Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Byron Katie once said, “Everyone is a mirror imagine of yourself – your own thinking coming back at you.”  If you’re like me, you read that statement and think there is no way that could be true!   We all know a gossip queen, a procrastinator, a curmudgeon, a drama queen, a negative Nelly, a lazy Lorraine, a Debby downer, and especially in my case, a defensive end!  I wouldn’t consider myself any of those, really.  I consider myself more of a tenderhearted Plain Jane!  

While I had a little down time after Dee did not contact me back about our falling-out, I kept wondering how she was a mirror imagine of myself.  I’m passive.  She is aggressive and defensive.  I admit that I became defensive.  As mentioned in the “Reviewing the Tapes” posting, Martha Beck said that our brains start to mirror the behavior of the other person.  So, I could sort of understand that; however, I was reacting directly to her defensiveness.  I was mirroring her behavior, but what Byron Katie was talking about was Dee's behavior was the mirror of my behavior. 

Confused yet?  Well, this week, Dee finally contacted me back.  We decided to hash a few things out a little, to be honest and to be forthcoming.  It was probably the first time we had both been truthful and forthcoming with our feelings in a long time.  We’ve known each other for almost a decade, but more on a superficial level – casual friends.  Since we reconnected a few years ago, Dee had demanded a lot of my time.  I don’t mind to give time to friends.  Friends are important.  We are social creatures - that's why God made a mate for Adam - so it only makes sense.

However, Dee demanded my time, only through the Internet – emails, social networking, etc.  I worked so I didn’t have as much time to devote to the Internet socializing.  I asked several times if she would like to meet for lunch or at each other’s homes or at an event.  She never came through.  I offered her a position with my company, when there was an opening.  She did a phone interview, turned down the offer, and then called me back within the hour and said that she might still want it.  I sent her some more information on the company and position through email and snail mail, and asked her to call when she had a chance to look over the information.  She never called back. 

After that, if I called her, she would dodge all my calls.  When I say all I mean all!  She never once answered the phone when I called.  I left messages saying what the call was about  - lunch dates, parties, etc.  If she acknowledged that I called, it was through email.  Wow!  If that’s not inconsiderate (I will post about the hierarchy of communication at a later date)!  However, she would continue to send emails almost daily, as if nothing were wrong. 

Over time, I became fed up with her emails.  I felt the Internet was a cop out for not having to actually talk to me or see me.  I didn’t want or need a pen pal.  I wanted and needed a friend!  We lived within thirty minutes driving time of each other, so I felt there was no reason why over the past few years, we couldn’t have gotten together at some point. 

My return emails started becoming shorter and shorter.  I wanted to stay civil, but couldn’t devote the time to entertain her through emails.  We drifted apart over the next few months.  Then she joined another social networking site that I was a member of and all this mess started all over again, like we were best friends. 

So in our most recent conversation (through email, of course), I mentioned to her that I would love to be friends, but I didn’t want to be a pen pal.  If she was going to continue to hide behind a computer, then I wasn’t up for it.  Not that we couldn’t be civil to one another, but I didn’t want the novelesque emails about her life, especially since she never asked how I was.  I was willing to put time into things where time is due, but not into entertaining someone else’s boredom.  She replied by saying that she dodged my calls and some emails and never wanted to meet me because of the situation about the open job position situation a few years prior.  She said that I constantly talked about it, invited her to events about it, sent her information, etc., and she felt pressured.  She said she didn’t want to have the job issue brought up, so she avoided me…except when she had something to say.

She was right, to some extent.  I did talk about my job.  It’s my job.  It’s part of my life.  So it comes up from time to time.  I did invite her to job-related events.  If I can invite friends or potential clients to an event, why not invite a friend I haven’t send in a decade, so it’s a little less intimate, and maybe a little less awkward.  I also invited her to personal (non job-related) gatherings.   

So while I was thinking of how to express this in my return email, I had an Aha moment.  I realized how our issues with one another were mirroring.  So I explained.  The way she described her feelings of pressure when I mentioned my job or invited her to a job-related event and that she thought I did it constantly (I’ll still argue that point!), was very similar to they way I felt when she kept barraging me with her suggestions that I mentioned in “The Defensive End.”  I still believe the reality of what she felt is a little skewed, but nonetheless, that’s apparently the way she felt. 

The other way I felt Dee was a mirror image of me was actually in reference to her only using email and social networking to contact me.  For some reason it just really rubbed me the wrong way.  I felt some face-time was a more beneficial way to have a friendship. 

So how is that the mirror of myself?  Well, I fall back on email too much when dealing with my clients for my job.   I use the Internet as a cop out to not have to pick up the phone and call.  I know a phone call would be more effective, and in turn, more beneficial to me than an email.  My reasoning for using my cop out is that to this day, even though I use the phone quite a bit for my job, I’m still a nervous phone talker.  With email, I can edit before I send something.  With the spoken word, I can’t.  Then my internal dialog starts sabotaging the rest of my conversation, as I think about how stupid I sound or how nervous I sound!  Also, now that I work from home and care for my child at home, I could potentially have a screamer in the background while trying to accomplish a business call.  Emails don’t have audio!  So, I actually hide behind the computer!

Each person in our life is here for a reason.  We learn about ourselves when we acknowledge the wrong doing in others.  So the next time someone cuts you off in traffic and you think “I hate it when people cut me off,” think of when or in what instance you could possibly be cutting people off, literally and figuratively.  "Therefore, you have no excuse-every one of you who judges. For when you pass judgment on another person, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, practice the very same things" (Romans 2:1).


To learn more about the mirroring effect, check out Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is.  She does what she calls The Work, with four questions that can change your life!