Aaron Doughty leads a mirror-work exercise where participants repeat self-love affirmations to confront rejection and embrace their weirdness. The intense emotions that arise during the practice are described as gold, and the facilitator encourages staying with vulnerability rather than shutting down.
What's wrong with being weird?
Rejection from others.
How many of you have ever done mirror work? Yes, very powerful. When you're looking at yourself in the mirror, your own energy is being reflected back at you, and this is where you're able to connect to not only you but also the other past parts of you that maybe in the past didn't feel accepted. What is something you would say to yourself, the thing that you wanted to hear, and everyone else?
I love you, sweetheart. You're so loved. You're so loved.
That emotion that's coming up right now, that's powerful gold. You could feel it. That emotion comes up and it's like, I'm gonna stop here. But the key is to just keep having the courage and the vulnerability to feel into that.
I love you. I love you.
Give her a hand. So what was coming up for you? In that moment when you were feeling that emotion come up?
I feel safe and loved, and I think feeling loved makes me cry.
Is it a good cry? Of course, yes. Yeah. The deeper we go inside of ourselves and the more we start to feel safe, what happens is this energy can come up to be expressed. Because in the past, whether you look in the mirror or not, or been around people that accept you, there's like this acceptance that's coming inside of you.
