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I wrote recently about being on the receiving end of projection. Someone who barely knows me watched a 30-second video and sent me a verdict. It was frustrating. And eye-opening in more than one way.
Here's the follow-up question I've been sitting with since.
Because if I believe projection is real, and I do, then I have to be honest about the fact that I'm not immune to it. None of us are. The discomfort we feel about something in someone else isn't always about them. Sometimes it's a mirror.
What Projection and Judgement Actually Look Like From the Inside
The tricky part is that it never feels like projection or judgement when you're in it. It feels like clarity. Like finally seeing someone for who they really are. Like justified frustration.
The psychology behind this is well documented. We tend to attribute our own uncomfortable feelings or traits to other people as a way of distancing from them. Research on defensive projection shows it's especially common when the quality we're projecting is one we've been taught to suppress or feel shame about. The louder our inner critic, the more likely we are to hear that critic's voice in what we see around us.
So if you grew up being told you were too emotional, you might see other people as overreacting. If you were taught that ambition in women is unattractive, you might bristle at women who are visibly successful. If you carry guilt about something, you might read guilt into people who aren't apologising enough for their behaviour.
It's not deliberate. It's not malicious. It's the brain's way of keeping the uncomfortable stuff at a distance.
I remember a woman I worked with years ago. The moment I met her I had her filed. Know-it-all. Too big for her boots. More impressed with herself than the situation warranted. She was getting recognised in ways I quietly felt should have been coming to me, and I had no patience for her at all.
At some point, one of us let our guard down. I couldn't tell you who went first. But somewhere in that relationship we got real with each other, and the moment we did, the shield came down on both sides. She wasn't what I'd decided she was. She was just like me. Doing her best, making mistakes, open to learning, figuring it out as she went. The only difference was that she wasn't shrinking while she did it.
My judgment had nothing to do with her. It had everything to do with the fact that I wanted what she had and hadn't let myself admit it.
I've started using these on myself when I notice a strong reaction to someone else's behaviour. Not to be cruel to myself about it. Just to get honest.
That last one is a useful test. We often extend more scepticism to our own interpretations when we hear them from someone else than when we're generating them ourselves.
Not every strong reaction is projection or judgement. Sometimes you're reacting to something real. Someone actually is being unkind, dishonest, or dismissive. Naming that isn't projection, it's observation.
The distinction tends to live in the certainty. Legitimate reactions usually come with some room for other information. Projection tends to slam the door. It already has the full picture. It doesn't need any more evidence because it's not really about evidence.
When you notice you've made a decision about someone and you're not actually open to anything that contradicts it, that's worth pausing on.
The female brain has stronger connectivity between the amygdala (where emotional responses fire) and the prefrontal cortex (where we attach meaning). What that means practically is that women don't just notice a social threat, we feel it more intensely, encode it more vividly, and replay it for longer. Add to that the fact that women have historically been compared, ranked, and measured against each other, and other women can trigger a threat response that has nothing to do with anything they've actually done. The judgment forms fast. The brain files it as fact. And because the female brain is more prone to rumination, it recycles that judgment on a loop until it feels like truth.
That's not a character flaw. It's architecture. But architecture can be worked with.
Projection keeps patterns alive. So does judgement. When we consistently see the thing in others that we can't face in ourselves, we stay angry at the wrong target. We keep having the same dynamic in relationships, with different people, because we're not examining our side of it.
We become the common denominator. That's the part worth sitting with.
This is something I see regularly in the women I work with. Not because they're doing anything wrong, but because the patterns we carry tend to operate quietly in the background. We react. We justify. We move on. And the next time a similar situation comes up, we react again.
The work isn't to stop having reactions. It's to get curious about where they're coming from.
If you've read this and felt recognition, that's a good thing. It means something in you is ready to be honest.
Projection doesn't make you a bad person. Neither does judgement. It makes you human. The point isn't guilt. It's awareness.
Start with the four questions. Notice when your certainty about someone else is running ahead of the actual evidence. Get curious about whether the quality you're reacting to has any traction for you personally.
If you keep running into the same wall in different places, it's usually a sign the pattern is yours to look at. Not because the other person is blameless, but because the only thing you can actually change is what's inside you.
If you want to go deeper on that, the conversation starts at breestedman.com/resets. It's not therapy. It's not coaching. It's a process that works at the level where the patterns actually live.