00:00:00 Shreya: Have you ever met someone and felt weirdly exposed? Like they didn't do anything wrong? It's something in you later. Maybe that's not a coincidence. Maybe it's a mirror. Today we are exploring how people reflect our inner world, our patterns, our healing, our soul's journey, and what to do with what we see.

00:00:28 Shreya: Welcome back to the podcast, the space where we get curious about the patterns we live inside and the truth they are trying to show us. I'm your host, Shreya, and today I'm joined by Louis Brandmeier, a dating coach and entrepreneur who helps people create deeper relationships and build heart led lives with more honesty, ease, and connection. Our topic is how is everyone mirroring our soul and its journey. By the end of this episode, you will have a language for what mirrors actually are, how to spot them in real time, and how to use relationship without spiraling like a path back to yourself. Welcome, Louis. I'm honored to have you on my show.

00:01:13 Louis Brantmeyer: Oh thank you. I'm honored to be here.

00:01:16 Shreya: And like Louis, when you hear the phrase people are mirrors. What is the first real time moment that comes to mind for you? Something that made you go, oh, this is definitely about me too.

00:01:32 Louis Brantmeyer: Oh my goodness, I've had so many moments like that. Um, I legitimately had a experience of basically how I teach it is we go where we live emotionally and we use our environment to get us there. So we manifest our reality with our subconscious beliefs. Not everything. Like I'm not manifesting the war in Gaza or international law or local policy in Mumbai. But we manifest whatever's in front of us, like anything that's in front of me in my life a partnership, a relationship, a difficult experience at work. Um, you know, car trouble, whatever. I'm creating it. I'm responsible for it, and I have the opportunity to change it. But until we make what is unconscious conscious, the outer world will rule our lives and we will call it fate. That was Carl Jung. So, you know, the experience of love doesn't come from people. It comes through people when we tune to it. Just like abuse actually doesn't come from people, it comes through people when we tune to it. We go where it's familiar and comfortable to our subconscious mind, because our subconscious mind wants more of what we've experienced in the past, even if it was dysfunctional, disempowering, not our ideal, because it knows we can survive that. So, you know, in order for us to stop experiencing stuff that we don't want in partnership or in our experience of life, we got to stop trying to shave the mustache off the mirror. So if we look ourselves in the mirror and we see a mustache Shaving the mustache off the mirror isn't going to work. It's just not going to disappear. But if we shave the mustache off our actual self, we do the work internally to address whatever we're holding onto, whatever we're manifesting. Then our external world will follow suit. So it appears without though it is within. And if we address and get responsible for whatever we haven't felt or dealt with internally, what becomes available to us is a life unlike anything we've ever imagined. And I'm a living example of this. The more I do the work of digging up the weeds in my subconscious mind, the more I can plant seeds and have beautiful fruits and amazing flowers. In terms of results and finances, or in relationships or sex and intimacy, whatever, right? So we're not here in life to feel happy. We're here to feel fully whatever we haven't felt that we've repressed, suppressed, avoided, packed and stacked. And once we do that, then we get to feel happier than we might have ever felt previously because we're no longer holding on to stuff. So the whole model of the mirror, it shows us where our thoughts are at. It shows us what we believe about ourselves. It shows us what we're holding on to. Does that make sense? I know that was a lot.

00:04:45 Shreya: Yes, definitely. I love that because I think it frames mirroring as lived experience and not just a spiral idea.

00:04:55 Louis Brantmeyer: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

00:04:59 Shreya: And a lot of people here, everyone is mirroring you and it can sound like everything is your fault or even like other people's are not real. So what is the biggest misconception people carry about mirroring and what's a healthier way to understand it.

