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We already got a DVD from the wedding, and my daughter looks beautiful. I, however, look like a hippo! People told me I looked good, and my husband said I do not look like I do in the DVD, but I know I do. I'm not grossly overweight; it's mainly my chin. I also lost about 6 pounds before the wedding, but it didn't help at all. I'm so discouraged now.

I wanted to look so good at the wedding, and I thought I did until I saw the video. When photos are taken from a certain angle, I look good. But otherwise, I really do look like a hippo. This makes me so depressed, though I know I should untwist my thinking. I know beauty on the inside counts more than on the outside, but I can't help crying about the way I look. How can I get over this?

I totally relate after having my new driver's license picture make me look so fat and ugly! I have determined that I need to get rid of the weight I gained and having this gross picture to look at may just help motivate me to do that. At this time I am also having problems with depression, though, and just trying to find the energy to keep up with my home is overwhelming enough without adding a gym routine as well. I have spent the past two days "taking it easy" in order to have the mental energy I need to get my physical body in gear for the job that lies ahead. Somehow going back to therapy after having the summer off is not helping because admitting how depressed I am only makes the depression feel more real. I may end up going back on meds and I don't want to resort to that.

I suppose it helps to know that others are not as concerned about the way we look as we are so we are the only ones who get depressed about the way we look. Other people just see us for who we are so that our inner beauty shows through. When my daughter took me to have my hair done for my birthday, the woman who did my hair thought we were sisters and it was after telling her that I was my daughter's mother that she said I looked like a "sexy mama" LOL. Pictures seem so unfair because they never look like us anyway. I have always hated having my picture taken for that reason.

It's not too uncommon for one to see themselves in a different way than others do. I think a lot of people are hyper-critical about their own looks. People told you that you looked good, and they were probably telling the truth based upon their perception of you. How to come to see ourselves in the same way? That's tough.

I've tried accepting (instead of fighting it and beating myself up over it) that this is the way I am, right now, and that's fine. I'm over-weight, but I don't have the time or energy to do anything about that right at this moment. I'm not denying that there is a problem, but I'm also not so accepting of it, that I won't ever do something to change it. I'm still an ok person on the inside, even if I don't look my best on the outside. Instead of getting depressed about it, I see it as another thing to work on, to improve, and trust that when the time is right, I will take the appropriate steps to address the issue. If I try to tackle too many changes at one time, I end up getting over-whelmed and failing at all of them. I see it as something I will get around to addressing at some stage, but right now I accept that this is the way I am right now.

I agree that it can be tough to see yourself though the eyes of those that love you. But, they were not lying to you! It sounds like you might just be being a little hard on yourself. Maybe your fixating on this because of other reasons? You yourself said that you had just lost 6 pounds, to me that's cause for celebration. I guess what I'm saying is maybe it is not the pics your really upset about. Maybe your worried about your daughter or you without your daughter? I don't know, I just think it is usually not as simple as 'bad CD'. Are you really just crying over the way you look? Could it be more than just a picture you don't find flattering? Just a thought.

Denim: You made some interesting statements.



Do you really think so? I can't help thinking that people at the wedding saw me the way I saw myself. Maybe they like me anyway, but still, I looked the way I looked.



I know people used to say that television made you look 10 pounds heavier. But others in the video don't look heavier. What I don't understand, and want to, is: how can my perception be so wrong, or, how can the video not look like me when it is me, in action?

It could be because the part of the DVD I was looking at had the top half of me, mostly, but any side view looks terrible also. I don't know if people who are taller like my H, see me as looking different because he sees me from above. I know I am dwelling on this, but I have conflicting views of myself. I think I'm pretty; in fact my features are, I know that. But those positive feelings go out the window when I see these "ugly" views of me. I didn't know I was so fat, either. I've been in denial over the fact that size 16 is heavy, since I'm short.

Amanda: But aren't we looking at the same person in the video? The hanging skin (sorry for TMI) is there for all to see. Why don't they see it, but I do? I think they are being polite. I just don't look attractive at all, unless you look from a certain angle. How do I know which angle people are looking at?

You have a good attitude about your weight, and a good self-image. I try to do that, and I'm okay when I don't look at pictures of myself. What really bothers me is that I thought I looked good: hair, make-up, dress, until I saw this really fat person in the wedding video. I don't want that person to be me!

Harmonium: You've got a point. I feel kind of let-down now that the wedding is over, and I have to get used to my daughter being married. But that's a separate issue from how I look in the video. Thanks for responding to me.

