Projection Explained: Why Certain People Irritate You So Much
Last Thursday I wrote about a scene from Mindhunter in which Charles Manson turns on the FBI agent interviewing him and says, more or less, that he's tired of being the man's reflection. It's a manipulative line from a dangerous man, but it points at something real, and something far more ordinary than a prison interview room. Most of us have a person who gets under our skin in a way we can't fully explain. The colleague who leaves exactly on time. The friend who posts every achievement. The relative who makes every gathering about themselves. They don't do anything terrible, but something about them makes your jaw tighten before they've finished a sentence. This is the second part of my shadow work series. In the first part, I explained what Carl Jung meant by the shadow: the parts of ourselves we've disowned. This part is about where those disowned parts most often show up. Not in our own reflection, but in other people. Why do certain people irritate...
