There is a part of us that longs to be seen, and there is a part of us that would rather be followed.
In the myth of Narcissus, he stares into the water and falls in love with his reflection. Not with another—but with the image of himself. He cannot love what is different, wild, or curious – but only what is familiar, only what reflects him back.
And then there is Echo, the lesser discussed and known nymph of the story. Wild, curious, and alive, we meet her after she has already been cursed for betraying the gods. After Hera’s madness, she cannot speak her own words, she can only repeat what she hears.
She loves Narcissus, but she has no voice of her own to offer. She echoes his words, hoping to be heard in return, but Narcissus never turns toward her. He is too enchanted by his own image.
This is how the soul can be caught in certain forms of sponsorship.
One speaks, while the other echoes. One speaks with authority, while the other forgets they had a voice.
In Depth Recovery, we recognize this pattern as archetypal. Not a failure of the sponsor—but a failure of recovery itself, and its lack of imagination…
The Narcissus archetype appears whenever a sponsor becomes enchanted with their own recovery story, believing it must be repeated rather than reimagined.
The Echo archetype appears when a sponsee gives up their voice in order to belong, when the soul trades depth for approval.
And the tragedy is not personal, but mythic…
Recovery becomes a hall of mirrors – reflection after reflection, a loss of depth, dialogue, and fear of true descent.
But within Depth Recovery we insists that repetition only preserves the form. But, response stirs the depths, and the soul is not interested in getting it “right” – its desire is to be met…
The work is not to fix Echo or to shame away Narcissus. The work is to recognize the spell, and break it. For the sponsor this means to turn from their image, and for the sponsee to recover their voice.
Sponsorship, in its deepest sense is not about sameness – it is not about making another version of oneself. It is about making room for the Other, and all of their strangeness, their timing, their way that seems foreign.
It is not a mirror, but an encounter. And in that encounter, something begins to move. Not the reflection of the sponsor, but the soul of the sponsee…
