Avoiding looking at yourself in mirrors

I haven’t got any mirrors in my house. 

If that all sounds quite negative, I’m way better than I was. I genuinely believed myself to the the worlds ugliest person for a very long time. But in a way that was still an ego thing wasn’t it- making myself ‘special’? I’ve got myself into a more balanced mindstate since and now know that I’m merely in ‘no oil painting’ territory like a lot of blokes. I’m not scaring the horses or anything. Crossing the door is a little easier as I know I’m not making people double take in horror, im just invisibly unattractive. 

But about five years ago I reached peak distress. I’d had quite a few instances of catching myself at a random angle in a random mirror and having an anxiety attack that I was so monstrous. Looking back, I think it may have been BDD but I always have this thought that if I’d said that to a Doctor they’d say ‘nah mate, you actually are a mutant, soz’ But one night I was so horrified that I got three mirrors, checked myself from every angle , saw only complete disfigurement and deformity, the more I checked the worse it got. Spent two hours at that, then used my phone camera to see if the un-mirrored version was less horrific. From different distances, angles, above, profile, back of head, full body posture, the lot. It was like a nightmare that was getting worse and worse, and I knew I was going to have to go into work the next day knowing that I now knew the full extent of what others had been enduring. I’d been right about the generalities, just not the epic scale of the horror. That wasn’t the only instance, just the worst one. I wanted to die. 

Two nervous breakdowns, one miraculous relationship, and one therapist later, I can see myself (on a good day) as I truly am: just a perfectly acceptable human who just has what he has on the lottery of face and form. People understand I’m not ‘doing’ it on purpose, and they forgive. 

I need one that says ‘I am autistic, am intermittently good and bad with eye contact but rarely comfortable with it. And I hate mirrors but also sometimes get drawn to them in the hope I might magically look ok for two seconds’ 

I especially hate mirrors on unexpected places. Like being reseated near one in a cafe or something and confronted with the full horror of what i inflict on the world. And usually there’s a harsh downward spotlight making my baldy bonce dazzle anyone within a five metre radius. Knowing it is bad enough, seeing the objective reality distrsssing.  I just want to apologise and go home, but I can’t.

I am fine with looking in a mirror if I want to see how an outfit looks on me, but I really don't like looking at my reflection of my face... It just serves as a reminder that I'm no longer as youthful as I once was. 

I don't like mirrors, they're another way of noticing how pale I am or that my hair looks rubbish.

And it is surprising how making eye contact with myself really creepy me out lol.

I take pics of myself but don't really like looking at them but at the same time I like to preserve how I look each year, just because it's something my mum did.

My 10 year old son has aspergers. He never wants to look in the mirror to check out his outfit etc and has to be reminded to check if his face is clean. He also hates looking at pictures of himself i mean a severe reaction to it

I go weeks without looking at myself in a mirror.

Sometimes I inadvertantly catch a glympse of someone who looks a little like me in a window, and I don't really recognise the person there.  In fact, I am growing increasingly unaware of what I look like.

I can perform many of the tricks that people use a mirror for without the mirror.  I shave with an electric shaver so don't have problems with cutting myself (I cut myself to pieces with a razor blade whether I use a mirror or not!)  I can put a brush or comb through my hair, tie my bowtie (or an ordinary tie for that matter), clean my teeth and wash my face all without having to know what I look like when doing these tasks.

I think though that I have some sense of remoteness between the physical 'me' and the psychological 'me'.  A lot of times my body seems a bit of a hindrance and not something I want to look at.  As I always say when people remark on me needing a haircut 'it doesn't bother me because I don't have to look at it'.  And the same goes with spectacles.  I don't have to look at them, I just wear them in order to see  So it is other peoples misfortune if the don't like them!

I definitely do not like mirrors, though they do help sometimes and are unavoidable.

I don't know if its also related but I also have no understanding of fashion, and no real sense of self image - I am often having my collar 'straightened out' in the office, or told by my wife 'are you really going out like that?'. I also don't notice other people and am accused of being unobservant, but I find this is limited to people, as I am always noticing all manor of obscure strange things and changes, just not the change in hair colour of a colleague (or my wife) or a new outfit / shoes etc. 

How much of this is down to not liking eye contact I am not sure. I think its just that other people are not really in my sphere of interest / notice, and I do not feel the need to get involved.

I'm not too bad with pictures of myself, though I know what you mean about not quite connecting with them. Video footage, on the other hand, I find very hard to deal with.

