{"id":769,"date":"2015-07-30T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=769"},"modified":"2015-07-30T09:00:23","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T13:00:23","slug":"the-mother-sister-daughter-triangle-a-tool-for-identifying-projections-between-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/the-mother-sister-daughter-triangle-a-tool-for-identifying-projections-between-women\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mother-Sister-Daughter Triangle: A Tool for Identifying Projections between Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\nThe core roles of mother, sister, and daughter are universal influences\u00a0in our development as women, and the triangle is an archetypal structure\u00a0reflecting the interdependent aspects of these influences (see figure 1).\u00a0It seems likely that this collective experience of women in one or more\u00a0of these roles informs many of our relationships with other women.\u00a0Every woman knows the experience of being a daughter. Although not all\u00a0women have the experience of being a mother or a sister, most women\u00a0hold some idealized image of mother and sister in their psyche. These\u00a0experiences or idealizations are often so potent that we project them\u00a0onto others. They can influence everyday behavior in individual women.\u00a0The phenomenon of the mother-sister-daughter triangle becomes a\u00a0lens through which our relationships with other women can be viewed,\u00a0especially when we are trying to make sense of extreme reactions to\u00a0another woman\u2014positive or negative, adoration or detestation.\nTo use the mother-sister-daughter lens effectively, you must have\u00a0some understanding of where you might be caught in the triangle with\u00a0the other woman to whom you are having a strong reaction. Does\u00a0she remind you of your mother or sister or daughter? If you can see a\u00a0connection between how this woman has behaved toward you and an\u00a0early experience you had, you might come to feel less offended by her.\u00a0As an example, I felt that a woman I had known professionally, Cheryl,\u00a0had treated me unfairly, and she had not responded to my requests to\u00a0discuss the offending incident at the time. Several years went by, and\u00a0I was not happy to walk into a new organization and see her working\u00a0there. I felt that I could not trust her because of what happened in the\u00a0past, and I told other people not to trust her either. I kept my distance\u00a0from her. I could not see that I was also behaving in an untrustworthy\u00a0manner by making demeaning comments about her to others. I could\u00a0only see that she was someone who had done me wrong.\nAfter some time in the same organization (and avoiding her), I\u00a0learned about the mother-sister-daughter triangle in a women\u2019s leadership\u00a0training course, and I applied it to my relationship with Cheryl. I asked\u00a0myself whom Cheryl reminded me of in my family. It took some time\u00a0for me to realize that she reminded me of one of my sisters, who had\u00a0tried to physically harm me when we were young. I had put Cheryl in\u00a0the dangerous sister part of the triangle. As soon as I realized I had done\u00a0that, an amazing thing happened. It was like a curtain lifted and I could\u00a0see Cheryl for who she really was. I stopped feeling negative about her.\u00a0We were never able to reconstruct exactly what had happened all those\u00a0years ago, but she no longer felt untrustworthy to me. She turned out\u00a0to be a very nice woman who was not my dangerous sister. This was a\u00a0projection that I had put on her that was not actually about her at all.\n \nAn excerpt from my book,\u00a0New Rules for Women<\/em>, available at Amazon (http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/<\/a>).]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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