Why I Put "The Mirror" First
I thought I fell in love with him...
Here’s something I wish I had known earlier: projection is a massive lifehack to self-integration.
As part of my Shadow Work Guided Journal launch, I promised to talk more in-depth about each of its 9 sections.
To start this mini-series, I wanted to use this opportunity to talk about my most transformative experience with The Mirror and how it subsequently changed my life.
The Mirror = Catching Our Projections
About 3 years ago, I fell head-over-heels in love.
Looking back, after all the dust has settled and I’ve achieved the clarity only time can bring, I feel certain it was my first and only experience with genuine romantic love.
Anyone who has fallen in love knows how it goes: it’s perfect, you feel like you’re walking on air, you’re intoxicated by their state of perfect virtue, and just the sight of them puts stars in your eyes.
Inevitably, the illusion shatters. You realize the line between love and hate is indeed paper-thin. Suddenly, this person who seemed perfect beyond measure is revealed to be just another ordinary human doing their best to figure life out.
It’s devastating and disappointing.
If you’re lucky, your love experiences a revival. You can see and love them for the human they are, instead of the walking daydream you thought them to be. In most cases, though, the maturity to perform such alchemy isn’t there; the love dies, and you’re left searching for another fountain of divine inspiration.
You Fell In Love With Your Reflection
There’s the saying, “You’ll never find love until you can love yourself.” This is commonly misinterpreted to mean “I’m not lovable unless I can love myself first.” However, a more accurate takeaway would be, “Unless I’ve done the work to heal myself, I won’t be in a position to genuinely love someone else.”
As long as your shadow haunts you, you’ll only ever fall in love with yourself through other people.
Let me use my experience to explain better what I mean.
If you asked me from 3 years ago to describe the person I fell in love with, you’d get a speech like,
“He’s so funny. Definitely one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. He’s also smart as hell. He speaks five languages! And he’s so kind and humble and respectful. There’s so much more to him than meets the eye. I feel like I can talk to him about everything and he’ll understand me perfectly. When he looks at me, it’s like he sees through me – like he knows there’s so much more to me than what I allow myself to be. It’s obvious he really cares about others. He’s just so impressive to me.”
And when I describe someone like that, it’s no wonder I fell in love, right? Who wouldn’t fall in love with that person?
But let’s take a deeper look at the reasons why I fell in love; because I thought he was:
Funny
Intelligent
Kind
Humble
Respectful
Emotionally Complex
Open-minded
Understanding
Perceptive
Caring
Impressive
It’s a solid list of virtues. And 3 years later, I see what I didn’t at the time: this list also describes me.
Look, I’m not saying he isn’t all of these things. He is all of these things, however, I am too.
I was only able to see it in him because it existed in me.
Why Do We Reject Our Virtues
It’s a complicated question, and it varies from person to person. Usually, the parts of ourselves we reject depend greatly on the culture and family we were raised in.
The best I can do is show you why I rejected these traits to give you some perspective on why such a thing happens.
Let’s look at 5 points from that list again.
1. Funny
I happen to be the daughter of a sexist man. In my early life, there were certain labels for men and certain labels for women. I wasn’t allowed to be funny. Instead, I was called dramatic, sensitive, and uptight. But I am funny. I am light-hearted and quick-witted, and I love making people laugh.
I didn’t want to label myself as funny, because I had internalized that my gender made my attempts at humor come across as out-of-touch.
2. Intelligent
I grew up in a physically abusive family, and somehow, my intelligence was my golden ticket. I took on the role of being the golden child, always getting perfect grades and countless compliments from my teachers. I once took a national test, placed very highly, and received a letter from the president’s office as a reward.
My intelligence saved me from physical violence at home. It created this complex in me; “If I shine, others will suffer more.”
I didn’t want to believe I was smart, because, in the past, my intelligence was a shield from my parents and simultaneously, a weapon they used against my siblings.
3. Kind
I learned early on that being kind meant being taken advantage of.
My dad was a strong believer in, “In this world, there are two kinds of people: sheep and wolves.” He constantly ranted about “sheeple” and did his best to instill a wolf mentality in his children. I watched my dad manipulate the kindness of countless people throughout my life.
As a result, I developed a hard and impenetrable outer shell. I didn’t want to be kind; I wanted to feel safe.
4. Humble
Unfortunately, American culture teaches us that pride is necessary. The third-wave feminism that dominated my high school friend groups taught me that your pride is equivalent to your self-worth. If you’re not proud of who you are, what are you even doing?
It wasn’t enough to dream of being a wife and mother. I had to want the world for myself to be valuable as a woman.
Humility is incompatible with pride. While a deep part of me wanted a life that was “enough,” I was cultured into believing today’s “enough” is tomorrow’s lack; that I owed it to my fellow women to do something worthy of getting my name on Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
5. Emotionally-complex
Growing up in an unstable family will lead to a complicated inner world.
In high school, I was vastly rejected by my peers once I began to show signs of severe depression. This experience taught me that my emotional world was something that needed to be hidden. If I wanted to be loved, I had to be palatable first.
Wearing my heart on my sleeve was dangerous.
I Fell In Love With Myself Through Him
The act of projecting is the act of moving information about yourself from the subconscious to the conscious mind. Being able to see and love all these traits within him was the beginning of me being able to see and love all these same things in myself.
