PROJECTION: OTHERS AS MIRRORS

A real deep-dive into the topic of self-consciousness in physical activity.

A common barrier to participation (or enjoyable participation) in physical activity is self-consciousness - a heightened awareness of oneself and one’s exposure to that environment. This is more than just plain old self-awareness; when people say “self-conscious” they usually mean there is some degree of anxiety around the fact of their exposure.

For some people self-consciousness involves being entirely caught up in their own judgments of how they look and perform, however for others there are explicit self-conscious anxieties around their exposure to other people, which adds an extra psychological layer to the experience of being active in public.

This can take various forms - perhaps you suffer from the spotlight effect, feeling as if people are watching what you are doing, even if you can see that this isn’t the case. Or maybe you experience social physique anxiety - concerns about people viewing your body negatively. Then there is self-presentation anxiety - a broader set of concerns about being unable to present yourself in a desired way in front of others. This most commonly involves worrying about how experienced, competent or attractive you appear. All of these concerns can also be about failing to present the image you want, or alternatively presenting a negative image - two different things.

When these self-conscious concerns occupy our minds they tend to lead to more restricted behaviour, negative emotion and distraction from our goals and motives. They can also have a significant impact on participation. Whilst for some people such concerns can motivate more physical activity to address whatever the felt inadequacy is, participation is often consequently unenjoyable and approached in a dysfunctional way, and for others these self-conscious concerns act as barriers to participating at all.

So what’s going on here?

There are many root causes of these self-conscious concerns, some being relatively easy to establish and others less so. If this is a problem you suffer with consistently, it is worth working with a qualified therapist/analyst/psychologist to get to the bottom of it, especially if it relates to other psychological difficulties. This post, like every post, is not intended to replace professional one-to-one support, so if you feel this is a persistent issue for you feel free to get in touch. However, you need not get to the root cause to understand a bit more about what is going on in the moment for this experience to be maintained, and make some helpful tweaks to improve the physical activity experience.

When we have concerns over how others view us, we are necessarily making some assumptions - we can’t possibly know for sure what someone else is thinking or the likelihood of that, especially if we are not directly interacting with them. Therefore we are necessarily engaging in what is known in the psychodynamic field of psychology as projection.

In order to make sense of every new moment, we are constantly overlaying our past understanding onto it. That’s why each new moment doesn’t feel new - we are experiencing it through the lens of pre-existing knowledge. This set of automatic processes is what enables us to experience a sense of continuity, recognise familiar situations and establish how to act. Without these processes, making sense of each new second in our lives would be enormously slow and inefficient. However, efficiency necessarily comes at the cost of accuracy, and I will come back to the question of when this matters shortly.

Projection is an unavoidable part of this natural sense-making function. It describes the process of “seeing” things in other people or situations that actually reside within ourselves. These might be character traits, emotions, intentions, beliefs or behaviours, to name a few. If you consider how a projector projects images onto a screen, that’s a pretty effective metaphor for psychological projection. Something within us gets beamed onto a person or situation - a quality or mood of our own that we haven’t acknowledged, something we wish we could develop or manage better in ourselves, or perhaps the spectre of an influential figure from our past.

Now, it’s important to acknowledge that people and situations do have their own objective qualities that we can perceive - the fact of projection does not erase the fact of these qualities’ existence. So sometimes our interpretations of a person or situation can be at least partially accurate - Marie-Louise Von Franz, a Jungian analyst with various publications on projection, would say there is usually a “hook” on which projections are hung. In other words, there is something about the person or situation that invites the projection - they exhibit a glimmer of something similar to what is being projected. However, we often see these qualities as magnified, describing the entire person as opposed to a specific aspect to them, or as indicative of other “likely” qualities.

For example, we might feel that someone is being judgmental of us in the gym or carrying themselves in a prideful way, when actually we are rather judgmental of ourselves or we feel resentful that we were discouraged from feeling pride in the past.

Or maybe we put our training partner on a pedestal and see them as this invincible character who is fazed by nothing, but this is in reality reflective of something we feel is important yet impossible for us to develop, so it is “seen” in others as a source of inspiration.

