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Many approaches to self-improvement and personal change are largely focused on self-understanding, on learning about one’s problematic or limiting beliefs, tendencies, and self-destructive actions.   Although this perspective on the internal, personal factors that may be responsible for a person’s discontent is important, it is certainly not the only perspective worth considering and, in my view, may actually limit what can be learned from other vantage points. Sometimes, how you see yourself, your problems, difficulties, and issues, is far less important than how you impact others. More specifically, what you elicit in others activates powerful relational and social dynamics that ultimately dictate your experience in the world far more than how you see, or feel about, yourself.

For example, a person may experience an ongoing issue in the workplace, across many professional experiences, in which she ends up feeling like her contributions are taken for granted and that her hard work and diligence are seldom recognized. She often ends up feeling devalued and frustrated, and, as her career progresses, develops somewhat of an inferiority complex, believing she is not as smart or as capable as she once thought, despite a track record of clear achievements and industry expertise. She may seek out the help of a psychotherapist to work with her on her diminishing self-esteem, dwindling lack of motivation, and suspected lack of appeal to those with whom she works. She may even consider a career change.

But this woman’s pursuit of these various lines of inquiry would likely not help her very much. What she has failed to consider is that her difficulties may have little to do with her technical skills or even her soft (people) skills. She may actually be a very competent professional whose work ethic and consistently high performance are generally recognized. She may also be quite personable and interpersonally astute. The factor that seems relevant to the core of her problems has more to do with what she elicits in others.

That is, it seems clear that this woman comes across as especially hard-working, ambitious and committed. However, these positive qualities may, ironically, elicit in others problematic reactions. For some of her co-workers, her qualities may elicit feelings of envy, especially in those persons who simply do not have this woman’s drive and motivation; in other co-workers, this woman may elicit memories of their own personal histories in which they had been earnest in their endeavors but, for whatever reason, failed; for yet another group of co-workers, this woman may elicit discomfort at their own need for approval, about which they feel conflicted or may even resent. Whatever the case may be, this woman’s admiral personal characteristics exhibited in the workplace paradoxically end up backfiring on her. They activate a range of feelings in her co-workers who project their own issues onto her and, ultimately, withdraw from or reject her. Unbeknownst to this woman, gradually, insidiously, she inadvertently inspires in others difficult emotions and conflicts that really have nothing to do with her at all, and then is rejected for them.

The distinction between who this woman is in the workplace vs. what she elicits in the hearts and minds of others or, perhaps better stated, what she represents to others about themselves, is of primary importance here.

People can attempt to work on themselves for a long time, in psychotherapy as well as in other venues, yet attention may fail to be paid to what a person activates in others, what he or she represents to others, and the ways in which he or she tends to be projected onto – unfairly and inadvertently. Group psychotherapy oriented toward unearthing and exploring what each group member activates in other groups members is one form of treatment that attempts to get at these interpersonal dynamics; group therapy patients gradually learn how to use their new-found awareness to impact others with more control and certainty. However it is illuminated, what we activate in others about their own histories and personal dilemmas is an often overlooked yet crucial perspective in any effort to gain insight into oneself and achieve growth.