Family therapists and Child therapists have known for a long time that the key to understanding children, even those who are not capable of speaking yet, is that they set you up to feel how they feel. So, however they make you feel and however you feel about them is actually an exact mirror of how you are making them feel and of how they feel about you.
Today, I’m going to tell you that this dynamic does not actually end with childhood. This universe operates according to the law of attraction. This essentially means that the universe we live in is a giant three-dimensional mirror. Your reality mirrors you precisely so that by recognizing the mirror, your awareness of yourself can cause you to change and to expand. That being said, we do not often recognize the reflection when it shows up in the mirror.
Because of the law of attraction, however you make someone feel, regardless of whether it is intentional or unintentional, will eventually become how they make you feel. Therefore, it is not that children make you feel exactly how they feel. It is that all people and even more than that, all beings make you feel exactly how they feel. And it isn’t usually intentional or conscious on their part either. It is that their reaction to how you are making them feel, makes you feel the exact same way that they feel.
For example, a man works from sun up to sundown. Because of this he is not making his wife feel loved. She feels like she has no value to him. Eventually, she gets a lover and cheats on her husband. He finds out and feels unloved. He feels like he has no value to her. Or for example, a wife feels secure when she controls all the planning for the household. Eventually this starts to make her husband feel totally powerless and out of control. Soon, he refuses to commit to any plans that she is making. This starts to make her feel powerless and out of control.
I’m not going to sugar coat the truth for you, the truth is that mirroring sucks to experience. But we can use the fact that people in our lives put us in the position to feel exactly the same way that they feel like we made them feel to our advantage. We can use it to understand other people completely. We can use that understanding to resolve our conflicts fast. We can use that understanding to see ourselves and our impact on other people clearly.
Whenever someone makes you feel a certain way, especially in a conflict, consider that the way they are making you feel is the way you either have made them feel or are currently making them feel. So, first identify how you feel. If you’re in a painful relationship, write down the many different ways you feel. Then consider how you might have made or be making them feel that way. Despite what they may be saying or doing, see them and their actions through this new lens of seeing clearly how they feel because now that you are feeling it, you do get it.
From there switch your strategy of resolution. Now that you recognize how they feel, make the conflict resolution deliberately about the way they feel. Do and say things that make them feel the opposite. If you want to know exactly how to address someone’s negative emotion, watch my YouTube video titled: Emotional Wake Up Call. Follow the steps outlined in that video with this person relative to the way you now know that they feel.
For example, using the examples I gave previously, the man would go straight to the root by addressing the feeling of not being loved and valued. He would do things to make her feel loved and valued. The wife would go straight to the root by addressing the feeling of being totally powerless and out of control. She would say and do things that made him feel empowered and more in control of himself. If we focus our efforts on making them feel differently, (for example valued or in control instead) it is an inevitability of this universe that they will in turn make us feel differently. The reflection in the mirror will change.
Confusion in relationships is a super common event. So much of the time when we run into conflicts in a relationship, we have no idea what is happening or why it is happening. We slip into the perception that the other person is completely unjustified and is being unfair with us. We tell ourselves that they are wrong and that they are crazy. We try to make sense of what is going on without remembering that the universe is a mirror. We can use that mirror to understand ourselves and to understand them. So never forget if you are confused and in pain in a relationship, that other people unintentionally make us feel the exact same way that they feel like we are making them feel.