00:05:18 Louis Brantmeyer: Oh my goodness. Yeah. So the world is not my wishbone. What I mean by that is like there are other people. Yeah. There may be a model through which I can look at them as the result of my subconscious mind, or as an outpicturing of my feeling about myself, like a great example. When I was, um, like I grew up socially awkward, anxious, introverted, diagnosed with autism, I had a lot of trouble regulating my emotions, relating to other people. And in my mind at the time, subconsciously I believed, all right, well, if I don't have love or sex, then I'm worthless and there's something wrong. So that lit a fire under me, and I worked my butt off to get dates, to get relationships to to get laid back before I had the emotional intelligence and the spiritual awareness to know, oh, I'm trying to solve an internal problem with an external solution. So during that time, I look back at the quality of partners and relationships that I was experiencing. And they were wounded, traumatized people who were using the relationship in the same way that I was to avoid their own internal pain, and paradoxically, also trying to solve their internal pain by acquiring some external reward or some external condition. And it didn't, it didn't work. It doesn't work. It's, it's, it's like it's insane. Most people trying to achieve a different result by doing the same things over and over. And that's the definition of insanity. So, you know, until we look within, until we deal with what's within, we're going to keep getting the same results outside. And then we're going to wonder, well, is my picker broken or am I just I picked the wrong people. Well, it's not broken. It's giving you what it knows. And what we know is based on where we've been, where we've been stuck, what we've been dealing with. Does that make sense?

00:07:29 Shreya: Yes, definitely. I think that distinction really matters because Mira is not a blame. I think it's information. I think it's a feedback about what's alive in us.

00:07:41 Louis Brantmeyer: Exactly what where are we in consciousness?

00:07:47 Shreya: Yes. And let's deal with that deeper layer. So like when someone triggers us like jealousy, defensiveness, feeling not chosen, uh, what tends to be underneath that in your experience? Is it unmet needs or identity wounds, fear of abandonment? What do you see the most?

00:08:09 Louis Brantmeyer: Yeah, there's a whole world here. So Let's speak in terms of general themes and then we'll go to specific specificities. Um, perception is projection. So most of the time, most of the people who are relating to you are relating to you through their stories about themselves. And thus it becomes easier for them to believe of you. What they may already believe about themselves. And so like, if I, uh, manifest or create someone who's mirroring back anger at me, I'll give you a really particular example. I, um, my dad beat the crap out of my mom until she was bleeding, dying while pregnant with my little brother. And I grew up feeling unsafe. I grew up feeling as if I needed to. Chess master and, uh, smarts my way through life just in order to survive. And so I was carrying all this pain and all this anger, all this rage within me. And like fear, fear and terror. And so, you know, if you squeeze a lemon, what comes out?

00:09:30 Shreya: The lemons are not actually water, are they?

00:09:37 Louis Brantmeyer: Like lemon juice, right? And if you squeeze an orange, it's orange juice. So if you somebody who's in pain, pain comes out. Yeah. So what most people are doing is, as I said, they're, they're going where they're already living emotionally and they're using someone else to do it. Imagine somebody walks up to you and they shake your hand. And when you go to grasp their hand, they pull back because they're in a lot of pain, because they've got splinters in their hand. Now most people, they blame their external world for what's going on. They're like, oh, you hurt me. How dare you? You're a bad person. And then they judge you or they reject you. They react to you. Whatever. But in this model of the mirror, we we bring attention to any pain. Any time I'm experiencing something other than peace, love, and joy inside me. I can take on the frame and the model to believe that I'm in pain because of a lie, a delusion, an illusion, or a trauma inside of me. I have an address that I was unaware of and thank God that person triggered me because hey, guess what? I now get to take the route of how I used them to trigger myself, of how I manifested the trigger through them. So going back to the example of like, my dad beat my mom and I was walking around and so mom, He wasn't fully available for the secure attachment, the intimacy, the nutrition that I needed, and I was looking for when I was younger. She was walking around with trauma and she was raising two kids on a single parents, uh, you know, salary. And so she was actually working sometimes four and five jobs, something crazy like that. So I felt unsafe. And when she was unavailable for connection. I felt an experience of abandonment, of rail, of like, what? Where is my mom? And so I grew to expect that. And I grew to manifest that through other people. So relationships, they would the woman, my partner wouldn't show up in communication the way that I was attached to or expecting. And I get pissed off. I get loud, obnoxious, aggressive, I get righteous, I get entitled because of how much pain I was experiencing inside of me. When they wouldn't pay attention to me. Just like mommy, right? So they were reflecting back to me. They were mirroring me. Whether they knew it like it, agreed with it, intended it or not. My own experience of my flavor, of what I hadn't dealt with yet internally until I started to release that resistance, to release that attachment to them showing up in a particular way. I started to release that need, that that judgment on them and started to look, you know? Oh, I shook your hand. And I've got I've actually got splinters in my own hand. So that's the sense in which I, I see and a very palpable personal example for me of, um, this mirror thing really working well, because coming to the other side of that, I no longer had to blame these people on the outside. I got to deal with what was on the inside. Does that make sense?

