Positive Projection:
Why You Give the Narcissist the Benefit of the Doubt
In my experience, I’ve seen this pattern occur over and over again: the narcissist gloms on to someone with 1- high levels of empathy and 2- a history of relational trauma, specifically tied to being chronically misunderstood. This is not random.
It’s a normal part of your developmental years to try and figure out how to meet other people’s expectations, get your needs met, or feel a sense of belonging. In relatively healthy environments, we succeed at this more often than we fail. Unfortunately, not every environment is particularly healthy.
If you had more experiences feeling like you weren’t ever good enough, people didn’t get you, your emotions or reactions were “too big,” and you have high levels of empathy, chances are you good you never want to make someone else feel that way. This is very often the experience of neurodivergent people.
This means when you’re first getting to know the narcissist and they send a message that feels a little insensitive, instead of tucking that piece of evidence away to evaluate if this is a pattern of behavior, you’re more likely to frame it from your own experiences. “Well, I know I have sent texts before that other people have misunderstood, maybe he’s just having a hard day or didn’t know how it would come across.” Or if someone says, “Oh no, I just totally forgot we had plans!” You might frame it from an ADHD perspective of the times that you have forgotten something important.
This is a form of projection.
Projection is a term the creep Sigmund Freud came up with to describe this common unconscious defense mechanism. It happens when a person attributes their own thoughts, feelings or impulses to someone else. Usually, we talk about this in reference to our unacceptable thoughts, feelings or impulses. A common example from a narcissist is saying, “There’s no reason you’d go out with your friends if you weren’t trying to get attention.” This isn’t because you have shown behaviors that would actually line up with cheating - it’s because if they went out with friends like that, they would be doing it for attention. But many justice-focused people do the opposite and attribute their own positive thoughts, feelings, impulses or intentions to someone else.
This pattern is deeply reinforced by cultural conditioning, especially for people in marginalized groups, including people socialized as women from birth. We’re consistently taught to “give people the benefit of the doubt,” “be Christ-like,” and to create excuses or reasons for someone else’s behaviors. While having empathy is a healthy, good skill to foster, the problem here is in trying to manipulate a situation internally to be something that feels more acceptable or fits within our worldview, instead of being able to state concrete evidence, behaviors over time, and their impact.
Maybe we could shift the goal. Instead of trying to “see the best in people,” maybe the goal could become something different.
What if instead the goal became: I am willing to see the truth about people, whether or not it makes me uncomfortable.
Sometimes this feels pretty tricky, because there have been so many times where you may have been misunderstood. There may be people who have unfairly evaluated you and misjudged you. One of the distinguishing factors here has to do with empathy and accountability. If you did send a text that came off insensitive, if someone responded and said, “Ouch, that sounded like you were pretty mad at me. Are you?” Someone with higher levels of empathy and an ability to be accountable will genuinely apologize and make attempts to communicate to resolve the pain. There will be a genuine good faith effort to try and repair the misunderstanding.
Someone with narcissistic traits will likely respond with DARVO patterns, like “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, you always get so worked up about little things, it was just a text. If you can’t understand me through this small thing, how am I supposed to trust you with other things?” The goal here is not about understanding or repair - it is about shutting down the conversation altogether.
This pattern is often fostered by the underlying belief of the victim that they are flawed, it’s probably their fault, or they should be able to find a way to fix it. This fits perfectly with the narcissist’s underlying belief that they are entitled to comfort, other people should just be grateful to be in their circle, and that if there is a problem, it’s someone else’s fault. These patterns form a feedback loop that is really hard to break.
If you relate to this, the first step is being able to recognize that positive projection and taking on excessive responsibility or self-blame are emotional regulation tools. Not facts. They also often function to try and prove that you aren’t bad. To try and prove other people wrong. This especially applies if you relate to being the scapegoat or black sheep in your family growing up.
While this is an understandable response, trying to meet that goal will burn you out. (Plus it makes you more vulnerable to narcissistic and/or toxic people.)
The second step is practicing some curiosity about what you’d be feeling if you weren’t taking responsibility or trying to silver-line someone’s behavior. What would it be like if you just gave yourself permission to feel whatever that feeling is? What would you need to feel a little bit safer feeling that feeling?
It is your job to decide where your energy goes and how you treat yourself. By shifting the attention to observing what is happening in you, you reclaim a little bit of that energy. Instead of getting sucked into reinforcing the narcissist’s narrative of themselves, you get to focus on your experience of what happened and how it impacted you.
Sometimes trying these patterns feels impossible. It can be legitimately dangerous, and often our brains will work really hard to short-circuit seeing things that way. Especially if your exposure to narcissistic patterns has been intense or lifelong, this can often develop into a dissociative disorder. If you find yourself feeling suddenly fuzzy, distant, overly tired, or just like you can’t process what you’re reading, you might be dissociating a bit. I can help you with this. It doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out, or that there’s nothing there - that’s a sign that your brain is trying to protect you from something.
Look here if you’re interested in joining my group on recovering from narcissistic abuse or here if you need some one-on-one support.
You cannot be a rehabilitation center for someone else.
If you’d like to be notified when I write new articles, provide freebies or open my next group or course, sign up below.
