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Seeing yourself on video
thegoldeneternity
Veteran
I find that I have a significant aversion to seeing myself on video. I just cringe and think that I stick out like a sore thumb; that I look awkward and silly; that I look like a doofus. Rationally, I understand that it can't possibly be this extreme, but the experience remains.
I don't think that I am alone in this. It also exists when people see photos and hear audio recordings of themselves.
I have recently been doing a good job of being kind to myself, but I just saw a video of myself, and that feeling of "ugh...THAT'S what I look like!?" just rushes on.
Should I just have people videotape me all the time and force myself to watch it until it doesn't seem so damn weird anymore?
2
Comments
Perhaps we feel weird because we know that the photo, the video, the audio, isn't really us.
I think most of it is caused by us seeing ourselves in a certain way that is usually very far removed from what we see in photos/videos. Which is more accurate? Can we really know? It's all perception. I got a haircut a few weeks ago that I just love. When I comb my hair after my shower, I love it. But I had a picture taken with my son last weekend and I thought "whoa, that haircut I thought looked so great in the mirror looks like THAT!?" It was really weird, lol. But who is to say which perception is correct? And what others perceive? Our perceptions of ourselves are gonna differ just like the perception someone else has does.
The veil of Maya makes us totally delusional about the image we have of ourselves and how others actually see us. I was about to write "how we really are," but I begin to doubt there is actually one single way in which we "really are." In the end, what is reality? A friend sees you one way and somebody who does not like you sees you in another. Does that mean that is really you? You could talk to twenty people and the twenty will see you not as you are but rather as THEY are. Twenty people will provide you with twenty different points of view about yourself.
But it's true that photos and videos are ruthless at least as revelatory of our most superficial physical layer. My husband finally got it that he has a kilo surplus when my son recorded him on video playing soccer last week. He was totally devastated when he watched himself playing. "I look like Maradona," he said. Of course, Maradona as he is now, not the Maradona of the eighties...
I find looking at myself in a mirror odd; and I am definitely recorded image-averse - hence no photos uploaded of myself
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Talking about seeing yourself in other ways I heard about the quantified self movement yesterday, now they have an odd view of themselves. However, they really do miss the point. Collecting data about your heart rate, brain activity, rate of toe-nail growth, number of times they ad a pee and the volume (lol ) etc. only provides a small fraction of what is going on with the body, however, in my view it's a waste of time, as I am more interested in relationships between myself and the world whether myself or other people are happy or sad, are they seeking comfort or want to talk about something, thats useful information in my view. Collecting and recording isolated data is telling them nothing about themselves at all.
No. Whatever for.
You are not trying to generate more ways to suffer. You are, you know this, trying to avoid dukkha. We are normally very critical of ourselves predominantly, unless narcissistic. I appreciate why you ask this question, it is to do with who we are not. Body, gender, attractiveness, age etc. These are our subjective states, our Buddha Nature is independent.
I love seeing pics and videos of people but am not allowed to post pics of family or myself in case we are picked up by the Thought Police . . . I think that is the reasoning . . .
The attachment to a good self image does dissipate with practice, maturity and unnecessary aversion therapy . . . which is what your suggestion sounds like.
Personally I would find a Yidam practice more useful.
I hate my teeth, but other people tell me they're fine, and that I'm overly self-conscious of them; true to tell, I DO see people, daily, with far more "unkempt" mouths, with regard to both dentition AND hygiene! But I just don't like them very much...
I'm very short. My H constantly, with great affection, always tells me "you're only small...."
And I don't like the SOUND of my spoken voice, very much. It's higher and more nasal when heard 'separate from myself' as opposed to hearing what it sounds like within my head...
But I have made tons of educational videos (someone has actually approached me to make some cooking-lesson videos for Youtube!) and by the time people begin listening to the content, they forget what I look like.
Mercifully!
Our own self-image is always going to be different to the way others perceive us. My hair is parted one way, I see it going in the opposite direction, in the mirror... I still think of myself as 12lbs lighter than I am... and taller. What wouldn't I give to be just that little bit taller...!
"Would it have spoiled some vast eternal plan....?"..:D...
But you know what?
None of that matters.
Not one jot.
Not one single, almost imperceptible iota.
Because as far as I have come to realise, what you look like isn't worth a damn jot, against WHAT YOU ARE LIKE.
And if someone is a wonderful person, their radiance outshines any possible physical feature.
Sorry, again mistake. I'm awful with technology!
Mistake again.
It worked the first time. Nice picture. Now it's gone for me.
Thank you, @robot! So this is my "Maradona" husband and me... @federica, please help me out of here to attach the picture. I hope it stays... Well, here we are, blissful in our Samsara...
That has to be one of the loveliest pictures I have seen for a long time.
Very nice!
Thank you, @federica and everyone! Just to say that at 43, you don't give a daisy about your outer appearance... except when your belly resembles too much Maradona's...
I once asked my Zen teacher if he would allow me to take a picture of him. It was later in his life and I didn't know when I would see him again. He gave me one of his no-screwin'-around looks and said, "No! I am getting old." For me, it's not specifically the business of age, but rather some wider net of distaste. But his response makes me feel somewhat less embarrassed about my own reaction to being photographed or videoed ... a kind of visceral eeeeuuuuuw that no amount of adult, Buddhist explication can dull or bring perspective to. At my age, I've grown more accustomed to my eeeeeuuuuws ... no big deal ... I don't like anchovies either.
[The OP did put me in mind of the fact that somewhere around the house here is a disc of a Korean television show about Buddhism. Somehow, when the show was being shot, I got chosen for an interview. I was flattered/excited before the event ... imagine that!... 15 minutes of fame... etc. But when at last I got a copy of the finished product and when I watched all the other serene interviewees and when I watched myself ... I literally wanted to crawl under a table and disappear. It was a bigtime EEEEUUUUUWWWW. Luckily, in a house that brought up three children, there is so much accumulation that I doubt anyone will ever find the disc. But imagining that anyone might find it still gives me a small case of the shivers. Oh well ....]
Just out of interest I listened to a BBC radio 4 program on the first action movie called Daring Daylight Burglary (film titles have come along way since 1903). It is a silent movie and there would have been someone in the theatre called a lecturer I believe. commenting on the action. It's in the radio show.
The story behind it is fascinating, and most modern day action movie cinematography has evolved from it apparently, in terms of continuity, and story line. and if you are in UK and are also interested you can listen to it here (not sure if it will be restricted outside the uk). Apparently the final scene was shot at a railway station with passers by thinking the arrest was probably real event, when they discovered it was movie many went to watch it to see if they could see themselves captured on film.
I've only ever seen myself from straight on (when looking in the mirror). I have grown accustomed to that perspective, but any other angle seems so foreign to me. Of course, everyone else who has ever spent any time with me has gotten the 360° panoramic view. Even if it is strange, I'm sure they got accustomed to it pretty quickly. But every time I see myself in video, I realize that I remember everything about the whole scene EXCEPT for that strange character that I hadn't seen when I was there. How are those other people just carrying on with such a weirdo in their midst? :-)
But I also need to realize that the other people who were there not only tolerated me but were very friendly to me. So I can't possibly be as awful as I appear to myself.