Anyone Experienced This?

[starry-night]

If I look at myself in the mirror, I have no idea who the person is that is looking back. I mean, I know intellectually that it is me, but there is no connection at all. It's like looking at a total stranger.

My OT said this is a self protection mechanism.

I would say that most of my life is a struggle to be present. At the milder end of it all, I'm not not there, not present.

At the other end, when it's bad, I feel like I've been split into two people: a physical self, and a non physical 'person'. If it's very bad, the non physical person hates the physical one so much, it wants to kill them. If it's not too bad in this state, it's like two people sitting on the sofa, side by side, watching the TV. They can exist together and tolerate each other.

 

[Kintsugi]

I often do not recognize myself in the mirror.

I have a lot of inner selves and outer selves. I don't know who is me cohesively. They are not multiple personalities, exactly. Just multiple modes on the outside and various critics and a couple of meek advocates on the inside.

There is a wild and tormented girl inside of me who hates me and wants to kill me, though, the tangible Me. She is constantly criticizing me. Intrusive thoughts of stabbing myself when I feel embarrassment. Imagery of this awful girl who is both me and not me keeping me locked up somewhere (though usually she is the one locked up in a cage in my mind).

I always feel totally insane writing about this.

 

[Gamereign555]

I know the whole dissociative events or states of being, not to mention all the other weird symptoms surrounding dissociation can really alter how one sees the world and themselves. Of course I have experienced derealization and depersonalization, sometimes overlapping. That made me feel as if I was not me or the things around me were not real or that I was not in or in control of my own body in the same way.

I can relate to the self image in the mirror thing, I'll even touch and rub my face a little and its like its not my eyes looking back at me, or is it not me that it is looking back at?
It just seems like delusion and reality are sometimes a little blurred but only when my stress levels are high and not managing myself in a healthy way. Mirrors have always bothered me but I just ignore it.

 

[Kintsugi]

Photographs really mess me up.

 

[starry-night]

Yes, photographs...or being video recorded...it drives me nuts!

A lot of the time, people don't even ask your permission to photograph you, then then they are so quick to put the photos up on Facebook as well. Ugg!!!

 

[jasmin]

Jeez I relate to all of this. I feel like it's always been like that for me... my reflection feels so foreign to me.. it's been severely worse over the last 3 years as the reflection kept changing dramatically with all the different bodies I've been through.. well, same body different states.