How to escape projections of other people posed onto you as truth?

[Tistepiste]

So this is something I've been suffering from deeply.

And it is extremely debilitating.
It could be due to childhood trauma, OCD, ADHD, whatever is going on in my conditioning, but the truth is - sometimes it triggers in me something so deeply, which puts me in a state of confusion that I can't seem to get out from.

What happens:

When someone tells me how I should feel or who I should be, it’s as if I step out of my own body.
I then try to merge their truth with my truth.
But that isn’t possible. Because those two truths cannot exist simultanuously.
So I end up in a constant struggle.
A voice in my head that tells me how I apparently should feel, and a feeling that I actually have.
At a certain point, I can no longer distinguish between the two. Then I no longer know what is mine and what is theirs.
And then I try to find myself again and understand what I actually feel. But I end up somewhere in a kind of limbo between myself and another. And then I am neither myself nor the other.

This happened three times in my life where it had a huge impact; examples:

First time:

I (a guy) came out to a gay friend I trusted at 18 years old that I liked this guy, I only liked girls until then. 
I was very confused and a bit scared. He then told me that I was gay, since I liked this guy. When I told him it was my first time he neglected that and said you just wish you like girls cause you don't accept yourself and bisexuality doesn't exist.

From that point on everytime I went out in a club or had any interaction with a girl that I liked, his voice popped, telling me my feelings weren't valid, and I'd be confused if I really liked the girl or if I imagined, wish it to be.

Whenever I saw a guy that was attractive, his voice popped up, telling me I was gay, and I'd be confused if I really liked the guy or if I imagined it because my friend told me I liked him.

Basically, I couldn't distinguish anymore what feelings were mine, and what were posed on me. Everytime I felt attraction it induced anxiety.

It took me 5 years to get over it.

 

Second time:

I had just completed my first Goenka vipassana retreat.
It was amazing, and on the 7th day I witnessed the dissolvment of my own body, also called bhanga ñana. 
I could literally feeling the energy inside my body to come together and explode outside my body, I was completely empty, and a feeling of infinite unconditional love entered my body for a few minutes.

Anyways - reason why I say this is that I felt my meditation technique must be working and was excited that i finally 'got it'.
The few days after that however I was completely blocked due to something my teacher said about the experience and  my whole body got tense after that.

That last day of the retreat - you are sadly allowed to talk then, a guy came up to me a bluntly asked about my meditation experience.

I told him my body got very tense the last 3 days and that I got a headache and that I couldnt go past that.
He asked me what I did, and I told him I just observe the sensation, label it, and then go back to body scan (Goenka technique that we are taught there).

(I now even still feel resistance in going on since I fear it will come back)

but then he asked me 'what do u mean 'observe', and I said, just observe without thinking, and he said 'u cant observe without thinking, all the biggest teachers say you are not able to stop thinking, so thats bullshit, so probably thats where u went wrong'

After that, my meditation practice was completely fucked up, when going to the 2nd meditation retreat a year later, this conversation suddenly sparked up again, and since I wasnt allowed to talk with anyone, and the teacher wasnt of help either, I spiraled completely.

Everytime it was silent in my mind, I questioned it, I started questioning what does it mean to "not be able to stop thinking", but if theres spaces between thought, isnt that the cessation of thought in that moment?
What about longer periods of stillness? Is there still thought? But theres monkey mind thought and focussed thought. Whats the difference?
I questioned everything about my practice and for 10 days I resided in pure confusion induced anxiety.

It wasn't until my 3rd retreat that I spoke with an actual monk that told me of course when you're very focused, there is cessation of thought, where the pull from that thought stopped.

Until then, I wasnt able to meditate at all!!

 

Third time

I was dating someone, for just a month, but I liked  that person very much, and due to very unfortunate circumstances it stopped. It was hard to accept it because of these circumstances.
But after 3 weeks I found myself being ok again, and my friend asked about the situation and I told them I think  itll take me another week and that Id be fine.
She then responded "A week? You mean 4 months! or a year!" Its the way she said it with such force, I could see it in her eyes she was speaking from the heart

And BAM, the trigger was triggered.

