Deflection
Hello there.
Chances are if you're watching this video,
you've already committed yourself to the path of awakening
and a path of awareness.
It's the most important part of awareness,
Self-Awareness.
As it goes, he, who knows himself, knows the world.
Why? Because each is a mirror for the other.
But as we know there are some barriers to self-awareness.
Now I'm going to be talking to you about
one of these barriers to self-Awareness today;
That barrier,
is called Deflection.
To deflect something is to cause that thing to change direction,
by interposing something.
This turns it off its strait course,
into another direction.
Even back in the original direction it came from.
The best way to imagine this,
is to think of animation that involves laser beams.
If one character shoots a laser beam at another character,
and he picks up his shield,
the laser beam is deflected off, in another direction,
or ricochets back towards the one who shot it.
This may be a good defence tactic when we're dealing with laser beams,
but what if what's being sent in your direction,
is something you need to reflect upon?
What if it's an important piece of information?
What if it's the universe
trying to get you to be aware of something within yourself?
As it applies to our conversation today,
deflection is when something that is communicated,
causes the person who has communicated too,
to feel triggered.
And as a result of that trigger and wanting to avoid
whatever it is that's being triggered,
the person either ignores, turns away from,
or...
Pushes back
that thing that's being directed at them,
towards the person who sent that information.
Of course this is done to avoid painful memories,
painful emotions, painful thought,
and it also is designed to prevent the person from being self-aware.
Deflection is different from projection,
which is where a person cannot accept
a quality or aspect of their own personality,
because it's incompatible with their self-concept,
so they project it out of their awareness, onto another person.
For example, the angry person recognizing anger in other people,
but thinking they're perfectly peaceful, for example.
However, I will say that once people have learned about projection,
projection becomes a wonderful deflection technique.
It goes like this:
"No, you're just projecting onto me."
~ Laughter ~
Before I continue, I must say, the people whose default defense mechanism
and coping mechanism is denial,
use deflection as a mechanism of denial.
For this reason I want you to watch my video on YouTube titled:
Denial (How to Call Bulls#!t On DENIAL)
Deflection is a defense mechanism
that is designed to preserve the self-concept.
It is designed to project the blame that we, in fact, feel,
onto other people.
Essentially, we feel like we cannot face
taking responsibility or taking the blame for something,
and feeling like a good person at the same time.
So because of this inability to deal with guilt or shame,
we put the blame somewhere else besides on ourselves.
We see this with our children quite often.
For example,
let's say that a kid spills a glass of water,
then they blame it on the cup.
Here's another example;
You've got a super abusive husband,
who blames the fact that he beat his wife up,
on the fact, that she didn't have dinner ready on time.
Here's some other examples:
A person who says things to hurt someone when they defend themselves,
blames it on the person being too sensitive.
A person whose behavior leads to group intervention,
and then says everyone has turned him into the enemy.
A person who's told that they're being manipulative and says:
"It's just you projecting".
A man who gets criticized for something he did,
who thinks: "She's just on her period".
It's a person who is destroying a relationship and says:
"It always takes two".
It's the friend who does something hurtful and says:
"She's just triggered because of her childhood".
It's the guru that fails to help someone, who says:
"It because they're too unconscious still or are too attached to their pain".
It's the partner who does abusive things
and when their partner gets angry at them says:
"They're in abusive the relationship, because of the other partner's anger".
It's the person who causes emotional distress in another person,
who drives them to the psychologist to figure out what's wrong with them.
And the list goes on and on.
What you see in all of these scenarios
is that feedback from the world
that would challenge a person's positive self-concept,
is not allowed to sink into the consciousness.
Instead, it is deflected.
If someone around you is using this coping mechanism,
what it will feel like,
is like no matter what you do,
you cannot get through to that person.
You cannot get them to stop doing whatever it is that's painful.
Now before I continue on,
I also have to flush up a common childhood pattern that we see.
This childhood Pattern, quite frankly,
has the capacity to not just destroy families,
but to destroyed lives.
And it involves deflection.
This is where a parent
who usually enters into the parent/child relationship
already with a core self concept of shame,
but who cannot allow themselves
to feel that shame or acknowledge that shame that already exists.
Because of the dynamic between themselves and the child,
maybe because they don't understand how to meet the child's needs,
they're not particularly attuned,
that child acts in ways that say to the parent:
"Something that you're doing isn't meeting my needs",
they show distress.
When the parent sees that child's distress,
they cannot make it about themselves, and feel like a good person
at the same time.
So what do they do?
They make it about: "Something's wrong with this kid."
This child, in this family,
then becomes the family scapegoat.
