Will she mirror everyone.

[mitchell16]

Ive been thinking back to the end of beginning of the relationship and also the end. I know she mirrored me in the beginning. But do they mirror people they are not in a relationship with or even someone they are not intimate with. During the last few weeks of our relationship we went out with anothe couple. The female in teh relationship is someone my ex has become friends with at work and even after work. While eating with this couple the girlfriend started telling her boyfriend that he had terrible table manners. and called him out on it. My ex later told me how she shouldnt have done that that was embarrassing for him and how it must have made him feel bad. which I agree. about a week later me and my ex were eating and she started putting me down for my eating habits. We had been togther for over 2 years I have never had or have had anyone say I bad manners. in teh two years she has never said a word aboutmy eating habits until that happened.

other incidents she has a older female friend who she looks up to almost as a surrogate mother. This women is always insulting her husband for various things she does it in public in front of him adn even when he is not around. I noticed that when we get around this women my exBPD would start trying to do me the same things.

Do they also mirror people that they are not intimate with? just curious.

[Learning_curve74]

My BPDex mirrored a lot of people. I think it was a survival strategy she learned growing up, also a way to try to find identity. She could do a total 180 depending on who she was around. I saw glimpses of how exhausting it was for her to try and mirror so many different friends and acquaintances though.

[expos]

Ive been thinking back to the end of beginning of the relationship and also the end. I know she mirrored me in the beginning. But do they mirror people they are not in a relationship with or even someone they are not intimate with. During the last few weeks of our relationship we went out with anothe couple. The female in teh relationship is someone my ex has become friends with at work and even after work. While eating with this couple the girlfriend started telling her boyfriend that he had terrible table manners. and called him out on it. My ex later told me how she shouldnt have done that that was embarrassing for him and how it must have made him feel bad. which I agree. about a week later me and my ex were eating and she started putting me down for my eating habits. We had been togther for over 2 years I have never had or have had anyone say I bad manners. in teh two years she has never said a word aboutmy eating habits until that happened.

other incidents she has a older female friend who she looks up to almost as a surrogate mother. This women is always insulting her husband for various things she does it in public in front of him adn even when he is not around. I noticed that when we get around this women my exBPD would start trying to do me the same things.

Do they also mirror people that they are not intimate with? just curious.

Yes.  My ex used to mimic the voice, mannerisms, and dialect of a woman (her name was Amy) she became friends with before she met me.  She would talk normally around me, and they flip to "Amy-mode" whenever Amy would come around.  I found it somewhat annoying, but never called her out on it.

Also, I came to realize the my ex would also mimic how her mother treated her father.  They would fight in front of us (and I would cringe) using raised, taunting, snotty remarks, and I came to realize that this was how my ex-wife was treating me.  Her mother serving as the role model.

She would also mirror partners.  She used to smoke and drink because one of her exes did.  She also picked up mountain biking (very briefly) because another did.  Her newest boyfriend (I heard) is brash, pushy, and sort of a jerk, and I believe she is mirroring him whenever she has to deal with me.  

Oddly enough, she never mirrored me.  She never picked up my hobbies, or interests, etc.

[Clearmind]

My ex mirrored those close to him and was always in conflict with those that were not so close (e.g. work colleagues etc).

BPDs mirror because they have no sense of self. Chameleon like is the best way I could describe my ex - he would switch depending on who he was around - which is the reason why I never felt close to him. I had no idea who he was.

Mirroring also created the idealization phase - believe it or not we also mirrored. I became someone else in my relationship. Its no wonder I was a lost soul after we broke up. I no longer knew who I was.

[Mutt]

I didn't get it at the time but my uBPDxw mirrored me in my interests and I remember one friend that she mirrored. She would use the same inflections, gestures and mannerisms as her friend. It was something else to see when they were together. She painted the friend black and gave some lame excuse as to why and blamed her. The mirroring of that friend lasted for sometime after she painted her friend black and finally it stopped. I had no clue she was mirroring, but I couldn't stand it at the time, because it wasn't her personality and she was faking someone else.

