Several years ago, I supervised a team of canvassers for a community outreach project.

One employee in particular seemed to rub me the wrong way from the very beginning.

We’ll call her Paula.

Paula was enthusiastic, full of ideas, and never shy about sharing her opinions. If I asked for volunteers, her hand was the first one in the air. If there was a discussion, she had a suggestion. If there was a problem, she had a solution.

For some reason, everything she did irritated me.

That wasn’t normal for me.

I generally enjoy hearing different perspectives and giving people an opportunity to contribute. But with Paula, I found myself becoming impatient. I would dismiss her suggestions more quickly than I did with others. Looking back, I wasn’t being as fair as I should have been.

I knew something wasn’t right.

My assistant noticed the tension too.

Neither of us could figure out why.

Then one day my boss called.

“Danna, Paula called me.”

Immediately, I was annoyed.

Why would she go to my supervisor instead of talking directly to me?

Later, I spoke with Paula.

She told me something that caught me off guard.

“I’ve never had a problem with any supervisor before,” she said. “You’re the first one who doesn’t seem to like me.”

Her words stung.

I told her I didn’t dislike her and promised I would work on being fair.

But I still couldn’t understand why she bothered me so much.

That evening I called my boss to discuss the situation.

I started listing every complaint I could think of.

“She always has a suggestion.”

“She wants to be involved in everything.”

“She inserts herself into every conversation.”

I went on and on.

Then, almost without thinking, I said something that stopped me cold.

“Ray, she reminds me of my mother.”

Silence.

Then my boss laughed.

“Okay, doctor,” he said. “That’ll be a hundred dollars.”

The moment he said it, I knew.

That was it.

The problem wasn’t Paula.

The problem was me.

Paula had qualities that reminded me of unresolved issues in my relationship with my mother. Without realizing it, I had been reacting to those feelings instead of evaluating Paula fairly.

That realization was humbling.

The next day, I apologized.

I explained what I had discovered and told her that my behavior toward her wasn’t her fault.

To her credit, she was gracious.

In fact, I decided to do something unusual.

I introduced her to my mother.

The two of them hit it off immediately.

They spent nearly an hour talking together and enjoying each other’s company.

On the drive back, Paula couldn’t stop talking about how much she enjoyed meeting her.

The experience taught me one of the most important lessons I’ve learned about relationships.

Sometimes the problem isn’t the other person.

Sometimes people trigger old emotions, old wounds, or old experiences that have nothing to do with them.

When that happens, it’s easy to blame the other person.

It’s much harder to look in the mirror.

Self-awareness requires us to ask a difficult question:

“Am I reacting to who this person is, or am I reacting to what they remind me of?”

That question changed the way I viewed Paula.

More importantly, it changed the way I viewed myself.

Months later, Paula shared something that surprised me. She told me her daughters often had some of the same frustrations with her that I had experienced with my own mother.

In that moment, I realized neither of us had fully understood what the other was carrying. We were reacting to experiences that had nothing to do with each other.