Who is that guy in the mirror???

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I remembered something from my childhood recently, one of those memories I shoved down to try and not feel any weirder than I did already.

I remember around 6-7 years old having the realization that the guy in the mirror was supposed to be me, and I didn't recognize him. It was like somehow up to that point I may have seen specific things in the reflection but I'd never seen myself as a whole. I had some picture of myself in my mind but it certainly didn't match what I saw.

I'm curious if anyone relates.

I've been like that my entire life... I'm now 51! I recognise the face in the mirror but it has never been 'me' it is just the body that I inhabit. I spend so much time "living in my head" that I sort of forget I have a physical dimension and body.

I have had many more minor versions of the initial experience but nothing ever as intense at the 1st one.

Once as a teenager I went to a shop and saw a girl. I thought "What a biatch" and then realized I was looking at the mirror. That was kinda hilarious.

Currently I have same kind of thing as TallyMan. I regognice my self but wonder still how I look that way. I feel so different. Also my singing voice is different. When I sing in my head, it sounds bad, but outloud it sounds good, and when singing on a microphone, it's .... welll ... even better. And yet I don't consider myself as a good singer because of that voice in my head

I used to hate looking at myself in the mirror when I was a kid. The way I looked didn't match at all the way I felt about myself. (I had a year of speech therapy when I was 7. It seemed to involve an inordinate amount of time sitting in front of a mirror.) A few years ago, a bf showed me a video of a girl walking on a beach, which I didn't understand at all. It was even more confusing when he explained that it was ME!

Yes, but being older with the mirror bit.

It's spending at lot of time thinking alone, and I've noticed the more I'm around others,' the less this splitting effect surfaces. In fact, I've have not done this in a long time --- since 36-- since being married.

This may contribute to that phenomenon or effect:
The mirror of the mind. Early, at around 5 years of age ,I asked my mother a question: Who am I? We were in a car and I was watching and gazing out through the window and I split myself into 'two parts' you could say. Me mentally watching myself sitting in the car seat and watching myself from an outside vantage point. She said, "you are a human being." I said to myself, Hmmmm a human being. I repeated that phrase many times that day..... I was really weird that day with that concept of "human being." I was probably too short to stand in front of the mirror at 5, otherwise.........................

This part ^ has to do with introspection/ and introversion, and like I said "thinking alone too much."

(Tally's thought)

I know the guy in the mirror is me, but I don't quite identify myself with my physical appearance. I'm used to looking in the mirror every morning, but if I look in those tall mirrors in shops and gyms, it's often like I see someone else completely.

Same here -- and i'm 53!

Sometimes i was and am even scared by my own mirror image when i'm not prepared for the sight like, in a window pane.

that's sounds exactly like me, because i sat on the bus and looked at the mirror and thought to myself, "that girl looks strange, there's something wierd about her."
if you cant recognize other people maybe you cant recognize yourself, either.

I'm always a little surprised at how I look. It just never really clicks in my head that I look the same, every day, and have for a while.

This happens to me a lot. I'll look at myself in the mirror, and I recognize that it's me, but it also feels like a stranger that I'm looking at. It's very bizarre. I've noticed that, for the last month or so, when I open the medicine cabinet to get my toothpaste out, that I haven't been shutting the cabinet (which has a mirror on the front) until after I'm done brushing my teeth. This hasn't been a conscious choice, so I wonder if I'm subconsciously avoiding looking at myself in the mirror?

I also experience this same 'sensation' with the people in my life. Sometimes I'll look at my boyfriend, or sister or whomever, and for a second, it feels like I'm sitting in someone else's body, with someone else's friend or family member. I recognize them, but my established relationship with them doesn't feel real...like, it suddenly strikes me as odd that the person is my boyfriend or sister.

I've never experienced any of the above with photos or videos, though. The pictures solidify my memory of the experience that was videod or photographed, so I recognize myself and my friends and the situation easily. I'm actually obsessed with photographs, and often feel that without a picture, that a certain event didn't really take place. I was the assistant for a very famous actor last summer, and it never occurred to me to get a picture with him until it was too late (even though I get celebrity obsessions, in real life, I've never been starstruck with a celebrity I've worked with)...now it feels somehow like it wasn't real.

It seems to fit in with symptoms of depersonalization, which seems to happen as a result of significant anxiety and/or stress. Which, considering what its like to be hypersensitive out in the world, doesn't really surprise me very much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization

When I first started being willing to take a closer look at the symptoms that led me here, some of them scared the crap out of me. That's part of the reason it took so long to see them, I was pretty determined to forget or downplay a lot of my experiences. I was worried I was schizophrenic (not that that's the end of the world but it seemed like it).

I remember having this as a kid.. I didn't like looking in the mirror because I didn't think it was really me. I didn't like the way I looked..

I still find it amusing that that person in the mirror is apparently what I look like.. but I like the way I look now..

And I wasn't under any kind of stress or anxiety as a kid.. that came later when people kept telling me I had to 'fit in to society' in all these disagreeable ways

Interesting article. It led on to this online test for anyone who is interested:

http://counsellingresource.com/lib/quiz ... tests/des/

I scored within the normal range (11) , so don't appear to have depersonalisation disorder. The awareness of not being my body / face is the only real significant symptom I have and I don't think it is attributable to depersonalisation disorder. My sense of self is simply much more strongly aligned with my mind than my body.

Depersonalization is one of the dissociative disorders but does not have the 'derealization' component of the others. The test you linked is more specifically for Dissociative Identity Disorder which is much more severe in terms of disconnection from reality.

There's actually a good post on DPD from WP a few years back:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt86212.html