As a kid, my problems with dodgy proprioception didn't seem that odd to me. I just thought I was one of those kids that wasn't talented at sport or gymnastics. The first time it really stood out to me was when I had to do formation marching in Boys Brigade. Something about my marching was not right, and the instructor (a nice chap) tried his best to help me with it. But no matter how hard he tried to describe what I needed to change, I just couldn't understand him. He'd get other lads to demonstrate to me, and, in my own mind, I would be copying them precisely; yet to onlookers, I was just doing my normal, incorrect thing or something which looked like a comical parody of marching.

Likewise with manual dexterity tasks. I can't be shown how to do them by demonstration. I can be dexterous if I learn by trial and error and form a "muscle memory" (I type OK and play musical instruments), but watching someone else's hands doing it just doesn't click - my brain is just screaming; "but those are your hands, and I'll have to do it with my hands. How's that supposed to work?"

When I see myself in video footage, the added creepy factor is that I can finally see just how different my movements, gait and posture are compared to the image of them that I have in my head. I grew up in a world where video cameras were very rare, but these days it's just normal that someone could whip out their phone and video any trivial social occasion. It's relatively recently that I've got to see this external view of myself, and I have to say, it has really shocked me at times just how inaccurate my self-image is, and has been for decades.

Thanks for the carrots, Ellie, from a tired old donkey.

I notice the Compleat Guide to Aspergers mentions 'a tendency to intellectualize feelings'.

. said:

Just because you have a diagnosis of autism does not negate that other support is not needed. 

Now, Pedanticus strikes again. Is the second 'not' unintentional? In which case, yes, I can't see all my frustrated wishes solely through the prism (ɿoɿɿim ɿo) of autism.

Having a quiet day.

. said:

Be kind to yourself because you deserve that. 

Same to you.

There's quite a lot in this reply that corresponds with my experience.

It's strange that I think the person I see in the mirror is different to the one I see in a photograph (I've even tried flipping the photo to produce the "mirror" image).  I've done physics and been a draughtsman but still don't get them - like you say.

But what did freak me out on more than a few occasions were seeing passengers sitting outside the train window.  Sometimes, when the light is right combined with the angle of the carriage you get a perfect reflection of passengers in the window floating serenely and unconcerned in mid air!

I did manage to pass my driving licence but only after a few fails where one of the key points was lack of using the mirrors. 

Funnily enough, I was talking about this exact same subject with my lodger last night after we had watched the excellent 2017 movie "Mad to be Normal", which starred David Tennant & concerned the work of R. D. Laing with schizophrenics in the 1960s & 70s. Definitely worth watching on Kodi, Terrarium or any other TV app of your choice.

I generally avoid looking in mirrors because I don't really identify with my own image. Most days its OK when I'm brushing my teeth, but in general seeing my own image makes me feel quite uncomfortable because I don't feel like I have any real connection with it.

It's quite common for people to say they dislike the sound of their own voice, mainly because it sounds different internally than externally on recordings, but I have always felt that way about my own image as well. Quite often I don't even recognise myself in photos unless I look more closely & then it usually makes me feel uncomfortable or even nauseous.

Not sure why this is, but seeing photos of myself feels quite wrong in an almost Cthulhu-esque fashion where my brain seem to think it is looking at something that isn't quite real or shouldn't really exist.

In my bedroom I have full length mirrors on a long built-in wardrobe next to my bed that came with the house. Despite them being so large, I can honestly say that I don't look into them at all & have become adept at pretending they arent even there.

With regard to your quiz though, there possibly should have been another option as below

"I'm autistic, I don't like mirrors & generally don't like eye contact either, apart from when I am trying to chat someone up or already in a relationship with them"

For me at least, the reason I don't like eye contact is because it is too intrusive & personal. If being personal is the whole point though, I actually quite enjoy it because there is an immediate emotional connection.

Seeing this topic made me grin - I've always had a bit of a "thing" about mirrors.

When I see myself in a mirror, my whole body-mind thing can go utterly wonky. My proprioception is pretty bad generally, and I quite often lose track of where limbs are, and I am prone to dissociating.  When I look in a mirror there is a strange sense of not quite knowing whether "me" is my body or the reflection. I don't mean that to sound frightening or melodramatic - I actually find it rather amusing. This is why I have nearly always had a beard; trying to coordinate my movements by watching my reflection is like something out of a slapstick comedy.

When I was a child, I had quite a few accidents involving mirrors; it took me a long time to work out that the "other kid" who looked so excited to see me wasn't going to get out of the way when I ran at him (thankfully, I was never seriously hurt.) It's also part of the reason that I don't drive; I simply can't use the mirrors properly because it takes me too long to figure out anything more than "behind me somewhere?".