I can say, 100% honestly, that I loved him so much that it changed the course of my life and transformed me entirely.
But this statement would also imply a deeper truth: I loved myself so much that it changed the course of my life and transformed me entirely.
Both statements are true.
He reflected back to me all of the parts of me that I was finally ready to acknowledge and love. For this, I will always be infinitely grateful for the role he played in my life.
But he also taught me to acknowledge and heal the pain I was too scared to face.
When The Daydream Shatters
All that goes up must come down, and I am by no means immune to this universal law.
Thanks to time, the balm that cures all, I can now see the nail in the coffin of this connection was emotional immaturity. My thoughts of him during the fallout are gems that give me insight into my dark side.
In the downfall, I saw him as:
Vindictive
Immature
Cowardly
Lost
Cruel
Unfeeling
Avoidant
Unempathetic
But what was I if not all of these same things? Does this list not describe me, too?
I acted like a selfish child throwing a tantrum when their favorite piece of candy gets taken away. I felt naked and exposed, and I pushed him away because I identified him as the source of all my discomfort. I didn’t want to face myself, and consequently, I didn’t want to face him.
So I did anything I could to get the pain to stop.
I didn’t think about how it made him feel. I didn’t care about seeing him as a person I once loved. I cared about remaining in my little bubble of ignorant bliss about my true nature.
He was just the mirror that reflected all my nastiness back at me.
I hated him, and I hated myself more for the person he was showing me I was. Loving him meant loving myself and hating him meant hating myself.
Is It Possible To Truly Fall In Love?
Yes and no.
Falling in love, according to Jungian psychology, is an inherently selfish act undivorceable from projection. We will also fall in love with the reflections of our own projections of unclaimed bits of ourselves.
However, love can grow from this immature neediness into something more grounded and selfless.
An ideal romantic love has 3 stages: falling in love, shattering the daydream, and finally, mature love.
Mature love is the love that forms when you see another person for who they are – not who you’d like them to be. It’s loving them unconditionally, regardless of how they grow and change over time. It’s looking at another person and seeing the small piece of God in them – the true miracle of their existence and consciousness.
This love is the only love that’ll stand the test of time because the human spirit will not tolerate being loved via projection for very long.
The Poison of Projection
No one wants to be loved only for what they reflect to another person. It’s a difficult role to play because as much as you’re worshipped like a God, you can lose your shine and become sub-human in a single moment.
If the object of love wants to continue to be loved, they have to continue to exist in a state of perfect virtue with little wiggle room for natural human complexity. They must always reflect the virtue of their partner back to them or risk shattering the daydream.
The second the daydream slips, the beloved loses their divine glow and reverts back to being another regular, ordinary human being.
What a letdown, right?
We all dream of a lover who truly sees us and loves us for who we are. Until we’re able to truly see and love ourselves for who we are, we’ll never be able to look past our projection to the person behind the mirror shining right in our eyes.
Can you imagine being loved by someone who only sees and loves the traits you have in common with them? Who could tolerate such a relationship for long?
We all want the right to be loved, flaws and all.
To get that, you have to first be willing to give it.
When You Project, You Hurt People
Projection is useful because it does show us that we’re ready to integrate subconscious information into our conscious mind. In this way, it’s a sign of growth. However, if we let projection take over, we end up hurting people.
We force them to carry the weight of our unacknowledged virtues, or we blame them for reminding us of our worst flaws. If we can’t see people for who they are, all we’re doing is using them as a mirror that only reflects our own image back at us.
I say this to you genuinely.
I bring this idea to you from the bottom of my heart. Because I projected onto someone I love, I hurt them. I can never take that back. I built them up into a God, just to tear them down into something sub-human, all because I was running from my virtue and my pain. It took a long time for me to forgive myself for this.
You deserve to be a full and integrated person. You deserve to own your virtue and heal your pain. You deserve this because you deserve a fulfilling life, and fulfillment with this work is impossible. You also deserve this because you deserve the ability to truly see and love people for who they are – not what they reflect back to you.
Why Did I Put The Mirror First?
The Mirror is the first chapter of my Shadow Work Guided Journal because, simply put, its ideas were the most transformative in my healing journey.
This section talks about using projection as a tool to reclaim the parts of yourself you contribute to others. Projection is a psychological process in which we attribute our own attributes to other people. Notably, this can happen with both our most positive and most negative qualities.
Essentially, our shadow is the collection of all our traits that we were taught were unacceptable.
In most cultures, conformity to the group is a priority, meaning any traits you have that differentiate you from the crowd exist in your shadow. For example, if you are ambitious, this can be pushed into your shadow if you grew up in an environment that viewed ambition as folly.
Just as much as flaws like manipulation, lying, or paranoia can be banished to your subconscious mind, virtues like compassion, humility, and intelligence are just as likely to suffer the same fate.
Ultimately, I wanted my Shadow Work Guided Journal to serve as a tool to help you recognize your banished bits and pieces and re-integrate them into your conscious mind. Putting The Mirror first is powerful because it is a back-handed way to see which parts of yourself you deny.
Essentially, anytime someone makes you feel a strong emotion, good or bad, they’re brushing up against a trait you have yet to recognize in yourself.
The good news about projection, though, is that it is the act of moving subconscious information to your conscious mind.
If you know how to recognize it when it happens, projecting can be an invaluable tool for insight and integration.