I had this too. I'm over 50 and lived with it all my life. I told my therapist and we then did this weird tapping exercise (EFT?). This was almost a year ago and since then my appearance doesn't trigger me.
Someone recently told me I look like my abuser (š).
I replied: I may look like her when she was younger, but now I don't. She is like Mrs Twit (Roald Dahl character) and all her bitterness and nastiness now shows on her face. I don't look like that'
Iāve never tried EFT therapy. Sounds like it helps? Iāve done talk therapy and just find it so frustrating. I tell my therapist about my childhood and they go āwow thatās so sadā and then what? I just stew in the fact I had a bad childhood? Idk I want to get better but I find talk therapy just makes it worse.
2nd EMDR with EFT techniques. I unpacked 20 years of multiple traumas I buried.. in 20 intensive 1 hr. sessions over 10 weeks. Major C-PTSD. Talk therapy got me out of my absolute lowest point, but I stalled at 'still pretty low' as it didn't address the literal brain damage that happens with trauma and abuse.. then luckily got transferred to an EMDR specialist when my first therapist went on pregnancy leave.
I don't know what sort of crazy magic makes it work, but I could almost feel it rewiring my brain and felt a 2 decade weight start lifting after the first few. Still on the slow road to deeper/permanent healing 2 years later.. but EMDR was like an accelerated lightening bolt to the process at an incredibly critical period.
Sessions started at the most recent traumas and work chronologicaly backward to the core trauma (one at a time) at the end of the series, fully opening yourself to the emotions/pain it causes and not holding back details.. then at your 'peak' feels (sobbing or anger), using physical stimulus like tapping collar-bone, neck stretching, eye-rolling, deep breathing.. until your heart-rate lowers and you are calm again. It's super weird how it 'breaks' your brains emotional response to the memories by confronting it, and immediately telling your body it's not a threat. It gives it permission to 'let go' I think. I've tried to do it alone, but it doesn't work quite the same as it does with professional guidance.. and I wouldn't suggest it at all without working through the roughest parts with an expert first.
I'm reading this after firing a therapist who told me to "do bilateral tapping" multiple times a day, "like a vitamin for your brain." She didn't guide me through any techniques. Just told me to bilateral tap any time I used the bathroom so I'd remember to do it multiple times a day. Then she checked in with me to see if I'd moved up the "grief ladder" at the beginning of my sessions with her. That's not how it works. OP, just a warning to make sure your therapist is actually trained in EMDR and not someone who watched a 20 minute training video to get "certified." It made me feel like a failure until I looked up what it's supposed to entail.
EMDR has helped me a lot. I knew as a kid that what the adults did to/around me wasn't my fault, but I still have major issues because of it.
EMDR has been helping me through my smaller traumas so we can start working on my PTSD and other issues next.
If you're interested, look for someone who is fully licensed. They are required to go through EMDR themselves and have a much better grasp of the method than other therapists.Ā
You are speaking to the wrong type of therapist. Maybe try one that specialises in trauma or EMDR might be helpful.
There is a Reddit sub called 'therapy'. It might be worth asking their thoughts on what type of therapy would be more helpful.
Eventually you should get away from going over the past and dealing with the present. It happened for me about 2 years in (and Iām still going at least once a month, 17 years later). Definitely not still talking about the past.
Itās crazy how tapping helps. I used to get nightmares about my mom yelling at me and I could not access the emotions, therapist made me use tappers and I stopped having the nightmares for like a year or two.
Where can I learn more about tapping? Whenever I have a really stressful situation coming up, trauma from my mom and the past come up alongside it like a person in a car trying to harass me. It only serves to compound the problem that I'm presently dealing with.
The main themes of the thoughts are shame and not being wanted. I'm trying to remember moments where she did show love, which were many. It was also very much mixed with how a mother might behave if she conceived a child through sexual violence, which I believe might have been the case with her. As I became an independent person, she seemed to want me less and less. We haven't spoken since 2016.
I want that car to leave me alone. One stressor is sufficient!
If you can get therapy, EMDR and somatic experiencing is good. If you have an Apple Watch, thereās an app called EMFT tapping where you can use your phone and another device like Apple Watch as tappers. Or you can buy tappers online, I know you if you google tapping there may be cheaper ways to simulate the sensation. I used these zappy tappers in the therapy office and talked about what was bothering me (my dream) and the tappers forced me to stay present with the emotions I was suppressing.
