Do any of you feel sort of...disconnected from your bodies?

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And no, this isn't a spiritual topic. Let me make that clear right now.

When I was a kid I made faces in the mirror. I still do on occasion. I did it because my face has always seemed...unfamiliar to me. Foreign. I would often forget what I looked like. I still do. Every so often I would pass a mirror, glance at my reflection, and become frightened. I didn't recognize myself. There would be this moment of intense confusion and "who the hell is that kid and why is she in HERE?!" It's a very strange feeling...not knowing your own face. Not knowing what your body is doing at any given time. What expression your face is making.

So, I would stare at my reflection for hours....make faces, widen my eyes, squint, move my mouth around. Try to get a mental photo of the person looking back at me. Try to get acquainted with the way it felt to make certain faces. Look at my arms in the mirror. Move them various ways. Try to get a sense of my body in all of it's seemingly disconnected glory. Arms and legs moving awkwardly. I often made (and still make) "odd" facial expressions according to the observations of those around me. My body as never felt comfortable. It doesn't seem solid. It seems to be constantly shifting...vague. I don't really have a "real" sense of self image beyond the abstract. I've been trying to "fix" that for years. Watching myself in mirrors. Jumping, spinning, swinging (and launching myself off), running....anything in an attempt to feel connected to my body.

Does anyone else feel this? This sense of disconnect?

Too weird?

Naw, not too weird. I can recognize that it's me in the mirror, but yeah, I've also had moments (rare now though) where I've looked at say my hand and been like "whoa, what's that thing, is that really mine? It must be, it's moving when I will it to, but it really doesn't feel like it does it?" or "Oh, leg, wait, my leg? Lets try to mov.. oh, it moves. Ok, my leg then.".

I often think that while obviously my body is attached to me, I seem to be less attached to it. It's like one of those relationships where the body is going "I love you, I love you so much and we're gonna be together foreeeeever" and my mind is going "Uh, ok. That's..nice? And you are?".

I can't say I relate to that, but on rare occasions (a short moment today actually) I feel like I'm outside of my body, and having a sense of movement when I'm actually very still. So, in a way you could say that is disconnected.

Yah - that was Number 1 Son in his younger days. Came the day it broke for him.

I feel disconnected from my body in at least a few ways: I never really know what I look like. I don't have an accurate sense of where my body is a lot of the time.

I did as a child spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, but then mirrors fascinated me for many reasons.

It sounds like depersonalisation.

Not an issue I have had but I have had feelings of derealisation (feeling surreal as though I'm in a dream world) at times when I am in a crowded place and there is too much noise and visual stuff going on. My poor brain does not know whether it is coming or going at those times but it tends to wear off when I go somewhere quiet.

It is not uncommon for me to feel disconnected from my own body. For me it is like my mind was just dumped into a casing and it is my body and it can seem as though they are not on the same page, so to say. I catch myself sometimes staring into reflective surfaces and I have no idea how long I have been staring, but longer than a few moments, I know. I do not forget what I look like, but it still amazes me that the reflection I see is me. I get like that with other people as well though. I have been married since 2001 and I still look at my husband sometimes and it is like the first time I am really looking at him. It messes with my head that he is him and he is real in the same way my own face does sometimes. Am I making sense? Eh. Not sure if that is what you mean, but that is how I can be sometimes.

Could be a touch of what's called 'Face Blindness'. Quite an intriguing condition, that.

is that like when you feel like you've got 3 legs? or like when your arms are supporting you but you cant seem to move them because you feel like you're just a placeholder for your limbs, like you're merely sitting between them and they're not actually part of you?

I used to have issues with that... like I was in the wrong body or I was trapped in a fleshy mass that's not... me. But I've gotten past it enough that it rarely bothers me and just accepted that this is my body for now.

Well, when I'm sitting still, I feel like I have another mouth and pair of arms superimposed over my real ones. They are always in different positions, like my real mouth is closed but my non-real one is hanging open, and my non-real arms are floating by my sides.

I often feel like that. I can never believe that the face in the mirror is really mine.