There is something to the idea that other people do not see our flaws the way we do. I don't think it's so much that they're being "nice". I think they are just not all that pre-occupied with how you and I look. They do the quick once-over view and that's about it. We're TRAINED to find whatever is wrong with us! Most people aren't. They just see what they see and they don't really attach any judgment to it.

SOs may see something even different from that.
I've lost about 15 lbs since my bf and I started dating in May. He was surprised to see that my clothes don't fit anymore, and he said he hadn't noticed. (cue crying fit!) Then he told me that my weight isn't what he sees when he looks at me. He sees "those beautiful eyes and wonderful smile, that nice curvy butt and those great legs. I don't see you as a bunch of parts. I see the woman I met and fell in love with."
I don't quite get that, but I know that I don't pay attention to his "flaws" either. It's not that I don't see them, but they just don't really register because those little details aren't what's important to me.

That said, I have a bit of a double chin and my sister doesn't. I saw THAT out loud in the pictures we took, and I hate it. And yeah, some sizes look a lot bigger on us short people than they would if we were 5'-11!

I think we all have a weight where we are more comfortable with ourselves and any weight outside that weight is not going to be comfortable. I used to wear a size 5 when I weighed 120 to 125 pounds and that was comfortable for me. I now wear a size 12 and that feels uncomfortable. Chances are I see myself at a size 12 as being fatter than anyone else wearing a size 16, though, because I am comparing my weight with what I am comfortable with and I am not uncomfortable with other people being whatever weight they are. My "sister" was about 350 pounds and I never realized she was that heavy - I would have thought she was 200 to 250 pounds, but then 200 pounds is what I consider my "suicide weight" because if I were to get over 200 pounds (I am only 5'2" to 5'3" tall) I would want not want to live with my body anymore.

I always wanted to be 100 pounds but I have come to realize that it is not realistic for me. I have a large frame and I have a lot of muscle bulk (we are talking biceps like a man and other muscle bulges that are not at all feminine) so for me to get down to 100 pounds would look terrible. In fact, when I was 120 pounds I looked more like a 100 pound person. I have actually stated to people on occasion how fat I am and have even given my specific weight only to have them tell me they did not see me as fat and would not have thought I weighed as much as I do. I even had a few good-intentioned people try to tell me that I had some sort of body dysmorphia (?) that was warping my view of myself, LOL!

You might want to take a look at what you would consider your ideal weight and compare how far from that you are right now. You can set a goal to reach your ideal or you can change your ideal to more closely match what is realistic for you. I have set my goal at 140 pounds for now because it has not been too long since I weighed that much and wore a size 8 instead of a size 12. I have a gym membership I can use to help me reach my goal and I know what is wrong with my eating habits that I need to change. Once I lose the weight, I am going to "lose" my drivers license (cut it into pieces) and get a new picture done so I won't have to look at my fat picture anymore.

I don't suggest you destroy the wedding DVD but perhaps you can use what you see there as motivation and consider it your starting point to get to what you want to look like instead. I am certain that your weight in the video does not concern anyone else and they are not seeing you in the same light you see yourself, though. I would recommend setting a goal that will make you happy with yourself and not worry about what other people think. I imagine most people were focused on the bride and groom during the wedding anyway and in reality the married couple are the ones the video is for since not many other people would be interested in watching a wedding video more than once, you know!

Husbands really don't "see" us at all! My husband has always told me he does not consider me short (then again I don't really see myself as short either) since I have a "larger than life" quality in his eyes. He is so distracted by my hair and eyes that I don't think he ever sees much of the rest of me. He doesn't really care what I look like as much as I do so my appearance is not very important to him. I don't really look at him much either since his appearance does not matter to me.

My seventeen-year-old daughter is more obsessed about the way she looks but then she is a teenager and teenagers in general are overly self-absorbed. She walks into a store and thinks everyone is looking at her when in reality people are doing their shopping and not paying much attention to her at all, LOL. If someone glances at her, she thinks they are "staring" at her. I don't know if it is her desire to be seen that warps reality since I tend to consider myself "invisible" and assume people are looking through me when they may be looking right at me.

Even when people "see" us it is for a moment only and that moment is quickly forgotten among other thoughts and experiences. I don't think many people would be able to describe what we look like accurately enough to come up with a composite sketch since we are the only ones who really know what we look like up close and in detail. Other people are too busy looking at themselves and thinking about themselves to be very concerned with anyone else. Even if they were to make observations about other people, those observations would not be lasting impressions for the most part. Only when people die do pictures of them become "locked" in other people's minds.