00:13:10 Shreya: Yes. Like what I'm hearing, uh, is the mirror doesn't create the wound. It reveals it, and it gives us a chance to meet it with one, like a more honesty than we usually do.

00:13:26 Louis Brantmeyer: Yeah, one hundred percent.

00:13:30 Shreya: And, uh, like you work with successful professional men, often men who are competent in life, but relationships feel confusing or heavy. So how does mirroring show up specifically in dating and intimacy, like in patterns around teasing, pulling away performance or trying to get it right?

00:13:55 Louis Brantmeyer: Oh my goodness. Well, again, in the same way that I've been talking about, like people tend to attract and choose to be in relationships with people who treat them the way that they subconsciously expect to be treated. And ironically, then they complain about how those people treat them. If somebody really believes that no matter what they do, they're not good enough, then they're going to choose somebody, generally speaking, who confirms that about them, who reinforces that belief. So no matter what they do, it's not going to be good enough for that person, right?

00:14:39 Shreya: Yes. And that brings up something really important. And also, uh, okay, say the listener is, uh, in right now. They they are triggered. Maybe they are activated. Replaying text, overthinking, feeling rejected. What is a practical way to work with the mirror in the moment? So it becomes like growth and not as self attack.

00:15:06 Louis Brantmeyer: Oh my goodness. This is great because um, the real solution is to take a cosmic view. And what I mean by that is like, okay, I'm triggered. So first of all, what I, what I get to do is notice that I'm triggered. Where is the trigger? It's inside me. It's not, it's not that in them. It's something that happened that's happening in me that in fact would have happened in me with someone else, even if, um, this person didn't show up. So, uh, I have a grace and I have a gift. So now that I'm maybe breathing and feeling into that trigger, noticing the body sensations, noticing the thoughts, I'm no longer the slave to those thoughts. Whatever it is that I see and perceive in me is not actually me. We're always more other than and beyond our thoughts and feelings. We're the awareness of those things. So if we can take that cosmic view, step back, we can notice the machinery and the automaticity, the autopilot in operation, and we can put distance between stimulus and response instead of reacting with an unkind word or a judgment or a snap, we can say, oh, I see that I'm triggered. I'm not coming from love or compassion right now. I'm not home. My nervous system is hijacked. Let me step back and say, hey, I'm sorry. I can't actually engage with you around this right now. I, I get to go take care of what's inside of me so I can be a clear space to receive your communications and to engage with you from love. We call this the conscious pause. So if you're consciously pausing the action, it's like pause on a video game, right? Like the level's a little too hard right now. I'm going to pause. I'm going to go take a take a nap, get a get a meal, whatever, come back and re-engage. And you know, of course, what really works is to equip your partner with the awareness that, hey, we may do this from time to time. Like so they don't take your, your pausing personally, right? And then once you've paused, what do you do? Well, you dig out the weed. What do I mean by that? Well, I have a breakthrough chair, and I've conditioned myself to. Anytime I'm experiencing something other than peace, love and joy and I had to do it. Actually thirty minutes or within about twenty, twenty five minutes before this, um, this podcast, because something really got me triggered, got me pissed off and I was like, alright, well, I want to be coming from love when I, when I go into this conversation, I want to be as clean in my energy as possible and I want to be like focused. And so I sat down and I, and I released resistance. This is a very particular process you can do to release resistance to whatever's going on inside of you. And, um, you know, if somebody is interested in that process, I'm happy to give them access to share with them, train them in it. So, you know, I sit down, I release, I release my judgment on the people who triggered me, quote unquote. Right? Because if you're pointing a finger at somebody, you got three fingers pointing back at you. So if you judge someone, What you resist persists. What you resist actually owns you. So, you know, the job is the opportunity is stop resisting through judgment and stop drinking the poison, thinking someone else is going to suffer. Like when we judge others, we're like, oh yeah, they're the ones that's bad and wrong, but we're the ones, you know, walking around feeling bad because of whatever they did or didn't do. I sit on my breakthrough chair, I release resistance, I let go of my judgment. Sometimes if it's particularly heavy for me, I'll watch a video that gets me back into my heart. Maybe I'll cry and feel. And then when I come to the other side of that, then when I'm clear and have let go, and sometimes it might even be an even deeper process, by the way, a breakthrough process, right? I go back into the original memory of, you know, whatever it was that was most painful for me that led to the belief and the feeling that was stuck in me, that's manifesting this experience. And that could take a little longer. You know, the release resistance is like five or ten minutes maybe. The breakthrough process that can be, you know, twenty, thirty minutes, an hour. But I do it until it's done. Like I sit in that chair until the battle is won, until I've got my victory and I've got a life where I can do that, right? Like I'm not in a nine to five. I'm a coach, I'm an entrepreneur. But, um, there's a certain kind of flexibility and freedom in your schedule. But even if you're not like experiencing that in your life, you can tag it and notice it like, all right, I got this thing going on. I'll come back to this later on. I'll come back to this after work or after this meeting, I'll go sit in my chair and I'll feel into it. And you know, even if you don't have the release resistance or the, um, you know, healing and release processes, you can just be with what's there. And most people they're running away from sensations. At most they're touching what's there and they're running. But if you can touch it, stay with what's there. If you can literally just be present to whatever physical pain or suffering is going on in your nervous system, in your body and bring full attention to it. In Buddhist meditation, we know that mindfulness and equanimity is magic. Mindfulness is being precise in your awareness and like putting your attention on something in a very specific way. And then equanimity is not resisting it. Again, whatever you resist persists. But whatever you can allow, you gain power with. And whatever you allow and choose not to resist, so much becomes possible. It may shift and change on its own, and it may move from your nervous system. And I'm now also like learning qigong and, um, like becoming certified as a teacher in that because there's other ways you can literally move energy through and out of your system, at which point you get to return to your birthright of bliss, peace, love, and joy, and you become much more skilled, capable, and available for dealing with that other person who is mirroring back to you or triggering you, or causing some hijack in you in a way that's like grounded and sensitive and compassionate and considerate. Anyway, I know I threw a lot at you, but hopefully this will help your listeners when when something's getting mirrored back that they don't want, right?

