repeatedly overwhelmed or when the projector has no intention of taking anything back. They just want to evacuate the unprocessed raw material and control the person. Do you see how that played out in my story? And are you already getting sort of snippets or memories from where it played out in your story? So, in theory, the tension that we're holding here with projective identification is how much of what the recipient of the projection feels is genuinely induced by another person, or versus how much of their own material is being activated. So, how much of them is them and how much of them is someone else? And from what I can tell, it's both. The projection lands on something very real in the recipient. That's partly why it works, because it finds a hook, it finds something to attach to, something to just, you know, there's a little opening there that it can weave itself into like a worm. And that is what you need to be aware of. You need to be aware of where in you something is landing because you have the capacity to receive it. And sometimes that capacity to receive is a feeling that that person is projecting onto you. So, for example, let's go back to my original story. I already was feeling nervous and a little bit out of place in that store because it was totally not aligned with me and my values and what I believe in. So I was already feeling a mismatch. Even though I was trying my best, I was feeling a mismatch. I was feeling a little bit anxious already. I was feeling unworthy and questioning my own sort of decisions. And so her projection of me not being a good enough person to work there landed in something that was already very real in me. Only she made up a whole bunch of things to prove that that weren't true, but it landed in something that was already very real in me. Now, when someone does this to you, or even when you're doing it to someone, it might not always be malicious. We will talk about malicious forms of this when we talk about curses and evil eye and all these things in another episode, but it's not always malicious. Most people who are doing it have no conscious awareness they're doing it. I do believe that the manager of the store had no awareness as to why they were doing it. When I tune into her energy and I try to figure out why she did what she did, she felt like she was out of control. She felt like she was not important. She felt like there was also some weird form of jealousy or envy or something that was going on in her, and I was activating it in her, which only made her react to me in the way in which she did. I don't think she was conscious of any of this. She was not necessarily scheming. Maybe later on she started scheming, but initially it was not like that. A lot of times people are just trying to survive their own unconscious material, their own emotionality. And so they have to project it onto someone else. That all being said, and because I know the person listening to this, you, my darling, you are such an understanding, sweet person. And you're you always want to understand other people and yourself. So you want to give them the benefit of doubt. And I know that, but I just want to tell you that even if it's not malicious, impact is still impact. It doesn't make it less harmful to be on the receiving end of this. Often it makes it worse because now you're aware of why the other person's doing it. You are conscious of what they are unconscious of. So it doesn't make that any less harmful. But it should help you to understand to not take it personally, to not make it mean something about your lack of worthiness. And where it starts to become an even more of a mind fuck is in groups. Projective identification is extremely contagious in a group setting. And that's what happened to me, right? With in this store. An entire group can project its anxiety, its aggression, or its shame onto one person. And that person becomes the identified scapegoat, the troublemaker, the black sheep. Can you see now we're going into empowered women territory? Are you picking this up? Do you see why we're creating this pattern? This person will then start acting out the group's disowned material and emotionality without knowing why. Can you see how this happens in families, workplaces, religious communities, even in online spaces? Haven't you seen this happen? And just to reiterate, again, for it to have its hook in you, you need to have the capacity to receive this projection. So the recipient's vulnerability really matters in this dynamic. The projection needs somewhere to land. It needs to find people who have a high tolerance for other people's emotional states. Hint, hint, something women are conditioned to do since we are born. It needs to find people who are trained early on to take responsibility for other people's feelings, other people's emotional states, other people's well-being. Hint-hint. Are we getting to the women's territory? You're seeing this now, right? Or they have unresolved material in the same emotional territory. All these three things were in me when I was working at that store. Again, this is not about blame. It's it's just this is like the mechanics, the physics of how things work. And understanding your own hooks is a protective measure you can take. Or rather, your own hooks, but also where the hooks can attach to you. Understanding that is can be extremely protective to your psyche. And also it can be mutual. So two people can be projecting onto each other at the same time. And I, you know, whenever you see extremely high conflict relationships, a lot of times you will find two people just