AGAIN, I questioned my own feelings, everytime I did not think about that person, the conversation would pop up "4 months! Or a year!" and then my mind went back to that person and started to overthink things.

At one point I didnt know whether I was still thining about that person because of the constant pressure I felt when  ididnt think about them, again, since I was trying to reconcile my truth and their truth.

I didnt know if I still missed that person due to this mechanic or because I actually missed that person.

 

Recently I learned this is be something called "cognitive dissonance", and my brain just cant handle it at all.
 

Of course for all three examples I talked to friends, looked up sources, but still the thoughts and their pull come back and take over.
There's very little that can help me for some reason.

What do you have for advice?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2025 by Tistepiste

[Joseph Maynor]

This is the beginning of the path.  Welcome.  

[Hojo]

See that every single person you interact with is gaslighting you or will try to gaslight you out of your own opinions. You must have courage and tell them no and its done the first time. That means you cant be trying to get people to like you. You need to stand firm in who you are.

If you read the bagavata gita it is about how you need to fight your mind for your place in the world.

Edited December 31, 2025 by Hojo

[theleelajoker]

I did not have the same experience, but similar. I have a POV,  I read sth, or sme said something  - and my POV changed by 180°. Bam, just like this, simply because I liked the information other people gave me.

As this continued, I slowly recognized that the content of my mind, my thoughts, my believes are like clothes I can change arbitrarily, just like that. Heinrich Zimmer in "Philosophies of India" writes about the mind as sth that is formless in itself, capable of assuming any form, and transparent when not distorted by ego and desire.

How I see it: 

• What is was for me at first - very destabilizing.  My persona had suddenly no more foundation of believes. That was tough at the beginning. But you learn to use the mind better after a while
• If my thoughts can be so...meaningless, what other source I can include to make decisions? Body and awareness became more important, thoughts (mind) less so
• Incredible freedom: So I can learn to choose and change my thoughts. How much? That's what I am finding out  
• I find more periods of time where I consciously don't think. Allowing space for non-thought. Mediation, yes, but also walking or cleaning my flat. Just doing / being. 

The key questions is not WHY this is happening IMO. More important for me is  "WHAT good brings this new found mental flexibility? "HOW can I use it for me and the benefit of others?"

Work with open ended questions, not fixed assumptions. HOW much do I like this boy or girl? HOW do I know I like her/him? HOW can I verify this? HOW can I get more information? WHAT can I do to find out if he/she likes me to? WHAT is the most important thing for me in this moment? WHAT is it, that I feel like doing, right here, right now?

Let the mind find the solutions to help you in ...dealing with the mind

Edited January 4 by theleelajoker

[Tistepiste]

On 04/01/2026 at 10:36 AM, theleelajoker said:

How I see it: 

• If my thoughts can be so...meaningless, what other source I can include to make decisions? Body and awareness became more important, thoughts (mind) less so
• but also walking or cleaning my flat. Just doing / being. 

The key questions is not WHY this is happening IMO. More important for me is  "WHAT good brings this new found mental flexibility? "HOW can I use it for me and the benefit of others?"

Work with open ended questions, not fixed assumptions

 

Thank you! Especially these parts resonated with me  <3

[Tistepiste]

 

On 31/12/2025 at 5:54 PM, Hojo said:

See that every single person you interact with is gaslighting you or will try to gaslight you out of your own opinions. You must have courage and tell them no and its done the first time. That means you cant be trying to get people to like you. You need to stand firm in who you are.

If you read the bagavata gita it is about how you need to fight your mind for your place in the world.

Thanks.

Saying "no" is something I've been working on and getting increasingly good at. Thanks for reminding me of this, though, it needed a gentle tap on the hand.
However, saying "no" is not always possible in certain situations. If I can't say no, the energy goes inward instead of outwards.
I need to find a way to let the energy go even though I wasn't able to do it in that situation's moment.

