Don't Allow Others To Be Your Mirror

Or... No one is really thinking about you anyway.

Has this ever happened. to you?

Someone says something to you, and it's unkind but with a distinct element of truth, and you gasp, and think, "That person is right! I am a loser!"

You immediately see yourself as they (you believe they) see you. It's like looking into a mirror, and it ain't the magical one Snow White's stepmother owned.

In eighth grade, a girl named Patty (not her real name, but that's the name of another mean girl, so it fits) cornered me on the patio outside the back door of our junior high school. She was the most popular girl in school (she eventually dated the quarterback, how cliche) and never went anywhere without her posse, who surrounded her and me on that tiny patch of concrete.

"You really love those jeans, don't you? You wear them all the time."

It was true. I did love those jeans. They were pink with white stitched stripes - the peak of cool in 1984. It was also true I wore them all the time. We'd moved to the United States only a year and a half earlier with nothing but a couple of boxes of belongings and the false promises of utopia from my Dad's hiring agency (apparently, everyone in America had a microwave. We didn't). The cool pink jeans had been a Christmas gift and were one of my only pairs. New clothes weren't a priority in a family of four children struggling to pay the electric bill. I wore them all the time because I had to. Unlike Patty, I didn't have a closet stuffed with the contents of the entire Bennetton store (also the height of cool in 1984).

Did I tell Patty this? I mean, about them being my only pair? Are you crazy? Admit to the most popular girl in school that I was poor in an area where wealth equaled popularity? Now, I know the admission would have probably shamed her, but not back then.

Back then, I mumbled a response and stumbled, flushed and crying, across the football field toward home. Patty became my mirror. Reflected in her comment, I didn't see myself for who I truly was: a girl who was massively out of place in a new country and culture and desperately trying to assimilate. I saw what Patty saw—a weirdo who always wore the same pair of jeans.

You'd be mistaken if you think this story taught me a lesson. I spent the rest of my life using other people as my mirror. Right up until I didn't pass my Ph.D. Viva with flying colors but got (*gasp*) corrections! My mirror then was the internal examiner, who basically told me everything I had done (approved and encouraged by both my Supervisors and the entire Thesis Committee) was wrong. Instead of believing in myself and my work, I looked into the mirror of that guy and convinced myself I saw an imposter who never should have been accepted into the Ph.D. program in the first place.

Luckily, that horror happened when I was fifty-two, and I've had an epiphany since then. Kidding. It was menopause. I've had menopause.

Menopause has few results you can look forward to, but not giving a crap anymore is most certainly one of them.

However, I wish I had recognized my horrendous habit of using other people as my mirror much earlier in life. It would have saved me from self-doubt, self-recrimination, and a crippling imposter syndrome. And so, in case you didn't get that particularly positive symptom of menopause, I invite you to examine your own life.

Are you allowing others to be your mirror? Other people don't know you. They don't know that you've only got one pair of fabulous pink jeans or that you doubt your academic abilities so much that giving you corrections might cause you to quit (almost, but not quite).

Research confirms that no one is thinking about you. We’re only thinking about ourselves. That news is harsh but freeing. As Deb Knobelman¹ says,

"When you feel judged, it's because you are judging yourself."

And, plot twist... Patty and I became fast friends later in high school when she invited me to her house junior year to do shots in preparation for watching our senior boyfriends participate in the Senior's graduation rehearsal.

Journal Prompt:

Do some time-traveling. When in your past have you allowed others to be your mirror? What was the message you received from that mirror? Write a quick story during which you respond to your mirror and put them in their place.

1. https://medium.com/the-ascent/research-confirms-that-no-one-is-really-thinking-about-you-f6e7b09c458