Looking at your own image

Post Reply New Topic

When I was a teenager I thought any picture of myself looked horrible. Now I look at those same pics, and think I looked pretty good. These days I've had so many skin cancers removed from my face I'm starting to look piratical.

Can't stand to hear recordings of my voice. Sometimes my cellphone gets a delayed echo, and I have to call back. Hearing my voice repeating what I just said makes my skin crawl.

I feel the same way I reconize that the image in the mirror is "me" yet I feel like that this "me" is a stranger. I find it unconfortable to look is the mirror. I dislike photos and video but I think that this is more of a self confidence thing than anything else.

I used to stare into the mirror, and try and look deep within my own eyes, it's a bit trippy really, trying to comprehend that that reflection is in fact you and all that, hard to explain in words, kinda of freaked me out a bit sometimes as well

I recognize myself, no problem. I look in mirrors a lot because my skin, hair, teeth, nails, etc. are always bothering me, feeling "not quite right". Get stuck fidgeting & preening in mirror, feeling irredeemably awful looking, before I'm supposed to leave the house. I don't mind photos, though I only like the ones (maybe 1/4 of the time) in which I look "good".
I despise recordings, whether video or audio, of me. My voice sounds grating & annoying played back to me, don't recognize it unless I know already it's me. On video, my appearance, mannerisms, movements, behaviors, etc. seem so fake/stilted/exagerrated & "unrepresentative of sample".
Idea of someone being able to manipulate my likeness freaks me out. Turning me into a repetitive caricature, as if how I am is set in stone because there's proof of how I was, which can then be used against me or to advance another's agenda. Don't want to be captured in motion, whether voice or image-don't want to lose what little control I retain over my own "public relations".
I always stand out (to my eye) even in a group photo from many years ago. No sense of whether I looked better, worse, average, in comparison with others.
Despite signs of aging & poor health, I still carry around mental image of self before visible deterioration set in (hear that's a common human experience). I feel insecure about my flaws and try to shunt away my constant awareness of them.

I don't like looking at my photos. Which i why I don't put up avatars of my face. Not because of what I look like, but because it creeps me out to see my face staring back at me.

What I see in the mirror doesn't fit what I think of as 'me'. I never feel like I ought to have a body at all; like I should just be a collection of thoughts floating around.

I refuse, refuse, refuse, to allow people to record my voice, to me it sounds fine, but i have an unusual accent which i was constantly teased for (people constantly accussed me of talking strange on purpose). Consequently, i HATE camcorder, not only do i hear my voice but i see how awkward my movements are.
Mirrors i don't mind as the image is only temporary, but i really dislike photos or videos of myself.
My main issue is the permanence of them, Video is the worse. A bad photo you can tear up(which i have) while anything you do on camera, anything stupid you say, or embarrassing thing you do is captured forever, and, can be REPLAYED.

Ditto...

I did not realize that the reflection in the mirror was a reflection of myself until about the age of 6. Before then I believed mirrors were magic windows and I would look behind them to find the kid that was pulling faces at me. A very large wall mirror was a window into another room and I would try search for a doorway I can get in so I could explore it.

I have thought this too

I have an odd thing going. When I'm not looking at a mirror, I have a certain face that I imagine as me. And then when I look into the mirror or a photo, there's a new, different face looking back. It's a bit weird. A similar thing occurs with my voice. I hear something but when it's played back it sounds different, mainly by being less expressive and more monotone than I imagined it to be (no suprise there!).

Apparently our voices sound different on tape/video/telephone than in real life because of the way that the magnetic fields are aligned? Or the way that the digital data are stored? I'd have to ask my physics teacher again...
If someone asked me to draw my Mother from looking at her, I could manage fine, but even though I have known my Mother since I was... born (:lol:), I couldn't possbly draw her from memory!