The parent decides that the reason the child is unhappy with them,
is because something's wrong with the child.
The parent then goes on a mission.
This is where they switch
from antagonist, to "fake rescuer".
Even though they in fact,
the dynamics of their own relationship with their child,
have created the distress in the child,
they make it about what's wrong with the child
and then they switch into the rescuer.
They say: "You know what,
to preserve my own self-concept
note: (this is all subconscious),
I am going to be the one that helps fix this child."
and so they spend all of their time trying to figure out
what's wrong with the child and fix the child.
They do this instead of recognizing their own behavior
and style relating to the child.
And realizing that that is wrong with the child.
Now this child is literally locked in the paralysis
of emotional abuse.
This is one of the most insidious forms of emotional abuse,
because it involves gaslighting.
To gaslight someone is to essentially make them believe
that what they perceive, they don't actually perceive.
What you see, you don't see.
What you hear, you don't hear.
It's elaborate deception.
It's designed to create a condition in a person
where they feel so incredibly crazy, that they doubt their own reality.
The parent first hurts the child with their behavior,
and when the child becomes upset,
the parent deflects the blame
onto something being wrong with the child inherently,
and actually feels abused by the child's negative emotions.
Then flips into the loving rescuer,
trying to solve whatever is wrong with the child.
They tell the child they're doing this because they love them.
So the child is now mentally and emotionally destroyed in confusion.
The very person who hurt them,
is now the person saying they love them
and because of that, will help them solve whatever is wrong with them.
Because we as humans have a very difficult time
understanding the gravity of emotional injury,
we only understand physical injury,
I'm going to explain how this goes
if it were a physical injury.
I want you to imagine
that you broke someone's leg.
But because you can't break someone's leg
and feel like a good person at the same time,
you can't admit to the fact that you broke their leg.
So instead, you do this:
as they're writhing around on the ground in pain
and yelling, you say:
"Wow, something must really be wrong with you,
because there is no good reason
for you to be that angry with me, in fact, it's abusive.
Also, there's no reason to be doing this, because it's such a beautiful day outside.
But, but, I love you so much,
that I am going to be the better person,
I'm going to stop what I'm doing here,
and what I wanted to do today, I'm going to go find a doctor
for you to figure out what's wrong with you,
and work on your anger problem, so you can enjoy this beautiful day,
and so that we can be in a wonderful relationship together."
So what happens to this child as they grow up into an adult?
They grow up with this concept that something is
seriously seriously seriously wrong with them.
They internalize this view
that their parent gives them of them.
This person becomes self abusive,
and often suicidal.
And here's the most hard part:
Because there's no resolution to this original pain
in their relationship with their parent,
every subsequent relationship is a mirror of this relationship.
Every subsequent relationship is abusive.
And abusive in a way that is insidious,
and that paints them as the scapegoat.
Now here's the thing,
since this person was scapegoated in childhood,
chances are, they reach adulthood with a boatload of diagnosis.
So when they run into subsequent partners,
with the same deflection pattern,
it's easily deflected.
It's easy to say:
"Hey, it's because they're mentally ill",
"Hey it's because of their childhood", or some other thing
that's now real,
because their parents made it real.
Okay, so by now,
some of you probably have your skin crawling
after hearing about that dynamic.
So, it's obvious to us,
that this pattern of deflection is both dangerous in relationships
and also dangerous to self-awareness,
so what do we do,
if we run into this pattern of deflection?
Number 1.
We have got to recognize
and allow ourselves to admit to and to feel
our feelings of deep embedded shame,
if we're ever going to have hope of not deflecting.
We deflect to save our self-concept.
In order to awaken,
we have to be able to see both sides of the coin about ourselves.
Both our darkness and our light.
The person who deflects,
this means in order to stop deflecting,
you have to be willing to see and feel yourself
as not a good person in the circumstances you're in.
Now, I know that you and I could engage in the debate
all day long,
about good and bad people,
and the fact that no bad people actually exist.
But here's the thing,
you've already decided in your mind,
that certain things are bad.
That's why you can't admit that you're doing them.
And so, I'm gonna just be frank and tell you,
you have got to be able to confront
the idea that maybe in the circumstance,
you're the "bad guy" and not the "good guy".
Step 2.
Once you have allowed yourself to accept,
to own,
to admit to the fact that you feel deep deep shame,
because looking at the circumstance you can see how you aren't exactly
"the good guy",
it's time to admit yourself that this a shame, in fact,
goes way way way way further.
If your common coping mechanism is deflection,
then the reality is, the core of your entire self concept,
is shame.
And has been, for a very long time.