[Bach Cantatas]

My ex mirrored those close to him and was always in conflict with those that were not so close (e.g. work colleagues etc).

BPDs mirror because they have no sense of self. Chameleon like is the best way I could describe my ex - he would switch depending on who he was around - which is the reason why I never felt close to him. I had no idea who he was.

Mirroring also created the idealization phase - believe it or not we also mirrored. I became someone else in my relationship. Its no wonder I was a lost soul after we broke up. I no longer knew who I was.

Your post has really struck home with me. My ex also mirrored those close to her and also those whom she felt would be of use E.G. her boss and asking to follow / be followed by her on Twitter, yet she to was often in conflict with subordinates. Knowing how am not particularly materialistic, I recall her telling me how she was not that way inclined either, despite using Chanel No 5 and the most expensive clothing and underwear (when she wasn`t engaged in massages, Spa Hotel retreats and holidaying in the farthest flung places on earth! LOL.) She even mirrored my religious beliefs until near the end !

I too became someone else in my relationship as I mirrored her (particularly relating to her morality and ability to reconcile my conflicting innate views on many things) As I look back now after four and a half months NC, I find much of what happened over the four years we were together was surreal! This is such a fascinating topic !

[mitchell16]

this topic has always been something that has struck me, sorta odd. So i guess it still sticks in my mind. I know in the early stages of a relationship with anybody we all mirror i guess to a certain extent. we put our best foot forward, until we get comfortable in the relationship and our true character comes out. This I consider normal and accept it for the most part because I consider this normal and i have done it myself.

But to mimic people is not what i consider normal. With  myexBPD I didnt relaize she was doing it, I thought wow I found my dream partner. Any other time my radar would have been up for bs. But she caught me at a very emotional time in my life. But I remember now thinking back some of her behavior was strange. I watched her with her best friend that acts like a mother to her. When we was around this friend she took on this friends talk, actions and habits. Later when we wasnt around this person she would drop the act. I started noticing this behavior around other people she was involved with co workers, her female boss. I never saw her do it with her family. with me when first started dating, she told me she was a christian, wow me too. She wanted to travel the world, i thought wow, me too. everything I had did she in my life she found interesting. later her religuos beliefs went from christian to her self decribed spiritual person with no concrete beliefs. She started critzing things I had did before us. women I dated, former ways i had dressed, tattoos etc.

whats ironic or strange is she is now best friends with a much younger female co worker. She is starting to do exactley the same things to this person that the older women that is her surrogate mother does to her. The older women treats her like she is her teenage daughter, tells her when to put lipstick on, tells her to wash her hands after using the restroom ( not kidding) tells her how to dress, what to do in her relationships. very weired for women in their late forties and sixties. But i started seeing her do this with they younger co worker when I was around them. She started telling her she needed to get out her relationship, I saw the younger co worker change her dressing habits to match my exBPDgf, hair style changed, very strange behavior.

[Mirdin]

In short, BPD's wear masks for people they know as in behave like a nice person, be great friends etc. They can only mirror people like those they get close to as in partners.

Mirroring is esentially the "throw the anchor" point, where they hold you down and start clinging. For others, they use masks, masks they learned growing up, they have a mask for almost every situation, if not, they improvise rather well, they are who they need to be at that very time, they never show themselves as their personality is inexistent, they "borrow" other personalities they met, saw, read about, from which the masks come from. The mirror is their "loved" one

[topknot]

Once you see it for what it is, you can readily identify it. The wonderful girl who could do no wrong before my ex and I were together had a Harley. So my ex HAD to have one too. I never qualified to be a passenger because I infringed on that whole mirroring thing between him and her, even though they were "supposedly" done. Miss Harley got married, and now my ex is mirroring her new husband! They both have the same beard mustache thing going, the same hair style... he always looks like a different person depending on who he associates with. It seems like so much work to me to live that way...