 

[theleelajoker]

8 hours ago, Tistepiste said:

Thank you! Especially these parts resonated with me  <3

Happy to contribute

As cliche as it sounds, for me we're all sitting in the same boat

[SimpleGuy]

I have a few advices for you

1. Learn how to be independent thinker, how to have autonomous mind. Leo talks about this a bit.

2. Grow your self-esteem. It looks like you are a doormat. Read Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.

3. Learn how to properly contemplate. Leo talks about this a lot.

[integral]

In MBTI the ENFJ and ESFJ have the hardest time with they're thinking process of being heavily influenced by others.

This nearly always causes and is caused by low self-esteem.

As they get older and they try to solve this exact problem they tend to swing the pendulum too far to the other side and overly adapt and what happens is they become very rigidly certain about how they feel about what they think, Every time someone say anything, they will slam their foot down and claim. "THIS IS WHAT I FEEL ABOUT IT". Basically, they become hypersensitive and they cannot seem to find the balance between there thinking and feelings and the thinking/feelings of others.

My father is one of these cases where it's very clear that his adaptation strategy was to have a strong personality that could deflect other people's feelings and thoughts because they're so overwhelming he can't deal with them properly. He wants to have his feelings and he wants to have his thinking be validated strongly. He wants this so badly because in his youth, he feels bullied basically by other people's thoughts and feelings! So of course if this is your sense making strategy, it means your wrong about everything lmao. He is extremely influenced by the thinking of others and so an identity has to be formed around it to protect itself. 

You're much more advanced than this, I bring this topic up just as a warning, not to swing the pendulum too far to the other side as you try to learn to balance all this out.

If I have a feeling about something or I think about something, I put so much effort into it and then when someone else is thinking process comes in, I could easily dissect everything wrong with it. Other people thinking are so profoundly wrong and it's just group think where they regurgitate whatever first thing that popped into their head. When you put enough effort into something and you dedicated your life to truth seeking and your top value is truth all of these silly games that are people are playing become so obvious that it's not gonna affect you in the same way. 

The autonomous mind takes in new information from any source like people, videos, a dog barking and contemplates it, and then decide how to integrate it into one's model of reality. So you're building a model of how everything works and you want see how it fits, how the puzzle piece are all fitting together. Peoples thoughts and feelings about a thing are just another puzzle piece that you gotta see how it fits into your models. Think of yourself as a model builder.

Another thing is, this is a guaranteed trait of low self-esteem. 

Low self-esteem will make it so you can ever be certain about anything. Normally people have to solve most of their self-esteem problems in their teenage years, but if people missed that stage of development because they're smoking weed, terrible parenting and whatever other genetic factors going on, they then have to work twice as hard to figure it out when they're older.

Most people never solved their self-esteem problems and their self-confidence problems. and so they create a posturing, a show, an ego-identity around their low self-esteem as an adaptation, pretend to be the real thing because society demands it.

Another thing is thinking is something you have to practice. You would never expect to be good at violin if you don't practice violin, this is intuitive. But for some reason when it comes to thinking, we just assume that you could be good at without deliberate hard effort. Thinking is something that has to be practised in a very deliberate, self challenging way where one challenges himself to make improvements. Most people when they sit in front of a musical instrument they play what they know and what's comfortable and what's fun and they don't challenge themselves and so they get stuck at the same level of skill. It's a misconception that the longer you do something the better you are it, most people that do something for 10 years in reality, they just repeated the same thing that they learned the first year for 10 years. You can't stay in your comfort zone you gave to challenge yourself and challenge you're thinking process which is exactly what you're doing right now.

The vast majority of people you've ever came to contact with have never practised thinking. There Level of thinking is at 1. Their level of thinking is so bad they don't even know how to hold the violin. It's like a child when you sit them in front of the piano, they basically take their fist and they just slam it into the keys. That's the quality of thought of most people. Yet because it's so elusive and it's behind an invisible barrier called someone else's mind we put so much weight into what they have to say.

and omg, socializing will never make someone good at thinking... Socializing is like being punched in the face while you try to contemplate. Good luck learning how to think that way. 

Edited 5 hours ago by integral