Reflection on Reflection
If I had to choose one skill/intervention/life hack to rule them all, it would be reflection. Reflection is the seemingly simple yet somehow super difficult and usually unnatural-feeling practice of focusing deeply on what someone else is saying, synthesizing that information, and saying it back in a manner that conveys understanding, interest, empathy, and non-judgment (and hopefully doesn’t come across as too parrot-like). It takes some practice, but once you get the hang of it, reflection is a win-win intervention. It lets the listener off the hook of feeling like they must solve someone else’s problem and allows the speaker to feel completely seen and heard, which I suspect most of us want far more than we get.
When I began my path to becoming a therapist, I identified pretty deeply as an introvert. While I had been fascinated with psychology for most of my life, I doubted my ability to engage with another human for a full hour, hour after hour. I assumed I would need to constantly impress my client with my knowledge and insight, analyzing and interpreting as if I were performing a magic trick to convince them that an hour with me was worth their time and money.
With that mindset, I went into my first session like I was about to give the performance of a lifetime. My “audience” was eight years old and completely unphased by the breathless, try-hard therapist-in-training with imposter syndrome and flop sweat. To this day, the most memorable and valuable advice given to me by a supervisor was, “STOP TALKING.” It was delivered in an earnest New York accent with lots of direct eye contact as we listened to a session recording of me waxing poetic about something or other with a teen who truly could not care less.
Over time, that need to perform has been gradually replaced by the desire to be a conduit for my clients. My job is to receive what they are saying and transmit it back in a way that allows them to feel heard and hear themselves. Taking my ego out of the equation makes the work so much more enjoyable. I’m able to genuinely connect with the person across from me, and because I’m not as concerned with accomplishing something according to my own agenda or proving myself, it really isn’t terribly draining, even for an introvert.
The magic of reflection works just as well in parenting. This is another area in which I feel pressure (from myself) to perform well and churn out “good humans.” When I find myself in a fruitless loop of trying to convince my two-year-old that it is morally unacceptable to hit his brother with a toy train and that, if he keeps this up, no one will want to play with him and he’ll eventually end up in jail and struggle to find work (yes, I have some work to do around catastrophizing and developmentally appropriate communication), I can pause and remember reflection.
“You were angry and you hit him. That was a really big feeling.”
Instantly engaged and calmer.
“Yeaahhh,” he wails, tears subsiding a bit.
“It’s hard to have such big feelings.”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder how your brother feels about getting hit.”
“He feels sad.”
“He feels sad. Is there something you can do to help him?”
“Say, ‘you ok?’”
“You think it could help to ask if he’s OK. Do you want to do that?”
“Yeah.”
To his brother: “You ok??”
If you really want to deconstruct it, this moment contains elements of Motivational Interviewing and light Socratic questioning, along with a few other things. But it works because it starts with reflection.
The more I can bring myself to reflect with the people I’m in relationship with, rather than lecture or moralize or chastise, the better the results. I have to trust that we are, at our core, already good humans. When we’re not behaving as such, I believe that some part of us — likely the most genuine part — wants to be. And for that to happen, we need to be in communication with ourselves, which oddly tends to happen most effectively through a relationship with someone who can hold up a mirror and allow the conversation to unfold.
