Some things you shouldn’t mirror. For example, if someone is aggressively attempting to be the alpha dog, you need to be more creative. But if you show aggression towards something that the other person judges, you can form a strong bond. It’s also fun to yell. If you are comfortable with your aggressive side, you can adopt an aggressive posture without displaying aggression towards the person. Adopt a team-like quality. This is similar to dealing with people who are desperate for attention and lack emotional control, such as those with borderline personality disorder.Mirroring people with very intense needs is much more of an art form and not a good place to start practicing. If you need to, though, you can do mild mirroring of body language without giving the impression that you think your needs are greater than theirs. You can also, on a symbolic level, share the kinds of resentments and other things that the person tends to focus on. By staying within the world that they mentally live in, you do not alienate them by intimidating them with a larger world. These individuals can easily collapse into feeling very threatened or inferior, and this can cause them to go out of their way to undermine you. This can include something called “triangulation,” where they put other people against you. This can even include your boss or legal authorities. It’s critical to build rapport with these people and guard against any attempts to undermine you. If you want to, you can use your general rapport-building skills with people who have more intense needs than average. This is especially true for psychotherapists, doctors, and other professionals who work with distressed people. You will learn that once you establish rapport, you can use it to influence or lead others. Pacing and leading is the pattern of reflecting and changing others’ behavior.You don’t mirror their suffering; you just mirror the general physical and symbolic items that make them feel comfortable with you and allow them to express themselves. If you can sense their state, that is enough to increase your empathy and let them know it. Most people can empathize with others’ feelings, but some are already very sensitive. Both ways. Mirroring is technical enough to keep you from being overwhelmed or distracted by the other person’s feelings. If this is not the case, and you still feel their emotions, you have probably mirrored them too closely, and thus induced their state in you. In that case, you will need to learn to reduce your mirroring, especially in the physical sense. Better yet, you can use NLP to discover and alter your overwhelm strategy. You can start with what internal representations you have about the suffering of others. Nurses, therapists, and social workers are often people who do a lot of subconscious mirroring without any training in it. If someone feels that you are mimicking him or her, they are probably aware of NLP and mirroring. If they seem uncomfortable or offended, the best response is typically to back off of the physical mirroring but maintain the symbolic mirroring without getting carried away.