Have you ever wondered what happens when you connect with someone else and that some time later you discover several aspects that you don’t like?Jacques Lacan’s mirror theory helps us understand this process.
According to the author, the construction of our personal identity requires the capture of oneself in others, in this way the relationships we have with others are reflections or projections of aspects of our personality, aspects that we love and hate.
- Just as there are parts of our body and image that we do not like when we look in the mirror.
- There are aspects of our personality that we do not accept.
- We find in other reflections with which we do not correspond.
- All this material being repressed by our unconscious.
- That is.
- One way or another.
- Certain traits of others that at least we do not like.
- We end up identifying ourselves.
- Even symbolically.
- About others.
- We don’t like it in us either.
We’re constantly projecting a part of us. So mirror theory is a vision that proposes a change of perspective: having to protect yourself from each other so as not to interfere with a vision from which the question arises?I who cannot bear it ??. As in general we cannot see Our own shadows and even our virtues, life offers us as ??. gift the relationships we live to show us directly what is in us. The other simply mirrors us, reflects us and gives us the opportunity to meet.
Mirror theory can work directly or inversely. Let’s look at an example. Imagine that you do not support the selfishness of your partner or friend, in a simple way you can project in the other person that part of you that is selfish and that you deny, if it worked the other way around, that person might reflect that little you care about your interests. Maybe you always care about others and put others first. One way or another, you bring very important information to our knowledge and evolution.
What I don’t like about you, I correct in myself
You may find your boss very demanding with you, you may also be very demanding and perfectionist with yourself and your boss is just a reflection of this requirement that you put on yourself. On the other hand, you may be too tolerant and need a little. rigor in your life and we know that virtue is in balance.
We don’t cure with a bandage. When we suffer an injury the first thing we do is express our pain, when we are calm we start cleaning and healing the wound with the right tools, we do not cover it and forget it because we know it will not heal. And besides, we spent some time checking the wound until it finally healed, the same goes for any kind of wound.
We all have emotional wounds. Emotional wounds are all the emotions, feelings, thoughts and ways of acting that are born in one or more painful moments in our life that we cannot overcome or accept, we become prisoners of these emotions keeping ourselves in a fictional prison. To be is to transform these emotions and ways of thinking into wisdom and experience, so that they serve as an impulse to overcome ourselves.
When we forget our wounds, you end up being part of our unconsciousness and influencing our thoughts, emotional state and behavior. Within us we begin to inhabit the emotional disabilities born of our childhood, but that awaken and / or strengthen when we do. don’t cure them.
So, many times we find deficiencies very similar to ours in our partner or partner, and that’s exactly what the union is doing. For example, two people who have suffered a lot for love meet and discover that love does not suffer, this couple was united by the same wound. Both have seen their reflexes, but you have to be careful because the wounds they join can also separate.
If each part of a couple does not heal their wounds, sooner or later they will begin to damage the relationship. Insecurities, fears, jealousy, possession? It’s as if life is trying to send reflexes that mark the path you have to take to grow, if you don’t analyze them and don’t care about the information they give you, won’t that change or evolve very slowly?and your relationships will be very fragile, so the bonds we have with others, given the mirror theory, can provide us with very valuable information about ourselves and the condition of these wounds that we have not yet managed to include in our history.