Mirroring & Modelling: how to change it to create a better life

Did you grow up happy? 

Did you have happy parents and a sense of love at home and connection and community around you?

Do you find it easy to create the same in your own life?

We model behaviour based off what we learn as children. We mirror what we see as we grow up and subconsciously copy it. Depending on what we experience, depends on how it will affect our lives.

“Children are great imitators, so give them someone great to imitate”. – Joy D Jones

I grew up with a sense of fear and dread. I didn’t feel connected to anyone, that I was safe, or that I belonged. My mother was negative about everything in her life: herself, her children, everything around her. She had been raised with the same negative toxicity and she created more by repeating that example.

I struggled once out on my own to stop myself doing the same, but it has taken many years. It had become so engrained and was all I had known all my life. I remember one defining moment, when a friend said to me ‘the only person you think is neurotic is yourself’.

From that point on I began to hear the negative self talk inside my head, which I reflected out into and onto my world, and began a long journey to break that pattern of thinking and create a new one, so I could create a better life for myself.

“Never use others as a mirror to judge yourself by, their view may be distorted”. - Unknown

The people we attract into our lives mirror ourselves, which in turn mirrors the people we are raised by, because we subconsciously copy the behaviour, reactions and actions of our parents. We repeat what was modelled for us and seek out people, subconsciously, that respond to us in the same way our parents did.

I started to find that my long-term relationships felt empty; I felt disconnected and unfulfilled. I didn’t feel that they were interested in me, or even liked me. I became angry, feeling hurt and disrespected. I didn’t think my partner cared. I didn’t feel listened to, emotionally supported, and I believed my partners were emotionally unavailable to me. This is how I felt as a child, in response to how my mother treated me.

Then I understood two things:

1. I was empty, disconnected and emotionally unavailable myself – both to my own feelings and to those of my partner;
2. My partners were mirroring my behaviour and responding to me the same way my mother did.

Not only did I mirror my mother’s behaviour in my own negative talk (both internally and externally), I was disconnected and had become emotionally unavailable to my partners and unresponsive. This was exactly how she had treated me when I was a child. And I demanded support from my partners, while at the same time rejecting it – just as she had done.

“Life, like a mirror, never gives back more than we put into it.” – Unknown.

And when I looked back on my relationships and my marriage, I realised that all the men I had sought and attracted had been emotionally unavailable. They treated me as I treated myself: they didn’t listen to me, weren’t interested in anything I had to say, and often ignored me, and especially my feelings - just like my parent had done.

Fundamentally I was trying to get my partners to fulfil something that was missing within me. I realised I was still seeking attention and approval I didn’t receive as a child. I wanted to be heard, and noticed and cherished. And I learned that to resolve this I needed to start giving it to myself.

When I started giving myself time and attention – listening to myself, my thoughts, my feelings, focusing positive energy on myself – I started to find what I needed. Self-approval worked to satisfy my needs.

And then once I stopped demanding all that time and attention from those externally, it gave them room to be who they were, and step forward and connect with me in an honest and authentic way, rather than being forced.

This really hit home for me when I became a parent, when I heard myself use the words my mother used, the behaviours she displayed and the actions she took. So many were unconscious, the most profound being that I had always felt like a burden and like a problem my mother wanted to be rid of. I became aware that I was beginning to treat my children the same: The more difficult I found them, the more of a burden they became.

But once I changed my perspective and dialogue with them, seeing them as people to be loved and cherished and that I wanted to connect with, they changed along with me, and everyone began to feel more secure and stable. And I managed to displace the sense of fear and dread I had started to mirror and model from my own childhood. I wanted to feel connected to them with a sense of warmth and love; to have a bond and a sense of belonging, and I managed to begin to create that and it felt a whole lot better.

“By being a living role model of what you want to receive from others, you create more of what you want in your life.” – Eric Allenbaugh

So when you find yourself modelling or mirroring behaviour that isn’t working for you, think about how you can change it.

The first step is becoming conscious of it.

The next is how you can change it: internally by changing your thoughts and perspective to what you DO want to feel and see, and externally in the ways you act and react. 

Attracting those that are the same – people that mirror us – means those people are often missing something too. This can cause difficulties, especially when we change. We either grow together or we grow apart. But either way you have to be honest with yourself if you really want to live an emotionally fulfilled life.