protective projection & misattuned love

When we haven’t fully processed our own trauma,
we often project protection onto people we love.

This is called protective projection —
✧ When we give what we never had
✧ When we mistake our healing blueprint as a universal truth
✧ When we love through prevention, not presence

That often leads to misattuned repair —
✧ Trying to “fix” someone’s path before they’ve lived it
✧ Assuming we know their emotional needs
✧ Offering love that feels safe to us, but suffocating to them

It can look like:
✧ Over-giving
✧ Resentment when they don’t follow your guidance
✧ Feeling abandoned when they want space
✧ Interpreting boundaries as rejection

But here’s the truth:
✧ Love shaped by survival becomes performance
✧ Control is often just unhealed fear wearing generosity
✧ Someone leaving isn’t betrayal — it’s boundary

Your love isn’t wrong.
But it needs room to loosen.
To hold without gripping.
To witness, not rescue.

✧ soft anchor:

Love that insists is not love that sees.
Letting them go may be the first time you actually choose them.

🌒 return to the mirror:

→ read: i gave them everything i never had — and it still wasn’t what they needed
→ reflect: when your love is a trauma response