Do some people not feel this way at all times? Personally i always feel like my body isn't "me", it's just the functional shell that I'm living in. Like when i get in a car and go driving i don't feel like the car is me, it's just the functional shell I'm inside of. "Me" is my subjective sense of consciousness.
When i look in the mirror i mostly see it in the 3rd person. I see my face and i think "hey look at that guy", and "that face could use a shave", etc.
I'm not claiming you're anything, but I've heard similar thoughts from trans people while they were still figuring stuff out.
Thanks for the potential help, but I'm not trans. It's not that my reflection looks incongruent with how i feel inside, it's that i see my body as a physical object. Which it is. "I" am not what my body is.
Interesting. I don't recall ever feeling this way. What I see in the mirror I feel as being me. I find it fascinating how different people think and experience existence. People should talk about that stuff more.
I didn't always think this way when i looked in the mirror, i used to think of what i see in the mirror as me. It's something that happened as I grew older and started seeing reality in broader and broader ways.
Yeah kind of. When I look at myself on the mirror there always the feeling of "oh yeah that's what I look like", because that's not how I perceived myself. My "me" isn't a body.
I don't typically feel this way, no. It's kind of like playing a video game where you forgot you're holding a controller and so you just like, go around enacting your will on stuff, without really thinking about it.
It's common for schizoids, for example. Personally, I've noticed that it's more likely to happen the more social contact I've had. Generally I feel a disconnect with my reflection and if I need to look in the mirror when getting dressed or doing my hair I just avoid eye contact. .
At work, if I catch my reflection in a shiny bolt or something while I'm working on a bike, I flinch and have to look away, it makes me feel so uncomfortable.
I also get that floating feeling when having to talk to customers, like it's not me and I'm observing someone else from a distance.
Wow that sounds really difficult, I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like you maybe you're experiencing depersonalization
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Have you ever heard of depersonalization? Maybe give this article a read and see if anything resonates?
Interesting, but when i read about it at an actual medical site it doesn't sound like me. I don't feel like I'm viewing my life from the outside with no control or connection with events around me. There's no distress to the way i see my body as being a thing I'm inside of rather than it being me. If anything it gives me a sense of calm.
Out of curiosity, have you always felt like this, ever since you were a child? I remember I only started feeling this third person sensation in my early teens. Like, I'd look in the mirror, and think, "who the hell is this guy and what did he do to the real me?" (well, not literally of course). I don't think this is something uncommon, I remember seeing a meme that went like
Me: Looks in the mirror
[thanos image macro]
Inner Child: I don't even know who you are
And that's pretty much how I feel
I also have a theory that this is more common among men than women, since women spend more time in front of the mirror (because makeup) and because women look nice, whereas men are generally ugly and therefore don't enjoy being "inside" their bodies (I mean unless you're FtM)
I mean, that's what the dating site data seems to show. Here is an example. This could also be explained by women being more "selective" than men (as the title of the article implies)... but since attractiveness is a subjective quality, I think "Women are more selective about men than men are about women" is the equivalent of "Men are less attractive than women" in a heterosexual context.
Another statistic is that women tend to spend more time on improving their appearance than men (source, I only skimmed through that paper, but the two graphs at the end seem to support my point). So it would make sense that the demographic who puts more effort into looking pretty will look more pretty?
I'm not really sure why you would disagree with this? You can prove it for yourself by going outside and just looking at people on the street? The only way that you can ignore the divide in attractiveness between men and women is if you only consider celebrities, models, public figures, and so on, who spend a lot of money and effort on looking good regardless of gender.
I'm not saying male beauty doesn't exist or doesn't deserve to be appreciated. Or even that you as an individual have to care about whether someone is attractive or not (again, attractiveness is subjective). I'm just saying that the reality is that women tend to be prettier. It's100% a societal thing, maybe if history turned out differently, men would have been the ones who spend more time on their appearance.
EDIT: I just realized I'm looking at this from a very cishet point of view, so IDK maybe attractiveness works different for LGBT+ people
Can't look in mirrors on acid because this happens instantaneously. That clown is not fucking me and his smile is creepy
I don't ever remember my dreams for longer than an hour but I do know that they are often incredibly surreal. Afaik I haven't looked in a mirror but it doesn't sound pleasant. They've always made me uncomfortable even sober. Passing by mirrors at night as a kid was always a very stressful experience
I love that feeling, it's strange but fascinating to see my face melt and age like that, if you look for long enough you might even feel like your reflection is falling at you
Likely because your entering some level of meditative state because your focus is on the mirror and not on your thoughts
I once accidentally went so deep in meditation that all my self awareness dissappeared but I remember it
I also had my eyes open, it was kind of like sleep paralysis but yourself just isn't there at all
People who stare in the mirror and experience what is described in this meme probably experience something similar
Happens 100% of the time if you are dysphoric. The person greeting you in the mirror is never the same as what's inside your head in that case
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Notably, this didn't happen to me yesterday. I saw my reflection for a moment in a window while at work and was surprised to see myself. The person I am inside my head never had a face; the image I saw in the mirror was like a mask I'd always been wearing and couldnt take off.
I don't know why it happened exactly when it did, I've been transitioning for over a year now, but it's really fucking satisfying to finally take the "mask" off and see myself.
It's honestly similar to how it felt when I changed my name. Like this barrier between my 'self' and the physical world being torn down. Like taking a full breath for the first time.
Dysphoria is real and it sucks, and I wish that nobody had to experience it. What made the biggest difference for me, even before I could socially or medically transition, was just finally allowing me to address my own self as a boy, just in my own thoughts or in writing or art. That was the hardest thing for me, but also the most freeing.
I dunno where I'm going with this, just rambling at this point. But just in case it needs to be said, you are real and fucking resilient, you matter, and you're not alone. ♡
I'm glad you feel like rambling. I'm glad you are moving towards a better place in life. Let's hope it keeps going in this direction for the rest of your life. 🙂
I did this to help get over weed-induced anxiety. Smoked a bit at uni, started getting bad anxiety most times, so I stopped smoking. Whenever I felt weird while sober (dizzy, spaced out, over-caffeinated), it Pavlov'd me into getting anxiety. Staring into the mirror and getting that weird dissociation gave me a controllable environment to get used to strange perceptual shifts.