evacuating onto each other. Neither one wants to own their own material, so both of them are convinced that the other person is the problem. And it can make you physically ill. Projective identification can make you physically ill. In many ways, I'm still recovering physically from the effects of that store. There were times I got heart palpitations. There were times I threw up, I got nauseous. And in so many ways, I have to say, my body protected me. It really was a protective force in my life. And so if you're finding that your body is doing that, that doesn't mean your body is weak. Sometimes it's a sign of healthy processing on your body's part. It literally needs to throw up what it is absorbing. It's poison, right? What it's absorbing is poison, so it's throwing it back up. So thank your body if that has happened to you. Now, someone in projective identification, they also say that if you have been a long-term container for somebody else's projection, especially in a close relationship, you will feel that disorientation. And a lot of therapists will call that identity erosion. Your identity is literally getting eroded and then replaced with somebody else's unconscious material. And you could you can see hints of that in the story that I told you from me working in that store. You know, one of the things that I have realized about why I love doing intuitive readings. And funny enough, I realized this in the store that I was working in. That one of the things that is the best part of an intuitive reading is that intuitive readings rise above projections and illusions and spells and projective identifications, you see, because it goes right to the truth. And I found that the people who are most surprised by what came out in their reading, I found that those people are actually under a lot of projections. And that is why they're so surprised by the truth of the reading. And it takes them a minute to even understand what I said. And sometimes they ask me to repeat it over and over and over again because it what they're doing is fighting against this cloud of projection that they've been under for so long. And that could be anyone. That could be somebody who is in a cult, right? That could be someone who has been in an abusive relationship. That could just be somebody who's worked under a toxic boss for too long. So this is something that's real and it exists. And you're definitely not crazy. So before we shift into tying this to empowered women, I just want to reiterate a few points because we really need to understand this, right? So the primary signal of a projective identification is when you have sudden, unexplained emotional shifts. What were you feeling before the interaction? So if you were neutral or you were fine, now you suddenly feel rage, shame, anxiety, or heaviness that has no clear starting point in your own life, then you can be somewhat sure that that feeling arrived with the person or during the exchange that you had with them. You feel something that they should logically be feeling. So they did something embarrassing, but you feel embarrassed. They're the one who's late, but you feel guilty. The emotional logic doesn't exactly track. You feel an urge to act that is very uncharacteristic of your personality. In my case, I wanted to compulsively talk to these people, even though I'm an introvert. And I get my energy from being alone. And I was there for hours and hours at a time, so I had no business spending all that energy on talking to people. But I still felt that uncharacteristic urge, you know? So that urge feels, I felt like I was under a spell. So it can feel urgent, it can feel alien, it can feel like something else is controlling you. It's like you're behaving in ways that aren't really like you. And you're constantly feeling like you're responsible for somebody else's emotional state, that you caused it, you must fix it, you must manage it. And very often, in all of this mindfuckery that we're talking about, it's your body that knows the truth before your mind understands what's happening. See, I felt like I was under a spell, like I was doing something wrong, that I was crazy, but my body knew to throw it all up. Right? My body knew to throw it up, even though my mind was spinning. My mind was trying to rationalize something. Meanwhile, my body was like, nope, just straight nope. No rationalizing needed. Okay, so now we can go into talking about empowered women. Now in episode 36, we identified, I think, about six battles that empowered women face, and that you need to know that this comes as part and parcel of being an empowered woman. And nobody talks about those battles, and which is why I made an episode for those battles. It's episode 36. You can just search for it in your podcast player, wherever you're listening to this, just search for empowered women, quiet battles, delicious dignity, and it will bring up the episode. So, in that episode, just to reiterate, what do I mean when I say the words empowered women? I mean, are you the first woman in your family to blank? Are you the first woman in your family to have your own bank account? Are you the first woman in your family to have a job, to graduate, to have your own space, to choose not to have children, whatever it is, right? If you have a lot of these first woman in your family type things that you can say, it's very often not just one or two or three things. It's usually 10, 15, 20 things that you have done, where you are the first woman in your family to do something. It means you have charted a path where no one else is gone. You likely had no