Alessandro Carmelita
28 October 2026
The first mirror we encounter is not made of glass.
Long before we recognise our own reflection, we begin discovering who we are through the eyes of others. A mother’s smile. A father’s disappointment. The warmth of being welcomed. The discomfort of feeling that something about us is unacceptable.
These experiences can become part of the way we look at ourselves. And the people who first taught us how to see ourselves were once children learning to see themselves through someone else’s eyes. Our relationship with our reflection may carry a history that began long before we were born.
When someone else’s gaze becomes our own
Imagine a little girl watching her mother get ready in front of a mirror. Her mother studies the lines around her eyes and sighs. Perhaps she criticises her weight or the signs of ageing. The girl hears the words, but she also witnesses something less obvious: the emotional relationship her mother has with her own image.
Years later, standing in front of another mirror, she may experience a strangely familiar dissatisfaction. Nobody needs to tell her where to look for flaws. She has learned.
Or consider a boy whose mistakes are repeatedly met with disappointment. He becomes an accomplished adult, admired by colleagues and friends. Yet every achievement brings only temporary relief. Every imperfection feels like exposure. He no longer needs his father’s critical gaze. He has learned to reproduce it himself.
These are possible pathways, not inevitable destinies. Temperament, friendships, culture and later relationships matter. Still, the psychological significance is striking: sometimes the harshest voice inside us does not feel entirely our own.
The invisible inheritance
We think of inheritance as possessions, traditions and family stories. But emotional patterns can travel between generations too. A parent who learned that love depends on achievement may unintentionally communicate the same expectation to a child. Someone raised amid criticism may find it difficult to offer themselves compassion.
Eventually, these patterns can feel so familiar that we mistake them for personality. “I’ve always been hard on myself,” we say. But have we? Or have we grown accustomed to a particular way of being seen?
Here self-awareness can become self-surveillance. Instead of noticing how we feel, we monitor how we perform. Instead of taking part in a conversation, we assess how we appeared. We become both the person living our life and the person judging it.
What the mirror cannot tell us
A mirror can reflect a face. It cannot determine whether we deserve love, whether we have disappointed someone or whether we are good enough. Those meanings come from elsewhere. Yet we may approach our reflection as though it can deliver a verdict.
This question informs Mindful Interbeing Mirror Therapy, which I co-created with Marina Cirio: what might become possible if a person could look at their reflection without automatically repeating an old judgement? Not through forced positivity, but through a carefully supported encounter with the feelings that arise. The approach’s therapeutic possibilities require further scientific investigation, especially where trauma or dissociation are involved.
Discovering that our way of judging ourselves was learned does not erase the past. But it may loosen its authority. What has been learned can be questioned. What has been repeated can be interrupted. What has been inherited need not be passed on.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing we can discover in a mirror is not who we are, but how we have learned to see ourselves.
And perhaps freedom begins when we realise that we do not have to keep looking through the same eyes.
