Mirroring

Mirroring: echoing other people's words, emotions, interpretations, intentions, or body language.

Types of mirroring:

• Mirroring words:
• Repeating back the last few words, or significant words, from what the other person just said.
• Shows the other person that I listen, lets other person hear what I take from what they are saying, gives the other person the opportunity to reflect on how their own words sound, and allows the other person the chance to correct or expand on their words, if they feel that I have not understood it well enough.
• Mirroring emotions: 
• Internalize the emotion that I perceive from the other person, feel what it does to me, and let that guide me in my responses.
• To supplement this, I can also put a label on the emotion, for example "It sounds like you are very upset about this". Similar to mirroring words, a label on an emotion, allows the other person to reflect and expand on it.
• Makes it easier for me to connect with the other person, and through how I act or respond it can also shows the other person that I try to connect and understand on a deeper level than just words.
• Mirroring interpretations:
• This requires some more work from me: I have to reflect on how the other person sees the world operate, and try to formulate how the other person interprets the world.
• For example, I can mirror the other person's words and feelings, and then I can say something like "when your sister says that to you, you get very upset, because you would like her to do X and when she said that you realized that she was not going to".
• Mirroring intentions:
• Trying to hear or anticipate the action that the other person would like to take, and simply formulate it, for example "so, you would like to call your sister".
• Mirroring body language:
• Show the same degree of energy, use the same kind of movements, sit in the same way. This can show the other person that I have tuned in to where they are, that I am willing to stay with them, that I am walking with them.

Some examples where I have had great success with mirroring:

• A colleague came up to me and asked me about a problem. I repeated back, and he immediately got an idea about how to proceed.
• My two-year old son getting to bed, he cried and called for his mother. I repeated what he said, like "mooother" and "oooh", mirroring the sounds and cries. I used labeling to say something like "you sound sad". And when he cried, I focused and listened intensely to the cry, instead of wishing it go away. This made the whole deal less stressful for me and for him, and now we have a nightly routine where there's either no crying at all or a little crying, which is mirrored by me and kind of absorbed and neutralized quickly.

Some challenges I have had with mirroring:

• If I am too slow to formulate a mirror, especially in group settings, I end up being very passive.
• I'm very inclined towards just mirroring words, which might be a good first step, but I believe it will be more efficient if it is quickly followed up by some of the other and deeper kinds of mirroring.