The Mirror

What Combines Into This Pattern

This pattern fires when three things combine: thin internal criteria for defining the self, an antenna hypersensitive to signals from outside, and the absence of a circuit that keeps any distance from one's own emotions. The boundary between self and other gives way, other people's desires and expectations come in already labeled as one's own, and instead of becoming a perfect mirror for the other person, one's own face slowly empties out.

Scenes You May Recognize

Choosing from a menu, choosing a career — the answer the other person seems to want arrives automatically. Everywhere, this is the easy, accommodating one; but in front of the question of what you actually want, only an honest blank remains.

If every time a relationship ends, the same hollowness arrives — not knowing who you even were inside it — that may be a sign of having existed in the relationship not as yourself but as the other person's reflection.

Empathy and assimilation are not the same

Empathy reaches another person's feelings while keeping one's own seat; assimilation has no seat, so the other person's feelings simply become who you are. Psychology distinguishes the self assembled to meet the demands of its environment from the original one — two equally warm people, except that one is recharged inside relationships and the other comes apart each time a relationship ends.

Same Pattern, Different Depth

The same pattern lived faintly and lived deeply makes for two different lives.

The same pattern plays out differently at a light firing and a heavy one. Kept light, it works as a social asset that reads a room and tunes it; as it deepens, the place where your own desires would sit empties out and dependence on relationships grows. Your own firing intensity, and what to do about it, are part of your assessment results.