I realized after I posted that I don't have a clue what you look like, wondering, since I have never even seen a picture of you! The main advantage to knowing what someone looks like is that they are more "real" that way. I think that the people here I tend to relate to the best are ones where I have a "picture" of them in my mind, even if it is a cartoon avatar! You know the saying, "out of sight, out of mind" rings true because it is hard to keep people in my mind when I don't have any way of recalling them with my mind's eye. I think that the "picture" I have associated with your user name is from a true crime book I read about someone with erotomania (?) and she probably looks nothing like you, LOL!

I wanted to get back to this thread because my T and I discussed pictures and how people see themselves. She was at my d's wedding and told me I looked nice, and not like a hippo! My T doesn't lie, so I feel better about it. She told me about her looking terrible in photos (I agree with her) but that in person you don't look at each flaw, you see the whole person. So, Minx and Denim, that's basically what both of you told me too.

Denim: You're right about who the DVD is for--basically the married couple. I want to see what I missed, being too busy and excited to concentrate on it all at the time. I am sure some of the photos will look good, and I will look at them, not the DVD.

I'm sorry you don't have a clear picture of me. I probably do NOT look like the woman with erotomania! I just want to remain anonymous on the board, as far as what I look like, due to worries about internet security. I look kind of ordinary. I know that helps a lot, LOL!

I have an image of people on the board who I've "known" for a long time, but they probably don't look like that at all. I don't think it matters, as long as I keep the images straight. I think about what kind of person each one is, and what I like about them, more than what they look like, though. When I think about it, that's how we should view each other. What a person looks like has nothing to do with their goodness inside, which is more important. I always thought that blind people are at an advantage because they can't judge others on the basis of their looks.

You're right Wondering. I don't really "picture" what people look like. I focus on what they're like and the words they say. I can sort of tell what age range each person is, by what they say about themselves, but I still don't know what everyone looks like. I think it's better that way - then we can focus on the words being said and not the exterior images. Well, you all can tell by my avatar that I have short hair and glasses. But that's not all who I am. I guess our personalities should speak for ourselves.

I imagine a lot of time and money went into appearances for a wedding ceremony that lasted only a portion of a day. That does say a lot about how society functions. What would be the point of having wedding pictures taken or filming a DVD if the visual images were not important to the occasion?

I think that the human form is what I use to "label" my mental files, not what I use to label people. I don't really care what people look like but it helps me to have some sort of face in order to relate to them better. I think it was Tracy who went by bogit and had an abstract color thing for an avatar. I don't think I started relating to her until I "saw" her as Tracy because the original name and avatar created distance for me. Likewise, I probably relate better to Amanda and Sarah by their names rather than by speedqueen and whoohoo - I definitely relate to them as having a "face" and not just names because they have both shared pictures. The name does not have to be a person's real name, though. Trinity and Minx both have names I can relate to just fine, probably because I have dealt with camp names for so many years, LOL. If someone came up to me on the street with a paper bag over his/her face, I would go out of my way to avoid the person where I have dealt with a woman who was a burn victim (through a suicide attempt) and had burned off most her face and that did not bother me because it was still a face.

Bordergirl, one thing that I had to "reconcile" in my concept of you is that you are not a girl but a woman! LOL I am not sure if you chose "girl" from Girl, Interrupted but at first I "saw" you as an "immature" person rather than as an adult. Knowing more about who you are helps me relate to you better and having a face to attach to what I know helps me keep you apart from anyone else so that you are an individual and not just a string of words on a computer screen.

I wonder, wondering, if you would get more replies to threads you start and find more people who relate to you if you were to be more "human" and not quite so "protected" by your user name and avatar. There are people who I think of by their names, even though they don't use them as their user name, because they use them in their signature, such as Candle/Jill and that also helps make them more "personable" to me. I have found it interesting that people will sometimes change a user name to their own name over time and it seems to have something to do with being okay with themselves and not being afraid to use their own name when discussing mental health issues because their mental health does not define who they are as people. In my case, my mental illness has to do with taking on different "personalities" so my goal is to become "one" person who can be consistent in who I am, once I can define myself as a single person. I had agreed not to use different names once I became an adult at 18 but I am not sure if that worked to solve the problem as well as I had hoped.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread and I may be doing that by bringing other stuff into it. I started a thread a couple of days ago that is more related to what I have just shared so I think I will need to confine these sorts of thoughts in that thread so this one can continue without disruption. In that thread I posted a link to an avatar maker for anyone who would like to have one of their own. I think this gives us the opportunity to have a "face" without being worried about being hunted down and stalked if anyone were to recognize us walking down the street where we live, LOL.

Denim, I will put my reply in your other thread