Hey Motherfuckers. How are you? How did you survive Thanksgiving? How festive have you been feeling? And what can I tell you about what we’re working on in December? 

Well, we’re covering a lot of topics over in the main podcast stream! Wrapping up our 2023 focus on why relationships get fucky with all the loose ends we need to tie up. And then moving into 2024 – a year I’ve really been looking forward to – by closing our lingering thoughts about where we’ve been for the last 12 months and considering where we want to go next. 

Which means, it’s been a bit of a relationship-miscellaneous experience in the long-form episodes on the private stream for the past two weeks. And those reports have gotten long and deep. 

First this month, we talked about Transference. Including the trends seen in the therapy office, romantic relationships, family dynamics, and beyond. We discussed projection, monkey-barring, and displacement. The ways any of those fleeting emotional copy-paste efforts can accidentally turn into permanent perspectives. Plus the ways that they ruin our relationships and recovery progress. 

Then, we dove into discussing something I usually don’t touch on this platform for self-protective reasons; sex. Or, to be more specific, the troubles we face in our relationships with sex. The many narratives, protective programs, and overreliances many of us have developed around swapping secretions, across a lifetime. Ps – we actually came back to talk about AGAIN in a followup episode, because I still felt that there was more to say. 

SO. What do you want to talk about on this mini-talk platform, considering all those options? Little of A, little of B? Alright, we’ll see how my brain handles the extra work, but let’s try for a bonus episode this month. 

For this current post, let’s jump into Transference, Projection, Monkey-barring, and Displacement…… uhhhh…. NOW.

Transference

What’s transference? Transference is misapplying cognitions that were developed during one situation, to another situation. So, your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, beliefs about one person, place, or thing, become inappropriately grafted onto another person, place, or thing. 

Or, the way that I like to imagine it is this: we create these cognitive structures inside of our heads as we live. AKA – the neurons that we string together have 3D architecture to them. This isn’t how it works biologically, but if you visually imagine building a little 4 walled container around a stimuli (a person, place, thing, or situation) as you interact with them and learn what to expect from them…. 

And then imagine taking that structure and just transitioning it over onto a new target. Or moving a new target INTO that structure. Just swap out the face or place it was previously associated with. 

There! Now all that structuring is seemingly about the new object of your focus! You already have a framework for understanding it, predicting it, navigating it… how convenient and comforting.

That’s transference. 

The problem being? It’s wrong. Those mental connections AREN’T about this person, place, thing, or situation. So your ability to actually understand, predict, or navigate it? Is not good. It is not the easy peasy process that your brain originally assessed while it was falsely equating these two discrepant experiences as being the same. 

You with me?

Your expectations will be all wrong. They will be unfounded. They will be nonconsensual and untethered from physical reality. 

And this will be confusing. Both, for you and for the object of your transference. 

So, transference is most commonly talked about in the therapy office, because that’s where we encounter people who seem like 1) real adults, which we’re not used to but have dreamed of 2) people who demonstrate care, which we’re not used to but have been biologically programmed to seek 3) authority figures, which we might be used to… but it’s often in a historically negative, abusive, authoritarian, way. 

As such, traumatized folks often accidentally get some wires crossed and accidentally assess their therapists to be parental figures, friends, abusers, or bosses. Or maybe some combination. 

And this has the effect of ruining therapy for everyone. The client, reacting to the therapist in inappropriate ways – often, falling into codependency, clinginess, or over-reliance… or going the opposite direction and becoming hostile and distrusting in the face of their authority. 

Any of which will eventually create misalignments in the professional relationship and the work that was being done together. The therapist may attempt to lay down boundaries, and the client may escalate their behaviors in an attempt to elicit the reaction they expect. But the reaction they expect will be from their experience with mom, a friend, an antagonist, or someone else. 

In this way, things tend to spiral out of control, as the client can’t obtain the reinforcement they seek and the therapist can’t do their job because of all the inappropriate behaviors and emotions. The relationship typically ends, and the client is back to supporting themselves without a mental health professional they trust. Probably, with a new story under their belt about how they can’t trust anyone in the mental health field and beyond. 

So those are the basics of transference and why it matters. 

If we don’t have significant relationships that we need, our brains can accidentally manufacture them. 

Keep in mind: even if those relationships are negative ones – such as with a cruel authority figure – that’s still something our head can “need” in order to maintain a familiar sense of normalcy and reason in the world. “Therapy didn’t work out because that guy was a jackass! He was out to get me!” Not because… any other reason that can be backed up with evidence. 

And, so… that’s what our brains do. Often, at the cost of the relationship we were trying to forge, our sense of self, our understanding of interpersonal dynamics, our hope for future relationships, or in the case of therapy – our hope for finding help and making progress. 

Which brings us to: 

Projection.

How is projection different from transference? Well, projection is a type of transference. But in this case, we’re taking those mental and emotional structures we’ve built previously ABOUT OURSELVES and thrusting them outwards, onto another individual. 

So we’re still transferring the thoughts, feelings, expectations, judgments, and understandings that were developed inside of us about another target and applying those neural connections to another person, place, or situation. But this time, those connections were made about US, ourselves, on an unconscious level. 

And this is where I tell you that projection has a great utility, if we use it as a tool. It allows us to interact with material about ourselves that we can’t face directly, by pushing that material outwards. Problem being, that only benefits us if we DO turn it back around to see what’s contained in us that we’re offloading onto an unsuspecting passerby. 

Obviously projection is not usually used this way – we, instead, believe our self-protective lies. This is where things are, again, dangerous, inaccurate, and likely to create drama. Or trauma. Or both. As we launch our own deep, dark, self-judgments and fears onto the easiest mark within view and call them a monster. 

Nah, Fucker, that’s projection. And that’s how you feel about you. 

But how do you feel about your past and present romantic relationship partners? 

Because another form of transference is: 

Monkey-barring. 

Monkey-barring is when we don’t let go of one relationship before we’ve grabbed onto another one. And I say, we do it with our thoughts, emotions, and expectations, as well. 

As in, rapidly transitioning from one partner to another, with little time in between. Thus, having the experience of the relationship never really ending… but the other party in the relationship being replaceable. 

OR, possibly having a “relationship template” developed from your engagement with one person, that everyone thereafter is gruffly shoved into, regardless of proximity in time-space. 

In either case, the neural structures that were built previously are emptied of the image of our past partner and a new profile picture is inserted into the voids. Therefore, we never really have to experience the loss of the person in our life, because we can replace them with a stand-in rather than dealing with the consequences of things changing. 

Again, the relationship more or less stays the same, as long as the new partner fits or adapts to the bill. And therefore, we get? A common trauma complaint. “The same relationship, over and over again.” 

Huh. Weird how we definitely force that to happen. Thanks, Monkey-barring shit sacks we call brains!

Next and final form of transference to talk about?

Displacement. 

Have you ever abruptly been getting yelled at for no reason that’s rooted in your physical reality and had the thought “hmm… this doesn’t seem to be about me?” Have you ever, then, found out that the screamer just got out of a bad meeting with their boss, or an argument with their domineering partner, or a fight with their asshat of a dad?

You may have seen displacement at work! 

Displacement is when we have negative feelings in response to someone or something… but don’t feel as though we CAN express ourselves to that person or in that situation because of the anticipated consequences. So, instead, we take all those shit feelings and throw them outwards onto someone else. Someone who we perceive as less powerful, dangerous, or consequential. 

In this way, we find an outlet for our big, hurt, feelings. There’s a reason why we feel this way. There’s a channel for our outrage to flow. AND we don’t suffer from the feared results of our actions, had we expressed ourselves at the person who actually created the upset. 

We win. The person being Displaced upon loses. And has no idea what just hit them or why. 

Which, obviously fucks up the relationship. It teaches the receiver of the displacement to be hypervigilant. It permits the displacer to be an unaccountable, sniveling little worm who ruins other people’s days to save themselves. And yep, this can become a habitual problem. The relationship can become fully abusive, as the displacer regularly funnels their pains and angers onto an unassuming and undeserving target, who learns to expect it and may have the opinion that they deserve it. 

But the other damning thing to note about all these forms of transference? 

Is that any of them can go from a momentary, accidental, fleeting strategy for self-comfort… into a permanent judgment, coping behavior, or relationship dynamic. 

Because once our brain decides that THIS is reality? THIS story that we’ve sewn to explain the emotions we don’t want to have? 

That limits our ability to perceive anything else. Thus, creating a NEW reality in which we were absolutely founded in our nasty and inappropriate behaviors, because we’ve created evidence to confirm our judgments and validate our actions. And because we won’t let ourselves see any counter evidence that doesn’t fit the narrative. 

So, that, Fuckers. Is what I think is most interesting about Transference. The fact that we can fabricate our own new realities – ruining fine times for many people as we do so – in order to support our own cognitions that we don’t know how to deal with by ourselves. 

And isn’t that… well, maybe explaining a lot of the people around you and/or some unhealthy behaviors you’ve accidentally demonstrated, yourself, in the past?

Welp. The antidote is to stop and examine the legitimacy of your thoughts and feelings about others. Such as… using a process like Nonviolent Communication alongside critical reflection. Question your perceptions that precede your “less than greatest moments.” Make sure they are backed up by physical evidence, demonstrated over time. Watch your SUB-C for ghostly memories and voices from prior situations. 

And, with an appropriately-weighted hand, turn rapidly-derived judgments around on yourself to check for the possibility of projection. If you feel something click inside your guts or pressurize inside your brain when you question “am I really talking about me when I say she’s a selfish fucking cunt who does whatever she wants,” or – I don’t know, an example from your own life – you might realize you were offloading some dark matter rather than dealing with the mass yourself. OR, maybe you realize you were judging both of you, but calling it a one person problem. 

… OR. Ya might fucking not. 

Maybe it IS a “them problem.” Maybe these feelings about them ARE based on physical displays and demonstrations that would be bystander-confirmed. Maybe your expectations are absolutely appropriate and founded on consensual, spoken, agreements. 

But it’s worth checking to be sure… that you’re not doing you both dirty with an emotional transfer. 

Boom. December episode 1, done. See you – most likely unless I chicken out – in bonus number two. Where we’ll talk about tail, on trauma. 

Hail yourself. 

Hail your ability to tease apart reality NOW and a reality your brain would like to recreate from the past. Don’t fall into transference, it pushes you away from progress in all its forms. 

Hail… seeing what’s up on the Patreon page lately. Someone invested in the expensive video making software again AND has been regaining full use of her brain, in order to use it. Fancy. Check shit out. patreon.com/traumatizedmotherfuckers it’s a great goddamn value if you’re willing to do the work outside the therapy office.  

Hail Archie and Marcus Barkus. 

And Cheers, y’all. We talk super soon.