mentors, no help. The few mentors you did have were probably not part of your family, but you did it anyway. So that's the first sign that there's some empowerment happening in you as a woman. And the second question you can really determine for yourself as to your level of empowerment is are you a woman that you would have felt safe with when you were a child? So if you imagine the younger version of you looking at you now, would you feel safe with her? That's usually the number one sign that you have gotten to a certain state of being. That's a default state of being, that is an empowered sense of self. And if you want more about that, you can listen to episode 36. I don't want to repeat the whole episode, but I just wanted to start with the understanding of what I mean when I say empowered women. Because sometimes people think that an empowered woman is someone who just does whatever she wants and is extremely rich and owns three businesses and has 10 kids and somehow manages to do it all by looking hot and sexy. That is not what I'm talking about when I say the words empowered women. So I just wanted to establish that as a baseline. But can you see now how everything we've talked about as far as projective identification is concerned applies to empowered women? Because when you challenge the status quo with anything, absolutely anything, projective identification is the first thing that comes at you, you see. Because a lot of times you've challenged somebody just by your mere presence. A lot of times, women are not empowered. And by being an empowered woman, you enter places and spaces where you just challenge people by just existing. So all of a sudden, you are being told you're aggressive just because you had an opinion. And now maybe over time you start to believe you're an aggressive person, but you're actually not. Do you see? It's almost as if when we talked about the container and the contained previously in this episode, you are the person who is containing all of the unresolved collective shadow material of the entire planet. Think of how many centuries and millennia of exploitation, dehumanization, victimization of women. And then think about a woman who is transcending all of that, or who's becoming more than her victimization. All of a sudden, you're challenging the status quo and all of the shadows that women received willingly for so long, you are now having to contend with them. You are everything the world has never seen or known. And a lot of people will just not know how to relate to you, including your own family. Let's give you an example. Let's say you're an unmarried woman in your late 30s. 99% of the time, what do people think of you? They don't think that you have high standards or you know what you're doing or you're simply waiting for the right person or you want a conscious partnership. Most people are not going to assume that about you. They're going to assume that you're unattractive to men or women or whatever. I'm talking about heterosexual relationships here, but they might just assume you're unattractive to men. They are deficient in some way, or you're just a bad person. If you don't want kids and you're in your late 30s, there's something very unwomanly about you, right? Because a woman wants to have kids. That's what women want, right? And so if you don't have kids, there's something unwomanly about you. There's something deficient about you. The operating word here is deficient. You are deficient in some way. Now, of course, this is an example, right? Unmarried, no kids in your late 30s. This is what some women have made a decision for. Maybe you've made a different decision in another way that has triggered people. It doesn't matter. But for the point of this example, you're an unmarried woman, you don't have kids, you're in your late 30s. The emphasis is that there's something deficient about you. Something is wrong with you. You're not right in some way. So this is how people will project that onto you, saying that you're deficient in some way when it's really them who feels deficient in something or in some way. But they project that onto you. Now you feel this and hear this from people over and over and over again in some form or the other. Over time, you are going to start to believe about yourself that you are deficient, unworthy, not attractive, you are a bad person, you are you're too much, you're playing the victim card, you're being difficult. And a lot of times you will get this from other women, not just men. So can you see how over time you're gonna get pulled into this dynamic? Even when you might not have been, you might not have felt that way about yourself, you might not have started there. And so now you feel kind of heavy and even sad. Can you have some grace for yourself and respect that about yourself that this is how you feel? Because it's really impossible sometimes to keep rising above the collective cloud of projective identification that we're all under, especially as empowered women. If you're angry, you're too much. Over time you hear that enough, now you seem to believe that you are too much and nobody can love you, nobody can handle you, nobody wants you. If you talk about patriarchy, you're playing the victim card. Over time you hear that enough, so now you believe yourself to be a bad person for playing the victim. If you state your needs, you're being difficult. So now over time you've begun to see yourself as someone who's so difficult to be around that nobody wants to be your friend and nobody wants to date you. You're difficult for even having needs. So now you make yourself feel like you're being needy, even though you just have needs like every other normal person. And in episode 36, we talk about six core battles that empowered women face. We talk about the battle of holding on to her sense of self, the battle of anger, of corruption, of questioning systems, the battle of big love and generosity, and even the battle of AI. But the specific feel the specific battle, I think, that directly relates to projective identification that a lot of empowered women will face. And this comes with the territory, no matter what. You cannot escape this, right? And that's the battle of holding on to her sense of self. An empowered woman wants the world to reflect her value, but very often she sees the opposite. She sees a big divide between how people see her and how she sees herself, and that is crazy making. She experiences this projective identification over and over and over again. So isn't it natural then that she and maybe you feel like they're like she's wrong, bad, evil, stupid, fucked up, a narcissist, selfish, isolationist, alone, crazy. Do you see that? Can you have some grace for yourself? And you feel these emotions so often that now you've even maybe started to see yourself as not empowered. Maybe you start to identify with all the other adjectives that were thrown at you instead. And you have to realize this is not who you are. You are you are in fact a very empowered woman. What you're feeling is just the weight of these projective identifications thrown at you. Maybe you found yourself behaving in ways that are not empowered all of a sudden. But that's not you. That was you under the spell of somebody else's projection. In that episode, I also talked about how you're holding on to the string of your soul and getting whacked or blown away this way and that in the wind. And that whacking away and blown away this way and that can feel crazy making. It is crazy making, right? It feels impossible sometimes to hold on to your sense of self, to hold on to your goodness, your love, because you're so used to now receiving all these false identifications that you you almost find it difficult to stop believing compliments or good things about yourself because there's so little positive encouragement. Okay. So I think you get my point. And can you see how we're connecting these dots now? And the next three episodes will connect even more concepts so that you can understand the full breadth of the fuckery that you are under, and then you, just by being aware of it, can pop it like a balloon. Just just like just a little dart and it just pops. And you're just freer and lighter, right? But we have to go through the shit to get to the other side, you know? And so, speaking of going through the shit, let's just outline how you can get more out of this series, you know, and really just go through it because I feel like you might only need to listen to this once or twice. I don't think you need to listen to it more than that, because you will just know it will just now be part of your schema, your symbolic understanding of the world. And so that's the beauty sometimes about these podcast episodes, because they work on you in a way that you don't have to work on yourself. It kind of just simmers there, like a brilliant stew just simmering and gaining more and more flavor, right? So the intention of these episodes is not to alarm you, it's not to put you in a state of panic, quite the opposite. It's actually to show you how you're actually not the one panicking. You're not the crazy person. And you just need to know how to interact with the world. So if you want to get more out of this series and really feel that healing hit, then listen to all the reference episodes I will link in the description because they're all related to the topics that we will talk about and they give you a broader understanding, right? Just in this episode, I talked about the true feedback or judgmental projection episode, and then I talked about the empowered women episode. So I'll link them all for you, and that will give you just a richer, deeper understanding. And the second, if you want to get even more, you know, that the first thing that I just mentioned, which is just listening to more episodes, that's like a good place to start. Now, let's say you want to go even deeper. Okay. The second thing you can do is identify just one story from your life where you felt this projective identification play out. Just one. That's all you need. Identify that one time. Think of your primary relationships. That can be a clue. The ones who had most access to you, if even for a while, your work folks, your parents, your schoolmates, your travel buddies, your spiritual circles that you were part of. Identify that story. Now, when you identify the story, notice in that story when did your energy start to shift. This will be a really good time to bring out your journal and just listen to what I'm saying, pause the episode, write it down because writing it down makes you look at it. And when it's written, it's real, right? And so your mind understands that as real and it will now start looking for it subconsciously in every dynamic you have. So, first step, identify the story of projective identification. Uh, the way to look for that story is look at your primary relationships or anyone who had the most access to you, even if it was for a short while. The second part is to notice in that story when your energy started to shift. The third thing to notice is name the pressure that you felt. What was the pressure you felt in that dynamic? What were you pressurized to