You cannot admit to guilt,
because it causes this deep wound of shame to be triggered.
All of your attempts to deflect
are designed to shield the fact that underneath that shield,
shame already exists in you.
For this reason,
after you've allowed yourself to really feel the shame,
I encourage you to watch my video on YouTube titled:
How To Overcome Shame
Step 3.
Deflection is a coping mechanism,
for this reason,
I want you to watch my video on YouTube titled:
How To Let Go of a Coping Mechanism
And use the advice given in this video, on deflecting, specifically.
Step 4.
The opposite of Deflection is Reflection.
Now hopefully, you are capable
of sitting in that horrible shame feeling
of not being a "good guy" in a situation,
but if you're not,
there's a back door solution.
And I suggest you take this back door solution
for the sake of other people in your life.
That back door solution
is to realize that the "good guy"
is the guy who admits to his own flaws.
So essentially, you can go through the back door of this pattern,
by feeding your positive self-concept by accepting your negative aspects.
So when you feel the tension of defense,
in any given situation,
use the power of your own ego's desire to see you as a "good person",
a good person who owns their flaws,
to in fact look for what you did wrong,
or what you did to hurt the other person.
Step 5.
You need to start facing up to,
owning and allowing yourself to actually feel unpleasant emotions.
People who deflect or go into denial,
cannot stand negative emotion.
This is what's at the heart of this coping mechanism.
But here's the thing,
pain calls your attention,
for a reason.
Because there's something inherent in pain,
that needs to be known.
It calls your attention,
for a reason.
Instead of deflecting or going into denial or eating or distracting ourselves,
we have to go inward towards the pain.
In order to see a method for doing this,
I encourage you to watch my video on YouTube titled:
How To Heal The Emotional Body
Step 6.
Start to ask yourself "Why?" .
relative to everything about yourself,
about what you're doing, about the reactions you're getting.
Ask yourself "why", but...
Ask yourself "why",
from the perspective
that you are wanting specifically
to explore painful truths about yourself
in each circumstance.
Painful truths about how you actually feel,
about what you're actually doing,
about why people are actually acting towards you the way they are acting,
and about what you actually want and don't want,
and about why you are really doing the things that you're doing.
Deep down underneath deflection,
is an unwillingness to really be authentic with yourself and other people.
Step 7.
look at the most painful areas of your life.
I encourage you especially to start with the most painful relationship
you have in your life.
And take a look at the excuses that you're using in that circumstance
for how the situation
is about the other person.
Ask yourself:
"What would be so bad if none of these explanations, were true?"
"What painful truth am I the most terrified to admit to,
if this situation is like it is because of me, instead of them?"
8. Once you have accepted and owned up to
the real painful truth about yourself,
whatever it was that you were deflecting,
whenever you're ready,
communicate that someone,
whoever you need to repair something with.
Why? Because now, knowing what you now know,
reflecting, instead of deflecting,
you have something real to work with.
Repair in relationships,
can only happen once you know what you're actually dealing with.
So now you have the key tool
to creating resolution.
So, do that.
The reality is, in the relationship where someone is deflecting,
repair in a relationship is not possible.
Because, let's look at it this way:
If someone does something to create a rupture in the relationship,
but they don't see what they even did,
and they're unwilling to see it,
they can't do an infant to resolve it.
So, repair can never happen.
This is often the real reason
that relationships with parents never get resolved.
Now there's a common societal belief/saying
that we love to use a lot when a relationship starts to disintegrate;
It's that:
"It always takes two",
or "everything is 50/50".
Now, I'm about to tell you today that that isn't true.
I'm about to tell you today,
that it does take two to nurture and create connection,
but it only takes one, to destroy a connection.
And destroy a relationship.
And this is how:
Now imagine this string in my hands,
this represents connection.
One person holds the key to the connection
and the other person holds the other key to the connection.
In order to create the connection,
both sides have to want to come together.
So, now that this connection has been formed,
by both of us coming towards each other
because that's the nature connection,
how many people does it take to destroy the connection?
Does it always have to be 50/50?
I want you to watch what Blake does.
Nothing.
Watch what I do:
I'm the one that just destroyed that relationship.
It takes two people to make a relationship work,
because if one person doesn't want the connection, or nurture it,
there can be no relationship.
But if one person doesn't want the connection or doesn't nurture it,
there can be a rupture.
Regardless of what the other person does or does not do.
That is one reason why being in relationships
is so powerfully vulnerable
and interdependent.
And the bottom line is:
One of the most painful things on this earth,
is rupture in relationships that are not repaired.
So dare to reflect, instead of to deflect.
Have a good week.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte