When They Leave Loudly: The Spiritual Mechanics of Projection

Inspired by a recent conversation with my friend and colleague Alexandra Sorgenicht. Part Two of a Three-Part Series.

Recently I was discussing being a leader in a spiritual community with my colleague Alexandra Sorgenicht. She had some lovely wisdom from her experience to share with me, “In any community, there is a rhythm of arrival and departure. Nobody is meant to stay in a thing forever, and it is natural for people to outgrow communities and support networks.

“Most people leave quietly. They take what they learned, they integrate it, and they move on with gratitude to their next step. They carry a space and what they were given forward into their lives, their families, and their creations in innovative and creative ways.

But there are others who choose to leave differently, they leave loudly.

They leave with blame. They leave with accusations. They leave by burning the bridge while standing on it, as if to prove a point - to invalidate the very thing they once appreciated and chose to participate it. Mostly, this is because people don’t know how to end something without punishing it (and themselves.) In order for something to end, something must be wrong - and it isn’t me so it must be that.”

I recognized this immediately from my experience working with over a thousand clients and students over the last 15 years, and over a dozen teachers and guides in the spaces I hold. For any practitioner, teacher, coach, this ending of a time together can feel devastating. You ask yourself: “What did I do wrong? How did I fail them?”

But as I was reminded by this conversation with Alexandra, in deep transformational work, this dynamic is not a mistake. It is to be expected.

When people enter deep spiritual spaces, their light gets brighter. And when the light gets brighter, the shadows get distinct.

Students inevitably encounter parts of themselves they have avoided for decades: deep shame, old envy, feelings of powerlessness, or unintegrated aggression. The tools show us what to do with these energies, but it takes fortitude and self-compassion to process them - indeed, to move past these, one must embrace and integrate them fully. Which is very, very challening in the best of cases.

If a student is willing to look at their shadow, they heal. But if they are not willing to look at it, they must do something else with it. Usually that involves projecting it onto something else so they don’t feel the pain themselves. It’s easier to make someone else (or a group of people) wrong than to truly look at oneself (and I should know, I’ve made an art of this unsavory behavior in my brief 50 years 🫠 🤣)

Psychologists call this Projective Identification. In the Seer’s world, we call it Throwing Energy or Projecting Pictures.

Instead of feeling one’s own internal conflict ("I feel powerless"), they export it onto the person holding the space ("You are controlling me").

The leader, the healer, or the teacher becomes less of a person, and more of a container or space to hold the emotions and energy they refuse to feel.

Not every criticism is a projection. Sometimes, we just mess up - we say the wrong thing, we are misunderstood, our actions and words can be accidentally abrasive or stimulating. So how do you tell the difference? Well, the first thing is to be self-aware as a guide and teacher; not on auto-pilot.

Mature Human Conflict & Repair looks like this:

Projective Conflict looks like this:

The "loud exit" is rarely (if ever) about the present moment. It is an old wound seeking a new outlet.

I’ve heard it said that roughly 30% of students/mentees will leave angry, no matter how impeccable the container is, or how diligent you are at holding your space.

This is not a statistic of failure. It is a statistic of capacity.

Not everyone is ready to own their own space. When someone leaves loudly, they are protecting their reality the only way they know how.

Your job, as a practitioner, is not to chase them. Your job is to not let their projection get stuck in your space; to double down on your own truth, and stay the course.

Alexandra is hosting a four week class this winter at Art of the Seer, 🌺 Temple of Her: The Power of Embodied Womanhood - it begins January 26th. (You can participate live or through recordings.)

Join a free introductory session tonight, January 19th to learn more about her point of view, style of teaching, and see if it’s a space you’d like to participate in.

🔭 One of the truly magical things about our community at Art of the Seer is that since we share a commitment to the same tools, techniques, and practice container, it’s easy to reach out to each other members and create your own reading and healing exchanges. Using this post as inspiration, find a partner to work with—perhaps someone you know from a current or previous class, or post in the practicum chat groups that you were inspired by this post and find someone new to explore with.

Pair up with a reading partner and exchange 30-minute Clairvoyant Readings together. Practice both giving and receiving as a way of deepening your experience and relationship to this topic.

The Reading Topics:

Healing Focus: Give the readee a healing on their Auric Boundary. Help them separate their energy from the other person’s energy. Work with your tools to help assist and fill in the space where the projection used to be, verifying that they are the only one authorized to define their reality.

Sometimes something is too charged to feel safe being vulnerable in interpersonal spaces with it at first. If this is really stimulating you, you can work this energy in meditation using your tools, or in moments of embodiment and pause throughout your day.

If you feel the sting of someone else’s judgment or "loudness" today, try this visualization:

The Golden Rose
Close your eyes. Visualize a large, golden rose sitting between you and the person who is projecting onto you. Let the rose absorb all their words, their anger, and their "pictures" of you. See the rose dissolve those energies into neutral dust.

Then, explode the rose.

You do not need to drink the poison just because someone served it to you. You can acknowledge it, get neutral to it, and discharge it.

Tell us in the comments: How do you physically feel when you know someone is projecting onto you? (e.g., heavy shoulders, stomach ache, brain fog)

Sometimes we need to write it down to get it out of our aura. People learn, experience, and process energy in a variety of ways—visually, auditorily, conceptually—and here at AotSA, we validate all those different forms. If you process through writing, take 10 minutes with your journal to "audit" a recurring picture in your space you’ve come across using this template.