Saturday, April 6, 2013

Day 4 - Pore Me

This is a continuation of my blog from Day 3, where I started the list of the physical attributes of myself that I judge as negative and which I build up in my imagination as separate from myself -- cutting off this piece of my physical body to over-analyze and fantasize about it.

The first thing on this list is my Pores - this is the first thing that my eyes will lock onto when I look at myself in the mirror.  So this morning I stood in front of the mirror and scanned my pores and wrote down the thoughts/feelings/pictures that came up.

  1. A physical "sinking" feeling in my stomach.
  2. Thought: "My pores are so huge and filled with dirt, it is disgusting"
  3. Thought: "Everyone will look at me and think that I am not clean"
  4. Picture: A nerdy teenager in a movie who has acne and everyone makes fun of him.
  5. Thought: "People who are beautiful don't have acne"
  6. Picture: up-close shot of Supermodel from makeup commercial, her skin is perfect
  7. Thought: "No one will like me if I am not good looking"
  8. Thought: "I must clean out my pores, so no one will know"
  9. Picture: Ad for acne face cleaner, where kids are happy after washing their face
  10. Thought: "All I have to do is squeeze the dirt out, then I will feel better"
  11. Picture: Ad for acne cleaner, picture of the pore where the dirt comes out, and nothing is left"
When I was a teenager, and even up until recently, I have done this ritual pore scanning in the morning (and sometimes throughout the day) and I started picking my face until I had gotten a lot of dirt out of the larger pores.  Sometimes, this picking would become a trance-like state and last a long time, like 15-20 minutes, and I would feel really good while I was doing it, like it was satisfying to clean my face, but I was so focused on each small pore, I wasn't seeing the consequences of what I was doing to my entire face.  Afterwards, my face would be all red and puffy, and I would be so embarrassed, especially if I my roommates saw me come out of the bathroom.

I will continue with my self forgiveness on each of these points in the next blog.

No comments:

Post a Comment