Sometimes we confuse ourselves.

We look at how we react to another person with surprise.

Why did we do that? we may ask ourselves.

For it did not makes in that context.

Or perhaps we meet someone and we immediate like or dislike them.

The was no specific reason why.

Maybe we just felt something.

There could have been something about their mannerisms or their tone of voice.

And there might have been nothing we picked up on that would warrant the kind of reaction we gave them.

So we try to be logical and we try to talk ourselves into liking them or not.

Yet that doesn't work for some reason.

Something about them pulls us in.

Or aggravates us.

Without them even saying a word.

We sense something drawing us towards them, yet that is happening below our level of awareness.

So why is that?

Why are we trying so hard to please them?

Or push them away?

The more we think about it, the more it doesn't make sense.

We sit with the feeling, sometimes for hours until it comes to us.

An answer so surprising, we have a hard time believing it.

Yet the answer clears up all the confusion.

It was never about the other person.

The whole thing was about who they remind us of.

The feeling we would have around these other people.

Perhaps they remind us of a parent, a sibling, or a school bully.

They might even remind us of an old lover, or former spouse.

Whoever it is that they remind us of, that is who we are truly responding to, not the person in front of us.

When this realization comes to us it is important that we have compassion for ourselves.

For that familiar feeling can be so subtle that we an easily miss it.

We can be in the space of reacting to someone based on our feelings for a different person for a long time before we gain clarity.

If we ever get there at all

We rarely see others as they truly.

Our vision of them is a pattern we match to our past.

To whom they are like.

No one else might ever make that connection.

Yet we do.

It is a connection of energy, not a connection of looks or sounds.

To our unconscious, we are just like this other person we had an experience with before.

So they frighten us, calm us, agitate us, or appeal to us because of an energy we match to a past experience.

Which make sit completely understandable that we reacted the way we did.

The important thing is once we manage to have this revelation, we can be more conscious about our choices around them.

We can look at them from their own merits and not from some phantom memory.

Rarely do we ever see someone for who they truly are when they are in front of us.

When we can recognize what our mind's bias is, then we can decide for ourselves if it accurate or not.

And then we can see them for who they really are.

Do you have someone in your life who reminds of someone else?

Can you recognize how your behaviors around them might not be based on who they truly are?

~ Sam Liebowitz, The Conscious Consultant

Host of The Conscious Consultant Hour

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