Who is Your Mirror?

“It’s easier for me to focus on your problems than on my own.”

Reba McEntire, Reba

I was watching an episode of the TV show Reba recently where the title character blurted-out the line above. It’s a line every codependent can relate to because we are all guilty of focusing our attention on other people and their problems so we can avoid our own. In this particular episode, Reba is focused on the marital problems her daughter, Cheyenne, and son-in-law, Van, are experiencing, and she’s determined to fix their problems. Sound familiar? YES!!!!

Likewise, we codependents are very good at focusing on the faults and failures of everyone around us. Sometimes we find ourselves very irritated by a particular person we live with or work with, and we spend way too much time renting out negative space in our heads to this person. Every time we turn around we are dwelling on something they have said or done that has rubbed us the wrong way. We may stew all day on this person and the fact that for whatever reason they simply can’t shut a drawer or show up on time for work.

Anytime our focus is outside of ourselves, we are caught-up in the codependent crazies. When we focus our attention on another person, we are deliberately attempting to avoid ourselves. We are terrified at facing our own faults and failures as well as our many personal problems. Escaping them requires some form of “acting out” and sometimes that form of acting out is to focus our attention on others. Other people provide a nice diversion. They allow us to remain in denial about our own shortcomings.

Dwelling on the lives of others is also exhausting. When we get trapped in endless negative thoughts about others it feels like we are swimming through a sewer of sludge in our brains. We end up self-righteous, angry and resentful about things we are powerless to control. And many of these negative thoughts aren’t even reality: They’re mostly fantasy (conjecture and assumptions) we have made-up in our heads.

The really scaring thing is that we don’t even realize that most of the anger and resentment we feel when we are being so critical of others is really about us. People who get under our skin are more often than not reflecting our image right back at us. They are like a mirror and they are mirroring back to us the very things we don’t like about ourselves—the very negative things about us that we’ve been working so hard to keep under wraps.

The solution? Well, nothing changes until we do. So if we want life to get better, we need to take our focus off of others and face our own issues. Facing our issues gives us the chance to change ourselves for the better. Yes, that’s real work, but after we’ve done it, we will be happier with ourselves—and with others. We will no longer be drowning in the sludge of our negative thoughts and energy. Instead of being resentful of others who are so much like us, we can begin to appreciate the fact that they are actually teaching us how to improve our lives.