What the Reflection Reveals

Today's Gentle Reminder:
The way someone treats you is a reflection of their character, not yours.

For a long time, when someone treated me poorly, I absorbed it.

If someone was angry with me, I assumed I had done something wrong. If someone didn't like me, I wondered what I needed to change. If someone said something hurtful about me, instead of seeing it as their opinion, I often accepted it as evidence of who I was.

Maybe I wasn't good enough.

Maybe I was the problem.

Maybe I needed to be different.

Somewhere along my own healing journey, I began to understand that I didn't have to absorb everything another person projected onto me.

I remember coming across this idea while reading The Inner Work, a book that deeply shifted the way I see myself, other people, and the world around me. I began learning how to create space between another person's behavior and my own sense of self.

Because the truth is, the way someone chooses to treat another human being says far more about what is happening within them than it does about the person standing in front of them.

But, like most things in life, there is some gray here.

This doesn't mean we dismiss everything someone says about us simply because we don't like hearing it. Sometimes there may be truth in someone's criticism. Sometimes we have made a mistake. Sometimes we have hurt someone, behaved poorly, or have something within ourselves that deserves reflection.

We should be willing to look at those things.

But we can also pay attention to how the message is being delivered.

You can disagree with someone without belittling them.

You can tell someone they hurt you without intentionally hurting them back.

You can offer constructive criticism without tearing someone apart.

You can be angry without being cruel.

And when someone chooses cruelty, disrespect, humiliation, or nastiness to communicate their feelings, that choice reflects something about them.

Understanding that has actually allowed me to have much more compassion for people who are angry or unkind.

I believe that when someone is genuinely happy—not surface-level happiness, but a deep sense of peace within themselves—they generally aren't looking for opportunities to make other people feel small.

It doesn't feel good to hurt people when you feel good within yourself.

So, when I encounter someone who seems determined to spread anger, judgment, or cruelty, I can recognize that there may be something happening inside of them that I cannot see.

Maybe they're hurting.

Maybe they're insecure.

Maybe they're angry about something that has nothing to do with me.

Maybe they're carrying pain they haven't learned how to process yet.

There is an old saying that misery loves company, and I think there is some truth to that. Sometimes when people are hurting deeply, instead of realizing that they have the ability to heal, they try to hand that pain to someone else.

But having compassion for someone's pain does not mean we have to accept the pain they're trying to hand us.

That's an important distinction.

All of us have been through things.

All of us have experienced pain. Many of us have lived through things that changed the way we see ourselves, relationships, and the world around us.

I certainly have.

But the painful things I've experienced do not give me permission to pass that pain on to someone else.

Our wounds may help explain our behavior, but they don't excuse our responsibility for it.

We can love someone and understand why they behave the way they do while still saying:

You don't get to treat me this way.

We can have compassion for someone's wounds without becoming their emotional punching bag.

We can understand their pain without absorbing it.

And sometimes walking away, setting a boundary, ending a conversation, or removing ourselves from a relationship is one of the kindest things we can do for ourselves.

This is something I try very hard to teach my children.

Although, admittedly, when one of my children comes to me and tells me someone has hurt them, my first internal reaction isn't always particularly enlightened.

Sometimes it's more along the lines of, Who the hell does that little shit think they are?

I'm still their mother, after all.

The mama bear in me wants to protect them. She wants to lash out at anyone who makes one of my children question themselves or feel small.

But healing doesn't mean we never have negative or unkind thoughts.

Healing is about what we choose to do with them.

Once that initial reaction passes, the calmer, more mature parts of me can take over. And instead of simply teaching my children to be angry at the person who hurt them, I can help them understand what may actually be happening.

I can teach them compassion.

I can remind them that someone else's anger may be coming from their own pain.

I can encourage them to respond with kindness when kindness is appropriate.

But I can also teach them that kindness should never come at the expense of themselves.

They are allowed to say, I don't like the way you're treating me.

They are allowed to say, You don't get to speak to me that way.

They are allowed to walk away.

They are allowed to end friendships and relationships that continually hurt them.

They are allowed to love themselves enough to refuse to become the place where someone else unloads their pain.

And perhaps most importantly, I want my children to understand something I wish I had understood much earlier in my own life:

Just because someone else says something mean to you doesn't mean you have to be mean to yourself.

Someone else's words don't have to become your inner voice.

Someone else's judgment doesn't have to become your truth.

Someone else's inability to see your worth doesn't make you less worthy.

Someone else withholding love from you is never a reason to withhold love from yourself.

Maybe that's what I love so much about the idea of a reflection.

A reflection can appear on the surface of the water with incredible clarity. Every tree, every branch, every cloud can be visible.

But the water didn't create what appeared there.

It simply became the surface upon which it landed.

Perhaps we can learn to see other people's projections the same way.

Their anger may land on us.

Their judgment may land on us.

Their insecurity may land on us.

Their pain may even ripple our surface for a while.

We are human. Of course we're going to feel it.

But we don't have to claim it as our own.

We can look at what belongs to us, take responsibility for the pieces that do, and gently let the rest remain with the person it came from.

Because the way someone chooses to treat you may tell you a great deal about what is happening within them.

It doesn't get to tell you who you are.