When you look in the mirror, what do you see? A good person who is kind, generous, and loving? Do you see a good parent, spouse, son or daughter, employee, friend? That’s what we all want to see, isn’t it? It is very natural for us to want people to reflect back to us that we are good so that they will like us and want to be around us.
What happens, though, if we fall in love with that “all good” image and that is all we want people to see? I call this “the fantasy” where we gaze into the mirror idealizing our good qualities and try to pretend our flawed, human side doesn’t exist.
We can keep this deception up for a good while – as long as we don’t get close to anyone!
Unfortunately, those that are closest to us can see things in our mirror that others can’t see on casual glances! Our loved ones see the truth – perhaps that we are defensive, argumentative, self-centered, angry, cut-off, lazy, critical, manipulative, moody or that we have other not-so-desirable traits. Alone and disconnected from the world, we can convince ourselves that we are “all good”. That’s only possible to maintain, however, if we avoid close, connected relationships with others!
We may choose to have surface relationships with people who will partner up with us in believing our “all good” fantasy. When those people eventually see our flaws, though, we are at risk of exposure and we ditch them, finding new people who will only see our “all good” status.
The question is: How long can we keep this up?
When people get close to us, they see everything – our faults, failures, and weaknesses. This effectively shatters our illusion that we are “all good”. A person that we so wanted to be close to, is now someone we desperately want to get away from before they expose our secret! It is extremely difficult to maintain an authentic, intimate relationship with someone while simultaneously running around covering up all evidence of the “bad” self. Since we all have a deep seated desire to have intimacy – to be known deeply , understood, and loved. We are drawn to these close relationships and therein lies the conflict – we can’t maintain the illusion of “all good” AND be intimate with someone at the same time. At least not for very long!
The problem here is not the people that we are choosing to be with, it is our desperate need to maintain the unrealistic “all good” fantasy. When our loved ones remind us of our flaws, they are really offering us a gift! They are showing us that we can be imperfect and be loved at the same time! When they take a sledgehammer (gently) to our unrealistic illusion of ourselves, they are actually freeing us from the exhausting task of having to hide!!
To keep our secret, we can get pretty ugly trying to steer people away from our “bad” mirror. Of course, we get ugly – the price is steep! On a very primitive level, we believe that no one could love us if they knew about the “bad” image. With such high stakes, we find ourselves needing to pull off the most spectacular charade of our lives. This creates a tremendous amount of stress, and under that kind of tension, we are bound to suffer. The resulting depression and anxiety will undoubtedly cause us to do something unhealthy like have an affair, steal, live a double life, commit suicide, or otherwise add to our stockpile of “bad” that we are trying so desperately to minimize.
The fix for this all-too-common problem is to be able to recognize that we all have flaws, secrets, past mistakes, failures, or other unpleasant traits at times – ALL of us! Yes, some of them are worse than others, but when we are humble and are able to admit to our own faults, weaknesses, and failures, while at the same times recognizing our good qualities, strengths and successes, we will find that we are not so bad after all!
When we acknowledge that there is a 360° mirror that shows a nice balance of good AND bad, we can stop trying to convince ourselves and everyone else that the fantasy is real. We can then relax the tension in our bodies, the stress of our minds, and quit running from ourselves. We can breathe in the air of freedom that comes from being loved – just the way you are. . .
This concept is from a wonderful book that I highly recommend: The Seven Levels of Intimacy by Matthew Kelly.
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