by Harmony Kwiker
As therapists, we spend countless hours cultivating presence, awareness, and skillful attunement to our clients. In order to offer them a clear view of their thoughts, feelings, and patterns, we devote ourselves to becoming an accurate mirror of reflection.
Transitioning from being that clear mirror for our clients into our intimate relationships can sometimes feel challenging. When we see the unconscious patterns of those we love, we may feel an impulse to get them to see themselves through our reflection. While we can certainly offer others our perspectives, it’s important to remember that personal relationships are not the same as therapeutic ones.
Where we serve as a mirror for our clients, those closest to us inevitably become a mirror for us. By looking into the reflection offered by our closest relationships, we have an opportunity to see and repair the more vulnerable aspects of our inner world—those places longing for attention, connection, and to feel held in love.
In many ways, our personal relationships are the most honest mirrors we will ever encounter. In our partnerships, friendships, and families, we meet our own edges and aches that reveal the potential for our healing and transformation. When our attachment wounds, protective strategies, and longings arise, it’s essential that we don’t try to change others in order to avoid feeling what is ours to feel.
When the people around us seem unaware, distracted, withdrawn, blaming, or resentful, what arises within us is precisely where our work dwells.
“We live in a house of mirrors, thinking they are windows.” —Fritz Perls
INCREASING AWARENESS
Where the impulse may be to look outside ourselves and to try to get others to see themselves or us more clearly, real transformation begins when we first look within and offer ourselves what we long for from the environment.
For example:
- If we want to feel wanted, the work begins by turning toward ourselves and wanting ourselves to the same degree we hope to be wanted.
- If we want our partner to understand us or respond to our needs, the work is understanding ourselves and being responsive to our own needs.
- If we feel lonely when our partner seems distracted, the work is to look within and give ourselves our own attention.
This ongoing relational feedback is what makes intimacy so powerful and so full of potential for healing.
Just as we invite our clients to gently explore their habitual ways of relating, we can do the same for ourselves by asking:
- What is this person showing me about myself?
- What am I longing for in this connection?
- What am I protecting?
- What does my inner young one need from me right now?
DEEPENING INTIMACY THROUGH VULNERABILITY
Being a therapist doesn’t mean we always get relationships “right.” It means we have practice being with complexity. It means we recognize that our defenses, our tenderness, and our care all belong. It means we understand that anything within us that isn’t love is simply searching for love, and then we learn to receive that love from ourselves. This is the essence of being a secure base for ourselves, which makes cultivating a secure relationship with others more possible.
Once we give ourselves the love we long for, we expand the possibility of receiving it in our relationships.
As social beings, we are wired to seek safe, loving, reciprocal connection. Sharing our inner experience with others and receiving their responsive care can be a reparative experience that is sometimes even more transformative than therapy itself.
When we are aware of what we feel, we can choose, with discernment, to reveal ourselves to those closest to us:
- Share what you are noticing within yourself in relation to them.
- Name the emerging need you are aware of.
- Ask if they are willing to offer you what you’re longing for.
- Receive their care and attention.
- Allow your attachment system to orient to the safe, reciprocal, wise connection offered by your adult self.
Looking into the mirror of relationship gives us the chance to grow our capacity for self-awareness, authenticity, and congruence. This is lifelong work: letting ourselves be shaped by connection, softened by love, and humbled by the realization that we are, always, both the mirror and the one reflected.
BEING IN RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHERS AS THEY ARE
Ultimately, this work is about being in relationship without trying to change others. While growth and change are important, it is even more essential that transformation comes from a person’s own volition.
Sometimes, when people in our lives don’t know how to be present with their own emotions, they unconsciously induce those unfelt feelings into those closest to them, a dynamic known as projective identification.
In these moments, it can be helpful to pause and sense into what is happening in your own experience, instead of entering into a reactive cycle:
- What am I feeling right now?
- Is this feeling familiar to me?
- Does this belong to me or might it belong to the other person?
When we can meet these moments with curiosity and compassion, we create the possibility of staying in relationship without losing ourselves. When projective identification is gently made explicit, our intuitive sensitivities can be honored as a bridge in our relationships.
Here are some examples:
- Someone feeling powerless may become rigid or controlling, unconsciously evoking powerlessness in you—externalizing what they cannot yet feel themselves.
- Someone who is afraid may raise their voice or become aggressive, inducing fear in you while remaining disconnected from their own vulnerability.
- Someone who feels unheard may withdraw or stop listening, leaving you with the very sense of disconnection they cannot tolerate in themselves.
We remember that being fully human means holding space for our own experience, even as we stay open to others in all their complexity.