Be Aware: Traits You Deny and Reject in You, You Project onto Your Partners and Sabotage Your Relationships

There are many traits you are NOT AWARE of which control your attitudes, thinking, reactions and behaviors in your relationships. These usually are traits which you perceive to be “negative”; which you are afraid might bring criticism upon you; disrespect; rejection and abandonment.

As long as you refuse to acknowledge and accept these traits, you can’t see and understand how they affect your reactions and behaviors. As they continue to pop-up in your interactions, causing conflicts and arguments, you “identify” them in your partners, and get mad at them. You don’t take responsibility for YOUR PART in the deterioration of the relationship, but rather blame your partners.

TRAITS YOU DENY AND REJECT AS BEING PART OF YOU: A SAMPLE

• Anger
• Aggression
• Stinginess
• Jealousy
• Over-sensitivity
• Vulnerability
• Competitiveness
• Control
• Manipulative tendencies
• Egotism

ANGER WHICH IS DENIED MANIFEST ITSELF IN RELATIONSHIPS: SPENCER’S CASE

Spencer never expresses anger towards Mary-Lou. He agrees with whatever she does. When he doesn’t agree, he doesn’t tell her, he just behaves the way he thinks is right. When they get into fights in which Mary-Lou argues that he’s too closed, that he doesn’t express himself, that he does whatever he thinks is right without considering her - he tells her that she’s hot-tempered; that it’s hard for him to talk with her and explain things to her; that she’s always angry. These repeated arguments make them feel distant, frustrated and disappointed.

EXPLANATION

Spencer perceives himself as a logical and rational person. That may be so, but he is repressing and denying that he also carries a lot of anger. The reasons might be many:

• During childhood, he may have experienced criticism and punishment from his parents when he expressed anger towards them. As a result he UNCONSCIUSLY LEARNED to repress and deny his anger.
• One of his siblings may have exhibited uncontrollable outbursts of anger. In order to distinguish himself from his sibling, Spencer taught himself – WITHOUT BEING AWARE OF IT – to repress anger and not express it.
• He may have adopted the PHILISOPHICAL APPROACH that an "enlightened person" is free of anger.

Whatever the reasons may be, Spencer has developed the self-image of a logical, rational, level-headed person who doesn’t lose his temper. He perceives anger as the opposite of logic and reason. In his relationship with Mary-Lou, he doesn’t take responsibility for his anger and his irate behavior. He projects onto her the unconscious anger that he’s harboring, identifies it in her behavior, and accuses her of being responsible for their arguments.

SELF-AWARENESS ENABLES YOU TO IDENTIFY TRAITS THAT YOU DENY IN YOURSELF AND PROJECT ONTO YOUR PARTNERS

When you truly and sincerely want to find out which are the traits that you deny and reject as part of you, and how they harm your relationships, you can do so when you develop Self-Awareness: this is a process by which you begin to know and understand yourself better; become able to identify which traits you deny within yourself; get to understand what makes you deny them, and get up to courage to acknowledge and accept them as part of you.

Being aware enables you to neutralize the power they have exerted over your reactions and behaviors and to CONSCIOUSLY notice how they come into play in your interactions. You are now empowered to express them willingly – or decide to choose other reactions and behaviors, vital to cultivating a successful intimate relationship.