Mirroring, when used as a psychology term, tends to have a very specific connotation, definition, and meaning.
While mirroring another person’s body postures, speech patterns, or mannerisms is likely to happen when and if two people talking actually like or care about one another, when a Cluster B person uses the bonding technique their goal is always to foster comfort and trust in a targeted mark or Narcissistic Abuse victim unlikely to be aware they are being conned or manipulated.
Mirroring is a communication strategy that can be consciously used to set other people at ease when two or more people are talking.
When an Empath mirrors, they are likely to do so with the intent of making the person they are speaking with more comfortable.
A healthy, neurotypical person will also tend to mirror a person they like or feel drawn to, motivated by the subconscious desire to show body language that sets both parties at ease.
But…
And here’s where the problem starts.
Machiavellian people such as the folks who wrote the “Machiavellian Guide to Womanizing” and the flip side of the coin self-help companion for the women called “The Rules” use mirroring as a conversational habit and technique; it is used as a Narcissistic Abuse tactic.
Bottom line, when used to con and manipulate other people’s trust and emotions with the self-promoting intent to manipulate, con, and ultimately to do harm, the HSP skill is nothing more than a social abuse tactic.
When someone subconsciously imitates the gestures, obvious speech pattern, or attitude of another because they are kind, loving, and prone to entraining, one might expect to see a pro-social result for both the person being mirrored as well as in the person who is biologically as well as emotionally connecting.
Mirroring occurs in many social situations to some degree, particularly between people who are close friends or family. For instance, when siblings get together after being apart for some time, they might revert to behavior patterns they actively engaged in when they were younger with or without realizing they are emulating the other(s).
As an abuse tactic used by a disingenuous person, the ‘Love Fraud’ style con artist is fully conscious of their intent to manipulate. In the hopes of gaining a targeted mark’s trust in order to use them as a Narcissistic Supply source, they will gaslight and literally use acting skills taught in any local community theater class to observe the movements and thought patterns of the person that they are malevolently striving to deliberately copycat.
Mirroring, when innocent, reflects the subconscious replication of another person’s speech patterns, emotional behaviors, and comprehensive nonverbal signals.
When malicious, it is actually one of the most effective, emotionally and psychologically abusive of all the abuse tactics.
Why?
Because Cluster B people striving to win the trust and social affection of targeted victims mislead people into not only believing they — the pathological and manipulative liars — are not simply trustworthy, but also that they genuinely like, care for, or in some way resemble the personality type of the people they con.
When a Love Fraud predator love bombs, they use mirroring techniques to trick their abuse victim into believing they are liked, loved, and cared about personally.
The predator will ask a series of random questions (typically) while seeming to be avidly interested in what their marks are saying. They are interested — just not for the same reason why the victim suspects.
You see, the Love Fraud con artists will ask deeply personal or psychological questions that tend to reveal the SUBCONSCIOUS thought patterns of the person to whom they are actively attention-seeking from while they are sizing them up for future use and other nefarious purposes.
The Flim-Flam-Man style of con artist is prone to doing the same thing. They will probe to find out what causes a business pro to make a deal, to inspire them to produce or connect, and to see what they can say or offer them in order to motivate them to buy a product, socially endorse them with a vote, or to trick them into being recruited as a Flying Monkey.
In the case of romantic deception, the victim believes they met their twin flame or soul mate. If they reveal any vulnerability, the predator will use it to first inflate their ego in a way that seems loving — but later they will use that same information to foster in the victim a profound sense of devaluation and insecurity.
In the case of a professional or civic deception? You end up doing silly things like hiring a Dark Triad to run your company.
But in both cases, the perpetrator of the con dupes people into believing they are an imaginary character — one they make up on the spot as an acting persona in order to trick the person they seek to socially acquire into believing that they are just like them.
Here’s a hint — if a Cluster B person’s lips are moving, they are probably lying.
If they name call, lie, and behave abusively in order to self-promote or to self-soothe, understand they only things they say that are less true than the ad hominem attacks they tend to make on other people’s personal character (accusing emotionally intelligent and neurotypical people of having Cluster B core values and being as criminal or duplicitous as they are by nature) are the things they say when being manipulative.
Ask any woman in the First Wives Club about how they felt the first time they heard their Love Fraud predator use the identical catchphrases and romantic hoovering lines on one of their mistresses or the next future ex-missus.
What most will tell you is this…
People who mirror to con money, personal favors, and sex out of kind people by pretending to be just like them are deplorable human beings. But more than that, they are some of the world’s most socially and emotionally destructive Abusers.
Resist the urge to fall for any person or peer group who uses love-bombing tactics while striving to mirror. If you are NOT a socially competitive, egocentric, abusive person prone to violence and impulse-driven patterns of addictions to hyper-adrenalizing behavior, the person who’s play-acting a person they HOPE will be seen as your emotionally attractive romantic twin is nothing like you whatsoever.
