The Mirror Effect

Carl Jung said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

We can only see things within others that we see within ourselves. We understand ourselves best through our relationships with other people.

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We can only be triggered by something that we know and have experienced ourselves. The traits that we dislike in others are usually the traits that we don’t like about ourselves. We then tend to judge and criticize these characteristics in others.

This is the analogy of pointing fingers at someone else. When you are judgemental about others you are actually judging yourself. When you are pointing your blaming index finger to someone else, you are pointing the other three fingers right back to yourself.

When we judge we self expose. What we don’t want to see in ourselves we judge harshly in others. It is an avoidance mechanism that we use in order not to look at ourselves. A way to feel superior to our inferior feelings.

Everyone you meet in life is showing up at the perfect time to reflect something to you that you need to learn or deal with or something that you need to heal within yourself. The people that you interact with are showing you who you are and ultimately providing you with an opportunity to grow. To become a better person and to learn to love yourself.

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Discovering what we don’t love and learning to love it anyway is a great challenge. That means it is the very people who get on our nerves are the ones who are our greatest teachers.

So how do you know what is in the mirror? Here is how to know.

1. What do you realy hate?

What kind of people do you really loathe? Is there something they are triggering? It could be your past hurt or something that you don’t like about yourself.

The stronger someones behaviour irritates you the bigger the issue.

2. What do you project

We are always projecting our own internal beliefs or feelings or experiences over other people particularly the issues that we are consciously or unconsciously guilty of.

Do you view people as untrustworthy or gossippy? Do people around  you seem so unhappy, angry, winny, unfaithful? You may be seeing your own inner self subjected onto others

When people have a negative trait they are more likely to see it in others and they are less likely to think that they have the trait.