Who’s Defining You? Projective Identification and Spiritual Warfare
Have you ever felt confused in a relationship? Maybe you wondered if you were going crazy? You may have been experiencing projective identification.
Projection is when people displace anything they can’t accept about themselves onto others. For example, a partner who cheats might express great jealousy toward your relationships with other people, constantly accusing you of being unfaithful to them. Your insecure boss might constantly question your competency. A fearful, hypochondriac parent might constantly question if their child is sick.
Projective identification, however, is when the people on the receiving end of projection start to believe and internalize it. Projective identification can be so severe, in fact, that those on the receiving end of projection can actually start to act out the very things they are suspected of! A faithful spouse might start fantasizing about others when they never would have before. A competent employee might start to commit careless blunders that are utterly unlike them. A healthy child might become chronically ill.
Then, to complete the devastating cycle, the person who did the projecting in the first place is proved right. “I knew it!” The person on the receiving end is left confused, broken, bewildered, and unsure of who they truly are.
Make no mistake: this cycle is abusive and incredibly damaging. Its payoff is that the projector gets to be right, even to the point of playing God with someone else. The projector inserts themselves in between the projectee and their God-given identity, driving a spiritual wedge and inserting their own identity into the victim.
The Enemy Loves Projective Identification
Spiritual warfare can be crazy-making. This is why we need other strong believers who can pray and speak truth in love to us, because we often can’t see clearly in our own storms. It’s tough to see what the enemy is doing when you’re right in the thick of it, but you can often have a bird’s-eye, strategic view of someone else’s battle. And just like God loves to work through other people to confirm our identities and callings, the enemy loves to work through others to get us questioning them.
After all, wasn’t what happened in the Garden of Eden the original projective identification?
The enemy had wanted to be like God. He was cast out of heaven because he wanted to take God’s place. He was furious when God willingly, joyfully, and lovingly created people in His image, giving them the power and status Lucifer wanted. So what did the enemy do? He set people up to fall just as he had, by projecting onto Adam and Eve.
The snake said that if they ate the fruit, they would be “like God, knowing good and evil.” There are two problems with this statement. 1.) They were already like God! They’d been created in his image, to be his vice-regents, to rule the earth as natural extensions of His will and being. 2.) “Knowing good and evil” is not what it means to be like God. He was inserting a false description into his statement. 1 John 4:7 clarifies that to love is to be like God. So the snake projected not only his inferiority complex but also his misunderstanding of God’s nature and character onto the man and woman.
Unfortunately, they gobbled it right up. And we’ve been gobbling it up ever since…denying, deep in our hearts, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, beloved sons and daughters of the Most High, and also insisting on eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (consistent with the law of sin and death) rather than the Tree of Life (consistent with the law of love in Christ Jesus).
When you start to doubt your worth, when you start to criticize yourself, when you take on any identity word that God has not called you…get curious. Investigate. It’s a clue that the enemy may have been issuing a subtle, gradual “drip, drip, dip” of his projections and accusations in your direction, and you have started to internalize what he speaks over you and even act it out. The enemy wants nothing more than to separate us from our true identity and project his identity onto us.
But Projective Identification Was God’s Idea
Would you believe that projective identification was originally God’s idea? See, when Abba Father projects, it’s not because He finds those traits unacceptable in Himself. It’s because He wants to spread His light, love, and truth throughout the whole universe, “that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). He wants to multiply and expand His goodness until there is no room left for evil—that death itself may be swallowed up in victory.
Romans 4:17 teaches us that God calls things that are not as though they were. Sarai, you’ve been called barren and childless? God says you are a mother of nations. Abram, you say you have no heir, and a servant will get all you possess? God tells you to count the stars in the sky, noting that your descendants will be as numerous. Saul, you’ve been called a persecutor and a murderer of God’s people? God says you are his appointed mouthpiece, to bring light to the nations.
And all these things came to pass.
Projective identification is only a good thing when we come into agreement with what God has spoken over us—regardless of any thoughts or actions that would seem to contradict what He says. It is demonic when we come into agreement with anything that separates us from our God-given identity.
God’s promises always need participation from us. His “projection” always needs “projective identification” on our part. This is why, even though it is God’s will that the whole world be saved, He will not make a single person say “yes” to Jesus. This is why, when God calls us righteous, holy, and chosen, we have to agree with that identity. When God calls us beloved, adopted sons, daughters, and heirs, we have to agree with that identity. And then, once we agree, we will find that belief and acting it out flow naturally from our agreement.
Only God has the right to give us our identity.
He calls us sons and daughters. We believe it, internalize it, and live it out! He calls us righteous and holy. We believe it. Even when we mess up, we don’t let our mess-ups become our identity. We simply return to our true identity as the righteousness of God in Christ. This is what real repentance is—a return to our true identity!
Spiritual warfare is ultimately a war over our identity. When we find that we are starting to believe and even act out anything not of God (“I’m addicted to porn, therefore I’m watching it” … “I’m selfish and lazy, therefore I’m going to milk others for all I can get” … “I’m a smoker, so here I am smoking even though I know it’s damaging my body, and I can’t stop” … “I’m an adulterer, so here I am cheating on my spouse”) … what we must start doing is declaring our true identity. “I am clean! I am pure! I am righteous and holy! I have been put here for a purpose, and I am doing good works that God prepared in advance for me to do! My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and I live like it!”
This isn’t wishful positive thinking. These words actually have power because they were first declared by God.
Driving Out the Wedge Between Us and Our True Identity
Projective identification, when it comes from anyone who’s not God, is a spiritual battle. Whether it comes through wounded people, abusive systems, or the whispering accusations of the enemy, its aim is to sever you from who God says you are and entice you to live out a false identity. Confusion, shame, and self-betrayal are not signs of your failure; they are often evidence that a war over identity is underway.
But the good news is this: identity does not belong to the loudest voice, the most repeated accusation, or even the most painful pattern. Identity belongs to God alone. And when we learn to discern which voices we are agreeing with, we can interrupt the cycle. We can refuse to internalize what God has not spoken. We can repent—not of who we are, but of the lies we have believed—and return to truth.
Spiritual warfare, then, is less about dramatic confrontation and more about daily allegiance. Whose words are you letting define you? Whose story are you living out? Every time you choose to agree with God’s declaration over your life, you participate in holy projective identification—receiving what He has spoken and allowing it to reshape your thoughts, your behaviors, and your future.
You are not who the accuser says you are. You are not what trauma named you. You are not the projection of another’s brokenness. You are who God says you are—and as you believe it, you will increasingly live it out. This is how the cycle is broken. This is how the enemy loses ground. And this is how identity is restored.
