I'd especially like to thank Gawain of the HEAL-L email list for his comments and suggestions. However, that is not to say that he necessarily agrees with what is on this page.

If you are interested in psychic and healing work, you will (or already have and will again) come across a lot of talk about shielding and psychic vampires and other scary stuff. The real picture may not be as dark and dire as it has been painted. If you haven't read my notes on Shields & Stuff, you might want to look at them because they discuss that. Here, I want to share something about "psychic mirrors", which are often, unwisely I feel, recommended for psychic shielding against "bad" energy. (When I get the article done on using "shields" [energy structures intentionally set in place in the aura] for the transmutation, transformation, and healing of energy, you will see why the " "s are around "bad".)
First of all, let me say that psychic mirrors are useful. They have their uses in advanced healing, training, and therapy work, which I shall discuss briefly at the end of this. But as "shields" they present a lot of problems. Consider what they do. They reflect energy back to the source. That sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? Surely it is just what they deserve. But, but, but...

Most people are not very clear about what is happening in their energy field, so when you reflect their energy back to them, they may well perceive it as coming from you. So if you reflect back anger, they think you are angry with them - and they probably get more angry, so even more anger comes back at them in a nasty, continuing spiral. If you reflect back attack, they feel threatened, and this too can spiral out of control.

I'd like to share a little experience I had that taught me about using mirrors. A former student was visiting me, staying in my home. I knew he had problems, but didn't really think about it, partly because I had developed a strong pain in my back, like a knife in the back of my heart chakra, and other less definite problems - just stuff going wrong in the house and in me. However, I had to go away for a few days to teach. While I was gone, I stayed with a healer friend. Talking to her about it, I realized where the pain was coming from. It's a long story and not mine to tell, but basically it was envy coming from my guest.
My healer friend advised me to put up an energy mirror and reflect the energy back to him, and in my pain, confusion, and mental laziness, I did, though I'd never used one before. I immediately started feeling better, and everything cleared up in my energy field that night. Then, over the next couple of days, between teaching and other stuff, I thought about it. I worked through my anger about being treated that way by someone I'd trusted - after all, he didn't even know he was doing it.
I realized that I didn't want to send that energy back to him - it could only make him feel worse toward me, and I'm into healing - it just isn't my style to try to make people feel worse. So I took the mirror down. I replaced it with two spiraling showers of golden energy whirling around me (an inner and an outer, spinning in opposite directions). The energy spiral was structured to take in the energy he sent, transmute it to unconditional love, and send it back to him.
When I got home, I discovered that my guest had had a violent attack of "it must have been food poisoning, nothing else hits that hard and fast". He said that his body felt really toxic, and that he thought he needed to do a thorough cleansing diet - I suggested that he cleanse his energy field as well. The initial attack of "food poisoning" hit at exactly the time I'd put up that psychic mirror. He'd been very ill for two days, and then started getting better suddenly just as I took down the mirror and put up the spiral. The moral of the story seems fairly obvious. So I don't use mirrors for shielding.

This is fairly advanced work. Both you and the client need to be fairly good at energy perception. I based the idea of doing this on the psychotheraputic use of "mirroring" as used in counseling. The technique of mirroring, put simply, is that you reflect back to the client whatever he or she has been saying. You say something like, "What I think I'm hearing you say is that .... Is that correct?" This is usually used to put something quite directly that the client has been waffling about, so that they hear it without all the circumlocutions and evasions. It is just another technique for getting people to begin to listen to themselves.
It seemed to me that there might be time when it would be useful for a client to look at the kind of psychic energy they are putting out, and this is difficult for any of us to do. If the therapist/healer can put up an effective psychic mirror, it gives the client an opportunity to look at themselves on that usually invisible energy level.
I have most often used this when I felt that the client was not seeing their own strength or healing ability or some other personal asset unconsciously radiated, and could benefit from seeing themselves more as others see them.
To accomplish this, I usually tell the client that I want them to look psychically at the energy they see coming from me when I signal them. I then project a mirror, opaque on my side, between us, and ask them to describe what they are sensing or seeing, no matter how much it is or is not what they expect. When they have described as much as they can, I explain about the mirror and that they have been looking at themselves.
Of course, a problem with this is that the client often will not want to say anything unkind about the healer, but if you think about this, it really doesn't matter. They know what they perceived, and will remember all of it. They may even open up about additional things they noticed once they realize that they are talking about themselves rather than the healer. As you might suppose, this kind of work presupposes a good rapport and a great deal of confidence and trust on both sides of the relationship as well as the skill required on both sides to do the work.