Joe describes a mirroring exercise he and Tara practiced for over a year: one person says something short about their side of a disagreement, and the other simply repeats what they heard. Joe got it wrong almost every single time. Tiny distortions — placing blame in odd corners, inferring intention that wasn’t there — made it so they were essentially fighting over misunderstandings rather than real disagreements.
“I was just putting the blame in this odd place in the corner, or I was inferring that she was trying when it was something that she wasn’t trying.”
The practice revealed that their trauma filtered communication in different ways. They had different ways of looking at the world and different ways of communicating, and what sounded like disagreement was often just not understanding. When you see this clearly, something shifts: “This isn’t them rejecting me — this is them not understanding me.”
It’s really hard to be mad at not understanding. It’s really easy to be mad at “you’re attacking me.” Mirroring converts the second into the first.
Related Concepts
- How we listen shapes what we hear
- Listen as if the other person is right
- There is no right or wrong, only perspectives
- Depersonalize the problem — it’s a patient on the table
- Seeing their truth is different from finding ‘the’ truth
- Both people in a fight want to be seen