Narcissistic Mirroring:

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Narcissistic mirroring is a defense strategy,unconscious or conscious, used by narcissists to create a false sense of connection with others to avoid negative feelings or situations that threaten their self-worth. In contrast to healthy mirroring (building rapport and connection and showing genuine empathy), narcissistic mirroring is emotional manipulation and deceit to avoid rejection (showing their true self might lead to rejection), gain control (through manipulated trust), and maintain grandiosity (victim’s love and attention feeds narcissistic supply or inflated ego needs so they don’t feel inadequate). Mirroring involves reflecting and imitating their “victim’s” emotions, behaviors, body language, or interests to win their affection, trust, and idealization. Only through conscious effort can the narcissist to stop their hateful behavior and not develop character traits, like being hypercritical, vindictive, angry, showing disdain, contempt, or lack of forgiveness). Also see Projection, Introjection, and Idealization and Devaluation. Mirroring involves:

• Creating false connection to form instant, seemingly deep bond. Involves: mimicking and adopting victim’s mannerisms, gestures, body language; echoing opinions and thoughts, regardless of agreement; and adopting interests by pretending to share same hobbies and passions.
• Building trust and idealization and controlling victim’s perceptions to make victim feel understood and special and see narcissist as relatable and likable, instead of selfish or flawed. Includes love-bombing, creating false sense of intimacy to seem like the ideal partner or friend.
• Manipulating for narcissistic supply (admiration, validation, attention) and protecting inflated but fragile egofrom perceived threats by appearing to be exactly what the other person wants.
• Weaponizing Information: Gathering data about “victim” to find and exploit vulnerabilities, often by reflecting a distorted image of the person back to them