Need to Be Seen – Mirroring Transference
By Penwood Partners
February 8, 2010
It will come as no surprise perhaps that the sources of most of the difficulties we experience in our intimate relationships are beneath the surface of our everyday awareness. Sometimes suddenly we find ourselves embroiled in a controversy with our partner and, while we remember what he or she said that upset us, we may not actually know why what was said upset us.
One of the veiled sources of difficulties in our significant relationships is our need to be seen. What do we mean when we say, Our need to be seen?
The need to be seen refers to our need to be valued, recognized, admired, appreciated, understood and esteemed by our partners. We need our partners to relate to us in a special and unique way. We need our partners to be closely attuned to us, to be empathic with us, and to relate to us in an admiring and appreciative way.
We need our partners to see and appreciate what we feel. We need them to show that they see us. We need to be recognized and understood. We want positive feedback.
How important and pervasive is the need to be seen? It is the driver behind much of what happens in our world – not the least of which are the social networking sites My Space, Facebook and YouTube. These services receive 250 million unique visitors each month. That is a need to be seen.
Disruptions in the need to be seen are responsible for most relationship break ups. So, for example, we need our partners to know and remember what we like and what we don’t like, what is important to us and what doesn’t matter, and what our opinions and feelings are on certain topics and regarding certain people. From the relatively simple and mundane – such as, “How could you forget that I don’t take sugar in my coffee?” or, “I was telling you about my day and you picked up the paper!” – to the more nuanced and significant – “You know I don’t like it when you compare me to my Mother(or Father)!” and “I was just trying to get close to you and you pushed me away.”
In each of these examples – and you can probably remember or imagine hundreds more – what hurts us, or irritates us, or annoys us is our partners’ failure to see us, that is, to relate to us in the way we want them to relate to us. We feel not special, not valued, misunderstood, perhaps ignored and taken for granted. This is what we mean when we say we need our partners to see us.
This “need to be seen” that we are pointing to includes the need NOT to be seen – for sometimes we want our partner to just leave us alone, to let us read or watch the TV and not intrude on our privacy. An example is, “Here I am watching my favorite show, and you come in and start talking. Can’t you see I’m not available?” In this case, both partners may feel not seen and react toward the other from that difficult place. So even our need from time to time NOT to be seen itself needs to be seen.
Where does it come from?The mirroring dynamic – that is, the need to be seen – has roots in childhood. The origins of this need are quite natural: The human soul feeds on light – it feeds on the light of awareness for its growth and development. When we ourselves have awareness of the qualities of our nature, those qualities grow and develop toward their potential; the qualities that remain hidden to us – beyond our conscious awareness – do not grow and develop.
The problem arises from the fact that babies do not have this self-awareness. For the baby’s qualities to develop and grow, they must be seen by others. So as infants we all depended on the light of awareness to come from the outside – we needed to be seen by others for our development. This expresses the need for mirroring. The baby needs the environment to mirror her so that she can come to know herself, and for her soul to grow and develop. Mirroring to the developing child is like sunlight to the plants; it is necessary for our growth and development and for the developing soul to know her self.
It is important to remember that the point of mirroring is not simply feedback; it is also acceptance and appreciation. The child needs to recognize her self through the mirroring she receives as precious and lovable. We need a mirror with heart. The “others” in the environment whose job it was to provide this needed mirroring were – you guessed it – our parents, or our parenting figures. But parents are selective in what they see and value. That is to say, parents do not see all that there is to see in the developing child, nor do they value all that they do see, and therefore cannot objectively mirror all of the qualities and potential of their growing children.
The developing child comes to know herself through what is mirrored back to her by her parents and other significant persons in her environment. This is what she comes to recognize as herself.
For better or worse, our growth and development is deeply shaped and influenced by what our parents mirrored and valued in us. Some parents see artistic talent and value that – perhaps to the exclusion of everything else. Some parents see and value physical coordination and strength and devalue other qualities and attributes. Some parents are not attuned at all – or not very much – and do not shine a light and encourage any growth and development. This can cause an intense hunger for mirroring and tremendous reactivity when that hunger is not fed, when there is a disruption in our being seen.
So our parents are not attuned mirrors, nor do they provide the consistent recognition, love and appreciation that is so necessary for integrated growth and development. The mirroring from our parents had smudges on it, as well as some coloring and stains. Some mirrors had pieces broken away or even cracks across the entire mirror. These kinds of flaws in the mirroring impacted our growth and development; what was seen and reflected back to us in a positive way grew and developed; what wasn’t seen at all, or what was seen in a distorted way, did not grow at all, we did not recognize ourselves as having the unseen quality, or our view of the quality is distorted and damaged in some way.
These flaws and distortions and inadequacies in mirroring become important later for many reasons, not the least of which is their impacts on our intimate relationships. The mirroring relationship that existed between your parents and you profoundly shaped your growth and development – and still lingers today in the ways that you want to be seen – and the ways you do not want to be seen – by your partner. The original mirroring relationship establishes the tone for what follows – this relationship is transferred in our significant relationships onto our partners. The transference includes the child’s dependence on outside mirroring. This dependence of the child, which is natural and necessary because the child cannot see itself, becomes an entitlement and demand of the adult. We demand that our partners see us; what makes them “significant” in the first place is that they see us! We transfer onto our intimate partners this mirroring relationship we had with our parents and project onto him or her the dependency, and the inadequacies and difficulties, including the hunger to be seen, we experienced with our parents – including how we react when we are not seen.
What happens when we are not seen?Not being seen leads to disruptions in our relationships – especially our significant relationships. The question of mirroring is a sensitive place for us. Not being seen can be very painful and wounding. It can feel like an insult, or even a betrayal, because mirroring is something we feel entitled to. We believe our partners SHOULD see us, for example: “After all these years you put cream in my tea? You don’t know me at all! I think we may need to divorce.”
Our reactions to not being seen are based on this wounding, this insult, and on the belief that our partner – in not seeing us as we wish to be seen – has done something to us. Blaming is part of our reaction to not being seen by our partner. We may react angrily and attack our partner, or we might withdraw and sulk. We may just go silent and fantasize to ourselves about leaving, about getting another partner, or about how much better it would be to be alone without any partner.
Not being seen, as you can see, is a very difficult and sensitive place. When we are not seen, our inner experience – our felt sense of ourselves – is often that of a child; we feel small, helpless and dependent – as we were dependent on our parents to see us when we were children. This can intensify our reaction because, in this condition, we do not want our partners to know that we are so vulnerable to them, and that they have so much power over us. This can intensify the blaming and may include denial – “Nothing is wrong with me. Why did you do what YOU did?”
Some of us can stay stuck in this reactivity for days, weeks, months – even years. Relationships can be ended. The need to be seen is such a sensitive place, and it is a key dynamic invisibly shaping our relationships with our partners.