When Silence Takes Shape (Part I): Mirroring and Mindsets

I’ve spent most of my life being told I was wrong.
Wrong for asking questions.
Wrong for how I would explain things to other people.
Wrong for caring too much, talking too much, saying my thoughts out loud.

After a while, it’s hard not to presume that you’re the common denominator. You start policing every instinct before it even formulates into a finished thought. You start walking on eggshells, watching yourself from the outside, like a referee with the whistle already to their lips, just waiting to blow.

That’s what happens when you’ve been corrected more than you’ve been heard—your body starts doing the policing for them.
Every sense turns up to max volume, alarm bells going off in your head at every move, no matter how calculated, how thought-out that move may have been.

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Right and Wrong

Years ago, I dated someone who turned every disagreement into a debate about who was right and who was wrong.

I remember immediately being on the defensive when we would argue, ready to stand my ground and argue my point against his rebuttals. One night, when we were in a heated argument, I hit a ceiling. I was tired of constantly having to prove myself. Constantly having to look for evidence that maybe, just maybe, some of the things that passed over my lips were accurate. In the heat of the moment, I shot back with,

“It’s impossible for you to be right 100% of the time and for me to be wrong 100% of the time.”

He didn’t miss a beat when he said,

“I didn’t say you were wrong 100% of the time. I said you were wrong 100% of the time you disagree with me.”

The only thing that hit me that night was the frustration of always having to bow down and kiss his feet just to end the fight. But a few years after I left him, I realized it was never about the truth.

It was about control—about keeping me small enough that I’d stop trusting the sound of my own thoughts.
That I’d stop trusting that feeling you get in your gut when it’s trying to tell you something.

It was about putting me at war with myself, exhausting me before my next fight with him even began, so that I had no chance at logic or reason.

Because when every feeling becomes a fire drill, they begin to distort the very thing the fire drill was made for.
Each time you hear the alarm but don’t see smoke, it changes your understanding of the alarm altogether.
It transforms it into the boy who cried wolf.

The urgency the alarm was meant to create dissolves more and more each time you hear it and don’t see a fire. So much so that it prevents you from quickly exiting a building that’s actually burning.

After a few years of that, you don’t just begin to lose arguments.
You begin to lose confidence in your perception of reality.

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How It Shows Up Later

The thing about that kind of conditioning is that it doesn’t stop when the relationship ends.
It follows you into conference rooms, grocery aisles, text messages you reread 100 times before even hitting send. And then 100 times more after there’s no taking it back.

It lives in your hesitation.
It’s in the way you double-check your tone before answering a question, the way you hold your breath waiting for someone to tell you that you’ve crossed a line you didn’t know existed.

Even when nobody’s judging you, your brain fills the silence with ghosts of people who used to.

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Mistakes and Ownership

At work, a little while back, I made a mistake that affected a transaction. Not because I executed it incorrectly, but because I missed part of a two-step process.

I had just learned to trade securities by lots, a method used in tax-loss harvesting. It was still so new that the process of executing the trade request felt delicate. I was so hyper-focused on getting step one of the request perfect that step two slipped through the cracks altogether.

When a manager brought it to my attention, she said,

“I’m worried about your process. If your process isn’t airtight, you’ll keep making mistakes.”

She meant it as a learning opportunity, not as an attack. But it hit like a gut punch when the words landed. I immediately started beating myself up out loud over the error. I let that discomfort — the kind that sneaks in when you know you’ve fucked something up — take over completely.

She told me not to beat myself up, not to dwell on it.
And I said,

“No. I have to sit with these feelings. I have to feel the discomfort of the mistake. If I don’t sit with them, I won’t learn anything from it. And I don’t want to make this mistake again.”

And I did sit in it. Long enough for the shame to cool into awareness. And sitting with that discomfort allowed me to take a step back and reevaluate my process so that I could make the necessary changes to it. Ensuring the same error wouldn’t happen again.

And it didn’t.

This interaction taught me something my ex never could: being wrong isn’t proof of inadequacy—it’s data. It’s feedback. It’s growth.

That lesson stuck.
The beauty of that is it’s versatile.

Sometimes I look back on my 100-mile race and feel the same defeat I did the moment I knew I had no other choice but to DNF.
That DNF was one of my greatest failures.
And that was how I perceived it until I realized later that it was also one of my greatest accomplishments.

My failure was data.

So when I carry this new and improved mindset into running, I don’t beat myself up for not reaching the finish line. That first attempt at 100 miles taught me exactly where I fell apart, exactly where my process cracked.
And now, I know what to fix.
I know what to strengthen.
I know how to better prepare for when I go back and try again.

Failure is information. Data. Not identity.

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The Residual Noise

What’s fascinating about the brain is that it’s constantly learning. Constantly rewiring and creating new pathways to improve understanding and cognition.
And while this is a helpful characteristic and a blessing, it’s also in some ways a curse.

Have you ever noticed that when you see someone yawn, you also have the urge to yawn?
This phenomenon is something that’s called mirroring.
It’s the mirror neuron system in the brain that causes you to perform an action when you observe someone else performing that same action. But it goes far deeper than just yawning.

Ever hear the saying, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”?
This is because your environments wire your mindset to mirror whatever you’re exposed to repeatedly.
If you’re around people who constantly tell you you’re wrong?
Eventually, you’ll encompass their beliefs as your own.
The more you expose yourself to negative things and the more those things are reinforced, the more likely it is you’ll wire your mindset to believe them.

And the hardest part?
Once the beliefs are yours, no matter how you remove yourself from the exposure to that toxicity, the residue stays.

It’s in the way my heart speeds up when someone says, “Can we talk?”
It’s in the way I brace for impact after I send an email, half-expecting someone to tell me I overstepped or said something wrong.
It’s in the way I sometimes mistake silence for disapproval.

But I’ve also learned that if the brain can learn the wrong lessons, it can also unlearn them.

I’m learning that this isn’t weakness. It’s muscle memory.
It’s the bridges that were silently being built in my mind while I was distracted by all of the questions that flooded in after the harsh accusations.
When you’ve been taught that safety equals compliance, courage feels like danger. Bravery feels like recklessness.

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What I Know Now

Everyone likes to talk about confidence like it’s this fixed state—something you arrive at after enough therapy, miles, or motivational quotes.
But for me, it’s a muscle built in micro-movements.

It’s catching myself before I apologize for existing.
It’s letting my ideas breathe before I edit them to death.
It’s remembering that everyone is wrong sometimes—including the people who once convinced me I always was.

I’m still learning to take up space without waiting for someone to grant me permission.
I’ve earned every inch I stand on, every word I speak, every mistake I’ve made that taught me how to not make that mistake a second time.

The residue might never go away completely.
But I’m learning to live above it—one uncomfortable, unedited breath at a time.

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Copyright © 2025 Kimberly Beth Thomas. All rights reserved.

💬 Join the Conversation

🌿We’ve all been told to tone it down — our voices, our emotions, our presence. But what if the real problem isn’t being “too much,” it’s that the world’s gotten too comfortable with us being less? 🔥 I want to hear your take: What happens when we stop apologizing and start existing out loud?

Next in the Series: The Reclamation
The silence doesn’t disappear—it transforms. In Part II of the Wiring of Mirrors & Minds Archives, reflection becomes motion, and the lessons carved from pain turn into the architecture of confidence.

2-Part Series: Wiring of Mirrors & Minds Archives: Part 1

**The views expressed in this essay are solely those of the author and are for reflective and educational purposes only. They do not represent the views of any employer or constitute financial, investment, or legal advice.

🔗 Catch up on the series:

👉 When Silence Takes Shape (Part II): The Practice of Belonging