One-Way Glass: Finding the Self We Couldn't See Alone

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?

We know how that story goes. The Evil Queen asks and the mirror answers, telling her who she is, whether she's enough. It's a fairy tale about vanity, supposedly. I've always thought it was about something sadder: a woman who needs something outside herself to tell her she exists.

Many myths are the same. The myth of Narcissus, for example, if you read it closely. He's not in love with himself. He's staring into the water, searching for a self he can never quite reach. He doesn't even recognize that the face looking back is his own.

These are stories about what happens when the mirror fails.

When Pain Looks Like Strength

There's a version of childhood pain that doesn't look like pain at all. It looks like independence, like convincing yourself you don't need anyone. It might look like someone who left home early, who figured things out on their own, or who learned that relying on people was a losing game.

If this resonates, you might not identify with words like "wounded" or "longing." Those words might even make you cringe a little. You're fine. You handled it.

And yet, something brought you here. Maybe it was a relationship that imploded, or the sudden onset of panic attacks. Perhaps a substance stopped working the way it used to. Or, someone used the word "narcissist" about you and it landed wrong, too close to something you fear. Maybe you're just tired in a way you can't explain.

This post is for you. The ones who went opaque, who decided it was safer not to be seen.

The Mirror That Wasn't There

Winnicott wrote that the mother's (caregiver's) face is the infant's first mirror. We look at our caregivers and we see ourselves reflected back. When that reflection is warm, attuned, and consistent, we learn that we exist. That we matter. That we are enough.

What happens, though, when the mirror is blank? Or turned away?

Some children keep reaching. They become the helpful ones, the ones who earn love through performance. They develop what we might call a reaching or preoccupied attachment: always seeking and always trying to get the attunement they missed.

Other children draw a different conclusion. They stop reaching altogether. They decide, somewhere deep in their nervous system, that the problem isn't the mirror. The problem is needing a mirror at all.

This is how you become one-way glass. You stop letting anyone see in. You manage what's shown, control the surface, and keep everything else locked away. At first, this is not conscious and is not a choice. It's an adaptation, just as brilliant and just as costly as people-pleasing. It says: I will handle everything myself, and I will never feel that emptiness or be let-down again.

The Logic of Self-Reliance

Here's the thing: this strategy works. For a while, it works beautifully.

You become competent. You don't wait around for people to show up for you because you already know they won't. You build a life that doesn't depend on anyone. You might even feel a quiet superiority about it. Other people seem so at the mercy of their emotions. You keep it clean. You're free.

Except you're not free. Not really. You're living behind glass, and it gets lonely in there.

The wound doesn't disappear because you stopped acknowledging it. It just goes underground. It shows up as a short temper or as a need to be right. It can be a reflexive contempt for vulnerability, your own most of all. Sometimes it looks like relationships that stay shallow or end abruptly, because depth requires letting someone see through to the other side.

And often, it shows up in the things you use to take the edge off.

Substances and the Empty Mirror

I work with a lot of people in recovery, and I've noticed something. People who present as "I don't need anyone" often have the hardest time getting sober. Not because they're more damaged, but because the entire architecture of recovery (not just from substances) is relational. It asks you to lean on people, to let yourself be helped.

For someone whose whole survival strategy is built on not needing, this feels like death. In a way, it is: a death to the part of you that is trying to do it all on your own. It goes against everything that once kept you safe, until it stopped keeping you safe at all.

Here's what I've come to understand: substances become a way to give yourself what you learned not to ask for from others. A drink lets the glass clear for a moment, lets you feel something without having to be genuinely vulnerable with another person. A drug gives you a reliable hit of regulation—something like comfort or confidence. You don't have to depend on anyone this way. The bottle doesn't disappoint you. The high doesn't leave.

Until it does. Until the thing that was keeping you together starts taking you apart.

What's Underneath the Glass

The word "narcissism" gets thrown around a lot, usually as an insult, especially on social media. In the psychoanalytic sense, narcissistic wounding is something more specific and more sad. It's what happens when a child doesn't receive the amount or type of mirroring they needed to develop a solid sense of self.

When the mirror reflecting you is absent, or when it doesn't match your internal world, you're left building your identity out of fragments. Imagine trying to see yourself in a shattered mirror. You might construct a self that looks impressive from the outside—financially successful, calm, fit, put-together—to try to make the pieces fit. Inside, though, there's a longing that never quite quiets itself. A suspicion that if people really knew you, they'd find nothing there. Or worse, they'd find the thing you've been running from your whole life: the small, hurt part that still wants to be seen and doesn't feel good enough to be found.

The glass isn't the problem. The glass was the solution. It got you through. It was never meant to be permanent, though, and it was never meant to separate you from everyone forever.

A Different Kind of Work

Healing from this kind of wounding doesn't look like "opening up" or "getting vulnerable," at least not at first. Those words probably make your skin crawl. And honestly, a therapist who pushes you toward vulnerability before you're ready doesn't understand the wound. I say this without judgment; I have made this mistake as a practitioner myself.

The work, in my experience, starts smaller. It begins with curiosity. What is the glass protecting? What does your particular version of opacity look and feel like? What happens in your body when someone gets too close? What did you learn, early on, about what happens when you need something from someone?

It means looking at the ways self-reliance has cost you: the relationships that couldn't deepen, the feelings that got numbed, the ways substances or work or sex or control became stand-ins for connection.

And eventually, slowly, it means risking something. Having the courage to let one person see one small thing you normally keep hidden. Tolerating the discomfort of being witnessed. Finding out, maybe for the first time, that needing doesn't always lead to emotional abandonment.

You're Not Broken

I want to be clear about something: the way I see it, there's nothing wrong with you. Going opaque was a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation. You did what you had to do to survive a world that didn't meet your needs.

Survival isn't the same as living, though. And the glass that protected you at eight might be the thing isolating you at thirty-five.

You don't have to become transparent all at once. You don't have to become "soft" or needy or any of the things that feel dangerous. You just have to get curious about what's on the other side. Easier said than done, I know.

The mirror was empty. Or shattered. Or confused. Or inconsistent.

That wasn't your fault.

The Evil Queen kept asking because the mirror was all she had. No one else was telling her she existed, that she mattered. Her tragedy wasn't vanity — it was isolation. Narcissus drowned because he was alone at the water's edge. There was no one to say, "That's you. That's your face. You're real." He kept staring because the water was the only reflection he could find.

The mirror was never going to be enough. It never is. We find ourselves through each other.

You're allowed to look up from the water, the mirror, the bottom of the glass now. You might find a clearer reflection in someone else's eyes.

If You'd Like Support

If this landed somewhere real, and you're wondering what it might look like to work on this stuff, you're welcome to reach out. I specialize in working with adults navigating substance use, relational patterns, and the slow process of learning that needing people doesn't have to be dangerous.

Request an Appointment or contact me to start.