do? Think, feel, be. Number four, name the container within you that received this projection. What was the capacity in you? What was the attachment that the hook could attach to within you that received this projection as though it was truth? Number what what what are we at? Number five? Number five, notice when, if ever, you caught the projection or you caught it, or what you were thinking when when this was all happening. Name it. Name this thing. And I'll give you an example of all of this in a minute, okay? But I want to have give you a clean experience so that you can do this work without the interference of my story, okay? So notice when you caught it and name that event. Give it a name. And the last question or the last prompt is what would you go back and tell her? This is very important that you do not skip that step. Write it all down. What would you go back and tell this version of you about what was happening? This is a form of reparenting, and it is a form of dissolving the hooks attachment in you. Okay. So let me use my story, my teaching story, my fairy tale, if you will. So let's use the prompts to go over my story. So, first prompt is identifying the story. That was the story of me working at the store. Second prompt, notice when my energy started to shift. My energy started to shift around the time the new manager came in. Or not the new manager, the manager came in from her vacation. Name the pressure that I felt. I felt the pressure of being under a microscope. Like I was being micromanaged, like my fullness wasn't allowed and it was even wrong. That's some behaviors were good, even encouraged sometimes, and then the next minute they were bad. So I felt like I was walking on a tight rope and I couldn't even see the rope. There was no consistency. I felt the pressure of walking on eggshells, the pressure to be someone different, the pressure to conform to an expectation that was not even outlined. The pressure to be palatable to everyone at all times. And so that was me naming the pressures I felt. Name the container within you that received this projection. Okay. So the container within me was someone who was trying to get along, who wanted to do a good job, who is a bit of a perfectionist, who wants to work hard, who wants to show love, who has really high responsibility for everyone and everything, who takes on too much. That is the container. Those are all the containers within me that received this projection like it was nectar, even though it was poison. Notice when, if ever, I caught it. I started to catch it first when I watched other colleagues being given a free pass for truly bad behavior. Meanwhile, I was criticized for literally no badness in my behavior, right? And the second time I started to catch it is when my body revolted. It took me some time to understand that I wasn't actually sick, that my body was just reacting, but I got there eventually. And I named this me catching this as my body refuses this burden. The proof is in the pudding. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Sorry. That's how I named it. These two names that I gave it where, okay, now I know to look for evidence of what I am facing in other people or in other situations. To not just blindly accept what I'm given as the truth. And the second thing I know is that my body will start to revolt because my body refuses the burden of carrying somebody else's projection. This is why it's so important to name when you caught it and give it like a phrase or a story name or something. My two names again were my body refuses this burden and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. What would you go back and tell her? So I would tell her to leave now. Just leave. You do not need to suffer to learn lessons. You do not get a cookie for staying and being nice to people who hurt you, don't appreciate you. If you're not welcome, you're not welcome. You don't need to prove yourself to belong. When you belong, you belong. There's nothing wrong with you. Put back the karma on their shoulders and don't take it on. Don't take on their karma for them. These are not your people. These are the people you usually avoid. You don't have to try to earn their love. There's big power in naming something, right? And that's the whole point of the series. To name it is to know it. That's why in ancient magic rituals, they would give something a name so that they could know it. And so that funny enough, it can dissolve its power over you. Because when you cannot name something, it just becomes this nebulous, vague thing that's just haunting you. And we don't need to be haunted, do we? We just don't need to be haunted. The third thing you can do is uh to really get the juice out of this series is to know what do you do or know as an empowered woman that pulls you into a projective identification for. For example, I've mentioned a couple already, and my most popular thing that I'm often pulled into a projective identification for is being called difficult or aggressive, especially when I call out men for their misogyny. And then I feel like a bad person for doing so. And then I become even more aggressive, even though I wasn't aggressive before, but I become even more impassioned, which is then feeling like I'm being aggressive even though I'm not, when I'm told that. Do you see? So identify those few places. I've given you so many examples. So identify that, especially as an empowered woman. When are you most likely to be pulled into a projective identification? And lastly, if you really want to get the most juice from the series, just know you can