a new thought: "imagined ugliness" also known as body dysmorphia. it is a dissatisfaction, mild dislike, to a full pathological loathing of your physical form. you don't see yourself as you appear to other people. you cannot grasp the reality of how you really do look..
this thought struck me. i often struggle with this and see fat where there really isnt. to other people i look underweight and rationally i know that. but when i look in the mirror i feel utter and complete disgust with that is staring back at me. i pick apart parts of my body wishing they were smaller. lately, i have been acutely aware of my body as i am restoring weight. i feel like all eyes are on me..like everyone is looking at me and seeing how "fat" i have become. there is the f word. thinking everyone is looking at me is quite a grandiose way of thinking, actually.
what i am getting at is that often i have this idea of "imagined ugliness" and other times i am very lucid and aware that i am underweight, that my bmi is less than the normal range for my height. i looked in the mirror yesterday and i noticed my face. my jawline and cheeks looked like they are beginning to hollow out, as that often happens with weight loss. what confused me was that as the number on the scale is increasing, i am "seeing" this appearance of weight loss. i use the term seeing losely. my question is..have i always looked this way and i am recognizing it for the first time? or have i actually lost weight and am seeing the effects of it despite the number that appears in front of me? it is confusing. mind boggling and a total mind fuck.
point of the story---> imagined ugliness is ridiculously and insanely baffling..
The whole idea of imagining what I look like terrifies me and sometimes makes me question what else I'm imagining. I don't understand how our brains completely morph how we actually physically see ourselves.
ReplyDeleteYou, my dear, are beautiful. Appearances in the mirror can be so deceiving, as what we "see" is emotionally reconstructed. Trying to guess at how we must appear to other people is completely unreliable. And so at some point, you just have to give up and begin believing that you are enough, that what you see is inaccurate, and that shrinking yourself down will never fix what is bothering you, for your weight is not the issue. It pains me to see beautiful girls and women hating their bodies because we are so much more than what we look like and so much more than what we THINK we look like. Sending lots of love your way <3
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