[ucmeicu2]

The mirror is their "loved" one

if you mean the mirror on the wall i say amen to that.  my xBPDgf spent so much time in the mirror.  she did "mirror work" ~ some psychology method of talking to yourself in the mirror. 

and the pics?  goodness, she took so many of her own pics (selfies), 99% in the mirror (so she could closely monitor her pose/position/facial expression.  she would review the pics immediately, wherever she went whatever she was doing, and instantly delete the ones she didn't like ie the ones that weren't as flattering as she needed them to be.  and then as soon as she could she would send them to people  on her phone (ex's and replacement interviewees?) and post them on facebook.  she changed her profile pic on FB constantly.

funny thing?  she had so many different "looks".  especially her 8 or 9 DUI mugshots that are online - it's creepy if you didn't know her good i bet you couldn't tell it was all the same person.  some of it can be chalked up to rapid weight fluctuation from anamia (anorexia and bulimia) but also just i dont know a different look in her eyes, almost like she was possessed.  or maybe that's just what DRUNK looks like.   

icu2

[sadinnc98]

Yes... and I noticed many times he would echo things that I did-sounds, facial expressions, movements, etc... . I noticed it early on and found it very odd, but that is before I knew about the BPD and figured out what was going on.

I also noticed he sometimes would talk in this weird, child-like voice... very strange coming out of 6'4, 250 lb man... it was very odd and I always wondered what was behind that.

[Scout99]

Mirroring is part of all interactions with people to a certain degree... . But there is an adult form and there is a childlike form, and the form of mirroring occurring with our BPD partners is usually more reminiscent of the child like form and therefore also contain more mimicking, imitation and also carry traits of model learning... .

We mirror because we want to feel identification with each other. Especially with people we like or look up to.

It is in childhood the most powerful learning tool, and then we do all the things, mirroring, imitating, mimicking and learn from our models who usually are our parents... . This is usually the reason we end up somewhat like our parents wether we like it or not... .

My best friends daughter who is six and with whom I play a lot does it all the time... . She does however not just mimic me, but it can be things she watches on tv or something else she has seen or experienced. For a long while she played the same fairy tale story with her Barbie dolls, but all of a sudden she wanted to play a subway coordination leader?

And I was her employee... . She was this really bossy kind of leader calling out orders from her little cash register microphone that sounded just as raspy as calls out in a train station sounds... . I was dumbfounded by the elaborateness of her role playing, and I could hear her mom from another room giggling a bit while we were playing... .

After a while she came in and she too was very surprised! It turns out they had been watching a documentary about how the subway is run... . And she was imitating the whole thing to a T!

It is through playing games like this a child creates their sense of self... . By trying out different things through mirroring, imitating and mimicking and model learning. And the more the sense of self develops the less mirroring is needed. But it doesn't end completely!

Athletes often use model learning and imitating of the people who are better than them to become better themselves. And in meeting a potential partner we always engage in mirroring initially too, to try each other out and see if the shoe fits or not... . However the more comfortable we get with our partners the more we reveal ourselves. And thus the relationship also gets tested... . The less secure we are in ourselves the longer we will mirror however... . Non's too that is... .

Now a borderline person has just like Clearmind stated  an underdeveloped sense of self. That means they don't know or don't dare to reveal who they really are, since they most of the time simply don't know... . And mirroring to them therefore becomes a coping strategy. A way to survive and seem normal if you will, in a disordered way... . They are stuck emotionally in a very early stage in life, so many of the traits we see in children can therefore be found in a pw borderline.

They seek acceptance through trying to be like their partner. But since their sense of self is unstable they can't sustain it in the long run... . The traits of the disorder will eventually surface, and the mirroring just like in the example of the table manners becomes very revealing... . Since it to the partner becomes a bit awkward... .

I think it is hard to fully understand what having an unstable sense of self really means, for us non's... . But looking at it through the mirroring gives us at least a glimpse... .

Best Wishes

Scout99