mirror

You know that thing in tv shows and movies where there's a kind but hideous fellow who's feared and hated by all the villagers in town and eventually starts to believe that he's a horrible monster even though he's actually gentle and kind? "Don't look at me!!" and such?

What's happening there is that the poor guy is internalizing what others are perceiving of him based on his appearance and coming to the logical conclusion that what they see in him must be who/what he is. It's a natural aspect of human psychology that has it's benefits and downsides. In this case, they see a hideous monster so he starts to see a hideous monster. His self-concept comes to mirror what others see in him.

The same thing can happen in the opposite case, since humans are as easily swayed by beauty as ugliness. It's quite common for us to project positive qualities onto those with features that we find attractive and appealing to our senses. It's part of why makeup and surgery are so commonplace - they can be used to influence this aspect of human psychology.

Something that I've been coming to terms with is that somewhere along the line of my growth into adulthood, the way I was coming across to others was pre-emptively inducing a positive impression. People started projecting all sorts of things and generally seemed to like me by default, deciding that I must be a certain kind of person before they'd really gotten to know me. The specifics varied wildly depending on the person and what they saw but it generally leaned towards overly positive.

And unfortunately, just like the poor fella who came to believe he was a monster because of what others saw in him, I began to believe some of the overly flattering things that others were projecting onto me while gradually losing sight of the fullness of my nature. The ugliness, the darkness, the grouchiness, the cynicism, the selfishness. The absolutely ordinary, nothing-special humanness.

Basically, I was developing an inflated ego based on what I saw others seeing in me.

It can be both flattering (aka inflating) and also subtly confining. It's natural to want to preserve a positive impression in the minds of others and it can be easy to fall into acting in ways that will continue to invite those feelings. Little by little I found myself becoming increasingly stilted, stiff and contrived. But the better I looked and performed, the worse I started to feel.

I couldn't understand what was happening. Why was I finding it more and more difficult to relax and express certain sides of myself? Why were my social skills becoming more refined but my interactions less enjoyable? Why was I getting increasingly preoccupied and anxious about my appearance?

Someone I was with years ago picked up on this phenomenon. It drove them nuts for several reasons but one was that they were experiencing far more of me than others were, and some of it wasn't pretty. After talking about some overly flattering things their friends had said about me, they shook their head and said "You're not like that! You're grumpy. And goofy."

The truth is they were each right and wrong about me. I'm all those things and I'm also none of it. What others see is the result of their subjective perspectives encountering and reacting to my appearance and behaviour, so there's no sense in confining myself to any of the resulting interpretations. I am who I am in any given moment, and I'd rather give that room to show up as it will.