00:21:58 Shreya: Yes, definitely. And this is so helpful. Thank you for sharing this with my listeners. And this is again, a very wonderful, very insightful conversation. I think whenever I sit with you, I think this, uh, your work words just make the conversation more useful, more beautiful and just brings a warmth. And if after this, my listeners want to connect with you, then what's the best way?

00:22:24 Louis Brantmeyer: Yeah. If they want more of this relationship stuff, I've got a whole compendium, like an encyclopedia. I've been creating their of specific videos and distinctions and points of awareness since September of last year. And it's a small but growing following. It's a new account compared to my other work, but that'll be the best place for them to get a little mini dose of like a minute or less per day. Uh, every day stuff that will shift their perspective and support them in their healing, their transformation, their souls, um, journey. And then ideally their relationships, because it's all about relationship, everything. Like everybody wants a better relationship or be in a relationship or to be more satisfied with whatever relationships they're in. And I think that's the best leverage we have for this model of the soul mirroring things. And the best place to start to play with it because it isn't just, oh, you know, I only have this type of, um, car or whatever because I, it's a mirror of my beliefs. Like I have these types of interactions today that I'm experiencing from these people. So, so it becomes a much more palpable place to play. And, uh, yeah, so follow me on TikTok. I'm just Louis Meyer there. I'm the only one that I know with that name. So you can search my name on Facebook. My dad is actually on there. So, so that's why I say I'm the only one on here with my name.

00:23:59 Shreya: Yes. And I will make sure to attach all these details and links below so that the listeners can find it easily and get in touch with you and know more from you because your work is really amazing. And for my listeners, if this conversation starts something in you, don't rush past it. Maybe journal one moment this week where you felt triggered and ask, what is this trying to show me about what I still need. And if you want more honest conversation like this about patterns, feelings, and the inner work we don't always have words for. Then follow the Soul Mirror podcast. We were here every week, holding space for the messy middle and helping you find meaning without losing yourself in it. Until next time, be gentle with your heart and do not forget to hit the follow button to subscribe. And feel free to share your thoughts because your ears deserve premium content. Thank you.