Time flies when you’re criss-crossing the Ontario wilderness (and Ohio) traveling from one camp to another delivering staff-training sessions. Each one beginning with the hopes that some still unformed words of wisdom leap from your brain and land on your tongue with enough buoyancy that they spring forth with vigor and capture the interest of those assembled before you – discerning masses of 17-23 year olds (by and large), imbued with the heavy responsibility that they will be caring for other people’s children for the next 8 weeks of their lives.
A quick side-note to the parents among you: I assure you that these young adults get it – they know the magnitude of the job before them and they understand the trust you place in them in by releasing your children to their care.
One of the many topics we covered in most of my sessions was mirroring. Mirroring is a tool for empathy building originated by the self-psychologists (Heinz Kohut, circa 1984, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_psychology) but more recently popularized – at least in Toronto – by Jennifer Kolari (www.connectedparenting.com).
The premise is fairly straightforward. Watch a parent (or really anyone) and an infant. Pay attention to their interactions. The infant makes a face – the observer mimics it. The infant makes a sound. The observer mimics it. For those of us lucky enough to have had a primary care-giver who was present and intuitive we spend the first two years of life having the world MIRROR back to us our smiles, our scowls, and our noises. In other words, everything that we’re able to feel and express in the ways we have available to us is fed-back to us in almost mirror-reflection perfection.
Then our words come and things get complicated. No longer can we get away with cooing, scowling, smiling or crying and having the people in our world respond with the exact – or similar enough noises – to show us that they understand what’s going on. Instead, we are challenged to use our words to describe what we want, what we need, and, most importantly, to rationalize the why behind it.
Self-psychologists argue that this is where the frustration begins and, perhaps, why the terrible twos are so terrible. Those years represent the beginning of a huge paradigmatic shift in which our environment no longer mirrors back to us what we’re feeling. And up until that point this has been our only proof that we are being understood. What this creates, therefore, is the beginning of some significant life-long feelings of being misunderstood.
If I’ve already lost you, think about how many times in your life you said with sigh of relief how great it felt to speak to so-and-so because ‘they just really got you’. My guess is you not only remember saying that, you remember about whom you said it and when as well. This is proof of how infrequently feeling really understood happens and how powerful it is.
It would be disingenuous of me to assert that each one of those people was ‘mirroring’ you. I do, however, strongly suspect that elements of mirroring were present and had something to do with you feeling understood.
So what is mirroring exactly? It isn’t complicated and it isn’t much more than its name it implies but it is incredibly difficult. Mirroring is truly reflecting back to someone what they are expressing to us in the way they are expressing it. It is 100% about the person and their experience. And that’s why it’s so difficult. Because it’s not about us and how we relate to their experience or what we think they should or shouldn’t do. It’s really and truly all about them.
It works best in situations when people really need to feel understood – those times when they’re communicating with their emotional volume turned way up. When they are exceptionally sad, angry, frustrated, etc… These are the times when our emotions have taken over and the logical-rational side of our selves is temporarily disengaged. We don’t want solutions. We don’t want to hear about how others experienced something similar. We don’t want anything other than to be fully understood.
Here’s an example. Someone tells me that they’re fed up with school. They’re tired of sitting in classes listening to people who can’t teach and being forced to learn about stuff they don’t care about and will never need to know. They tell me that school is not for them and they’re ready to quit.
My gut reaction – and probably yours – would be to launch into a lecture about how important school is and/or how I got through all the many times when I felt exactly the same way. I would be full of stories I would hope they could relate to and solutions for how they can cope with it. But how would that make them feel? Listened to? Like I really understood how horrible their experience was? Like I understood them? Probably none of the above. In fact, my lecture and suggestions will most likely turn something that could have been a conversation into something that quickly looks more like a fight.
Thankfully, I have another great starting point: I can mirror. I can say ‘you’re stuck in classes with people who can’t teach and you’re learning crap you don’t want to learn and that you’ll never need. No wonder you want to drop out.’
At that point they might be a little startled as they certainly wouldn’t be expecting what sounds to them like agreement. They’ll also be feeling something pretty close to being understood. My guess is they’d push a little further. Probably something like: ‘yah, it’s stupid and there’s no point at all in being there.’ My response? ‘You think you’d be much better off in you weren’t in school.’ No sense of questioning. Just a statement of fact. There are probably a few more rounds in here but here’s the place I think you’ll get to – they will feel understood, they will calm down enough to have a discussion about the pros and cons of dropping out of school. I have a hunch that in a rational state most people will see the significant downside of dropping out and will stick with it at least until it makes sense to take a break.
Although this is a fairly innocuous example the theory is the same. Mirror the person so they feel understood. They will turn the emotional volume down once they believe that you’re getting them. And at that point they’ll be ready to partner with you in coming up with some choices that make sense.
Still with me? Clearly I can’t summarize the entire concept in one blog entry but I can tell you that it works. You can start by reading Jennifer Kolari’s book (Connected Parenting) and take it from there. Or you can contact me and I can guide you through it. I can also tell you that I’ve taught this to 17-23 year olds at many camps. I have an on going role at two of these camps and each time I visit I’ve had multiple staff members – previously very vocal naysayers – approach me and share success stories they’ve had with campers when they decided to give my ‘mirroring thing’ a try – typically after exhausting all other efforts without success.
I already knew mirroring works. I taught it to them. What I didn’t know how many of them would take the chance to give it a try. Sometimes it’s important to plant the seed and hope the conditions are ripe for it take hold. The jury is still out on how many of these 17-23 will use mirroring and find it helpful. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, though, I hope you too will give mirroring a chance. Let me know how it goes.
Scott