always get a session with me and you can choose what you'd like to discuss and go over. And all my sessions are built around you and your questions or concerns. And of course, you can also just stay tuned to the series and get a lot of juice out of it. But if you want to come and really do some serious work one-on-one, I'm here for you. I usually never say that in my podcast episodes, but I feel like, especially what I said before, I've noticed so many times that the whole point of a session sometimes seems to be just getting past the illusions and spells and projections that other people have put on the client I'm talking to. So that's why I offer this just so you know. And I, you know, after your session, you can also request a bespoke podcast episode on this podcast based on your follow-up questions or themes we didn't get to. Because sometimes clarity deepens after the sessions, new insights emerge, a question lingers. So if something clicks after the session or a new question comes up, I can always create an episode for you on the podcast with you in mind. And of course, it'll be anonymous and with full respect for your privacy, but you will be the inspiration for that podcast. And that way you get to re-listen to something that makes even more sense after your session. So I just feel like it's a simple and beautiful way to keep the conversation going. I haven't seen anybody do that from one-on-one session. So I think that's pretty cool. I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty cool. And I really love that about my work. And obviously, that part of the session is optional. You don't have to do it, but it's there. And if you want me to write down all the rituals to this episode, I stopped doing that because I didn't see many people were benefiting from me writing the rituals down in the in the blog post. So I stopped doing that. So if you want me to write all these rituals down, please message me. You can even leave me a voicemail now. The link to that is in the description. Or you can slide into my DMs on Instagram and leave me a voice message there. You know, it doesn't always have to be text. I love listening to your voice. So do that. So the first three episodes in this series are about me linking all these concepts together because awareness is the healing. And stay tuned for the next episode because this is where we're going to now go into how this links with being an empath, with a couple of things that is completely normal developmental process for babies and for children, like introjection and the just world hypothesis. It's a mouthful, but you're gonna get some major ajas. I bet. I bet my life savings on this, you're gonna get some major ajas when we link all of this together. Oh, it is so juicy. And you know, lovelies, as usual, I'm going to just please encourage you and say that if there is someone in your life that you know will benefit from hearing this episode, send it to them. Maybe it's an empowered woman who's just stuck under the weight of the identification she's been under. Maybe it's someone who's really felt the negative impact of being around large groups of people and they can't name it. So share this episode with them. And, you know, leaving a simple review on the podcast helps so much because it helps forward my work and put my work in front of a lot of people. And that also encourages me to do more episodes and helps me continue my work. And even if you can only just leave a five-star review, that helps too. I think now more than ever, we need to show the right people for us appreciation, you know, because I'm noticing that so many good content creators on Instagram just don't get the attention they deserve because they're not following marketing gimmicks, they're not, you know, doing anything shady, like buying followers or buying likes or something. And so they don't get the attention that they deserve. And I have found that by simply commenting on their post or liking their post or reposting their post, gives them so much more attention and pushes the algorithm to show their content to more people and encourages them to create content because we are not individuals, we are people living in community, no matter where we are, no matter what we're doing. We are not just individuals. We are part of a collective and we need each other now more than ever. This podcast is not created by AI. I'm not using marketing gimmicks. And so if you'd really like to support the show, then please do so by leaving a review and commenting and do that for your other creators as well. Let's bring back the power for the people, you know. I think I might do an episode on this where I talk about what I've left comments on, you know, on Instagram or on other podcasts, and how I've just had fun with it leaving those comments. You know, sometimes it's a funny joke, or sometimes it's an aha from their video, or sometimes it's just thank you so much, you know? And it's just been such a joy to show my appreciation, which is something I never anticipated. So, anyway, all that to say, thank you so much for listening to this episode. Believe it or not, you just listening to this episode also helps. So, because that increases my listening time, that the algorithm knows that you listened, and that puts it up in the feed. So, even that alone is enough. Thank you so much for being here. And so, my lovelies, may your dignity rise above the unconscious or conscious projections of others, and may your dignity be upheld in the purest of light in all times, in all places, and in all spaces. Much love to you, lovelies. Until next time. Bye.