The weird thing is that I understand the optical science of mirrors very well, and I'm good enough at geometry to have worked as a draughtsman; but I just can't quite get my head around them.

Another thing that might be connected is that I can't stand pictures of faces looking straight out of the page. If there's one on the page of a magazine or newspaper, I often have to cover it up, otherwise it gets really distracting. I can't quite describe the sensation it gives me; again, it's not frightening, and I know full well that the picture can't see me, but it makes me feel odd in a very distracting way.

I LOVE halls of mirrors, though; I could spend all day in hysterics in one of those.

Autistic, don't like eye contact, mostly fine with mirrors unless they are in numbers, in close proximity and effect the lighting conditions too much. I had a stage which I mention above where I avoided them for a while but that was more sensory than anything else.

I have a bit of a beat up face, nerve damage around my right eye, a scar on one side of my forehead, a scar on my left cheek, a scar on my eyebrow and a cauliflower ear. I don't like them, some bad memories but I hate hair. I shave my head and my face clean. So I don't really have a problem with mirrors, unless I get too reflective (no pun intended) on the past.

I actually had a phase where I practiced expressions and gestures in the mirror in my early 20's. I had a really deadpan face, I still do for the most part but I think it helped.

Disambiguating Cynosure said:

I use mirrors or windows or reflections a LOT when on "the street", to see who may be behind me, stalking me, planning some sort of harassment, etc. etc. ...

I find them useful for the same reasons. You can avoid eye contact with mirrors, look at people without staring and lots of other things. I don't like too many in close proximity but they are pretty useful for lots of things.

Emma said:

I imagine seeing my image distorted in creepy ways (as often happens when I look into them in dreams) or something behind me that I don't expect. *shudders* 

I see pink and purple pretty vividly so I can see a lot of the veins in my face. I see them in other people too. I didn't even know that I wasn't veiny until I sort of put things together. I didn't see the veins on people on T.V.. When I asked my mom when I was about 12 she told me I wasn't veiny. I then started to think I was going mad. I got used to it though.

Emma said:

I imagine seeing my image distorted in creepy ways (as often happens when I look into them in dreams) or something behind me that I don't expect. *shudders* 

Yes, I have that fear of seeing something unexpected, in a dream that might carry over to reality, usually a skull staring back.  It possibly something picked up from horror film (Donnie Darko again?) or TV, or some fear of mortality.

Sleep tight!

I put "fine with mirrors", but there is an exception; I hate looking into a mirror with the lights out at night, it just gives me the creeps.
I imagine seeing my image distorted in creepy ways (as often happens when I look into them in dreams) or something behind me that I don't expect. *shudders* 

100% fine with them for the purpose of checking my appearance/doing my hair/etc in the day though.

(I also hate having the curtains open especially just a crack at night, as I imagine being watched by people/entities unknown through the gap. I used to not be able to have curtains open at night at all, but now I am ok only if they are wide open and I am not on the ground floor.)

Hi Cassandro

thank you for posting that. I don’t look as there’s a self there that even I can’t fathom. Be kind to your self you’re fervently scratching for meaning at present.... like a pig hunting truffles.. trying to find the scientific root if who you are.

1. you come across on the forum as a good person
2. you seem wise and insightful
3. Don’t forget that intelligence frightens people... you appear to be coping and intellect can be more of a barrier than autism. 
4. People want to help but sometimes it’s not knowing the route in. I for one am crap about giving people precise direction even though I need it myself! The irony :)

find here carrots with no sticks attached

Sometimes we become so good at masking that people don’t see the vulnerable confused self and you won’t show that self readily because it means loss of self control, and agency which makes one feel vulnerable. You’re hyper processing. The puzzle pieces will find their place. Just because you have a diagnosis of autism does not negate that other support is not needed. 

Be kind to yourself because you deserve that. 

Greetings Mr.Cassandro! I see this as I begin to visit, and so I vote, the second choice. However...

I am only "fine with mirrors" for reasons not usually thought of: 1 - I always check my appearence a lot, due to Health Reasons. (Not detailed unless asked, since they are a bit "icky".) 2 - I often wear a necktie or similar and must make certain that it is straight a lot. Vanity - no, self-protection and Psychological effects - yes.

3 - ...Being the Cynosure that I am... I use mirrors or windows or reflections a LOT when on "the street", to see who may be behind me, stalking me, planning some sort of harassment, etc. etc. ...

I do not (currently) like my own reflection, and it scared me at nights so much that I no longer have any mirrors in my own "room". But mirrors are useful to me for looking at other people...?    :-/