Furthermore, many people someone with a physique they admire and assume that person is therefore happy and confident in themselves, but this is nothing more than a reflection of an ideal the observer has: “I’d feel better about myself if I looked like that.”

Another variation of projection occurs when we come across people in the present who bear some resemblance, no matter how small or unacknowledged, to people from our past. In that case we may unwittingly project those past figures onto the people in the present, subsequently responding to them in similar ways. Consider the archetypal pattern of some young people trying extremely hard to impress authoritarian coaches who bear echoes of perfectionistic parents. Equally, something about a present situation can activate memories of past situations - I’m sure some readers will resonate with the experience of dreading going to public pools having had a bad time with school swimming lessons!

You could even argue that when people are objectively displaying a certain quality there is still necessarily some projection on our part as observers, because recognising and understanding that quality requires a degree of pre-existing experience of it. We think we “know” what someone else is doing, thinking or feeling because we are already familiar with that pattern in some way. Otherwise it would seem totally alien and incomprehensible to us.

For example, where the observer experiences emotions in response to an objectively displayed behaviour, that may also indicate projection. Let’s say someone in your running group often complains about the interval sessions set by the coach and you find it particularly irksome. Complaining consistently is something most people would agree is a negative thing to do and probably unhelpful if no action is taken, but if it bothers you enough to really rile you up each time, then it’s pressing on something that already exists within you. That might be an unacknowledged tendency of your own to complain, or perhaps past situations involving negative people in which you haven’t felt able to remove yourself or address the behaviour. Things stand out that are relevant to us given our history - so we might be more aware of X about someone whilst someone else is more aware of Y.

It might seem like these are just associative experiences, external stimuli simply triggering psychological content in our minds. But if we think we “see” this content out there, then we are necessarily projecting.

So, why does this matter for understanding self-conscious barriers? Because it turns out the mirrors in gyms are not the only things showing us our reflections.

Often when we worry about how we appear in front of others, it is because they either serve as implicit reminders of people or situations from the past that we have not come to terms with, or they act as mirrors who reflect back at us what we really think of ourselves. What we “see” in others’ judgments are often our own ideals, or those of significant others in our lives.

So in trying to deal with excessive self-consciousness, an important skill to develop is discernment - sifting out what is ours from what is theirs, which over time with practise leads to the withdrawal of the projections. This is no easy task, and as I implied earlier it is most effectively done with an analyst or suitable therapist.

However there are questions you can hold in mind as a part of ongoing reflection. Any thoughts or feelings you are assuming on others’ parts can be checked out as potential indicators of what you might actually think or feel about yourself.

Then you might consider if you want whatever ideas and criteria you have identified to be the sole determinants of how you feel about and evaluate yourself and your workouts. The pragmatic question of “is this helping me here or not?” can come in handy. Or “what do I really want this activity to be about?” This is an opportunity to rework some of the ideas you bring into this space, and ultimately your relationship with yourself.

Also pay close attention to anyone you tend to see in an overly positive light or respect in the midst of these self-conscious concerns - what qualities might they hold that are in fact qualities you would benefit from working on, or even have lying dormant already, waiting to be acknowledged or actively put into practice? This relates to Carl Jung’s idea of the “golden shadow” - positive potential within ourselves that for whatever reason we have not integrated into our conscious personality.

Furthermore, in a book called “Swamplands of the Soul” Jungian analyst James Hollis discusses how difficult psychological experiences such as this can be considered uniquely meaningful in that their existence and your proactive engagement with them can lead to transformation that wouldn’t occur otherwise. Feeling self-conscious whilst exercising is a brilliant reason to keep participating, in honour of yourself and the spirit of overcoming. A counterintuitive idea and a task that demands energy to take on, but worthwhile doing if you have the space for it.

If you enjoy deeper dives and discussion of these topics from these alternative perspectives, check out my Substack which is all about exercise psychology through a depth psychology lens.

Chloe

Psychology of Movement