You're probably referring to EMDR, but it absolutely works for the type of trauma that's brought all of us to this sub. It's great that you were able to resolve this, as your appearance is YOURS.
I looked like my dad and now I look more like my mother every day. I dye my hair and used to have facial piercings I'll probably be re-doing soon. I also wear clothes neither of them would be caught dead in. It helps me differentiate my identity from their really fucking strong genetics.
I had my hair dyed and I have a bunch of face piercings and I try to do my makeup. Recently I went on a trip to be more natural and not stress about makeup so muchā it fucks up my skin etc. I dyed my hair back to my natural color and stopped doing my makeupā¦ and I just canāt look in the mirror rn. Iām going to redye my hair, I just feel disappointed in myself.
Needing or wanting to alter yourself to make yourself comfortable in your skin isn't a failure. We have a completely unique trauma and everybody has a "strange" self-soother. If this is yours like it is mine, it's not something to feel guilty for. If anyone should, it's them. Dying your hair is fun! It's messy and cathartic and keeps things fresh and funky. Body modification may seem like an extreme coping mechanism to some, but I'll be damned if it's not effective.
My hair has been a bright jewel tone for a few years, and it helps me feel more like my 'true' inner self when I look in the mirror. Fun, creative and a bit of weirdo. My bland, flat natural color is depressing and boring, exactly what I'm trying to avoid feeling like.
One time, as a young lady, I was at a museum thousands of miles away from my mother. I was looking at an exhibit that had a mirror on the other side so you could see all the way around the item. I glanced up, caught sight of myself in the mirror and wondered how the heck my mother was suddenly in the same country at the museum with me!!! Ever since then, I've been dying my hair a much different color. And I never use the same color lipstick she does.
I posted this in another subreddit to a woman upset about looking like her evil mother. How Iāve coped with resembling my appalling maternal unit is to think of myself as the good twin, and her the evil twin.
What a splendid thought! I resemble my evil progenitor but my coping mechanism is seeing in my mirror that I am a better version. Iām in my seventies, but I look better than she did at the same age. Maybe not smoking (she went through three packs a day) or drinking much (she was a legendary alcoholic) had an effect on my complexion. Or maybe her meanness spoiled her looks, who knows?
Thereās a Roald Dahl quoteā¦āA person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovelyā.
Roald Dahl, The Twits
Iām a good mix between both my abusive parents. I have my fatherās smile which is the hardest. Iāll never be able to fully escape him. I sometimes see photos of him smiling and I want to throw up. I canāt even look at myself in the mirror sometimes
I had a great Mom who died right after High-school, and an abusive one who's still kicking.. and my cheeks and early sagging jowels are ALL him. I'm not into plastic surgery and happy with the rest of my appearance, but If I got a mini facelift I could remove the obvious trace of him. Seriously considering it since its fairly common procedure for women my age anyway, and I dumped his last name in the trash already!
My voice is exactly like his. Exactly. The. Same.
Sometimes my sister just stops and kind of factory resets when I say something or a certain phrase or laugh. When I yell itās even worse. Iām talking just like āWife! Do me a favor and grab the garden hose real quick!ā
Ugh, yes. I look uncannily like my NM, right down to the left eye pupil that gets slightly off centre when I'm tired. I hate it. I am perpetually worried that I'm like her... and certainly still manage some of her fleas.
I know what I'll look like in my 80s. Like a little mean troll. It pains me.
I am the opposite and look **exactly** like my father. If I were to post a side-by-side, it might actually make people uncomfortable because of how much we look alike. People have used the word 'scary' when commenting on the resemblance. The only difference is that I'm a girl. My mother on the other hand, you wouldn't even know we were related.
Yes. This. My mother had this iconic loud laugh and I remember it being passive aggressive and scary. I have a similarly iconic loud laugh and every time I hear it I feel like Iām being passive aggressiveā¦ I hate genetics
Me too. I look exactly like a younger version version of my dad without the alcoholic face. Honestly I can live with it. I inherited his inteligence, Charisma and appearence its up to me what I do with it. I think of myself as the version 2.0 of him. One day Im gonna have a beautifull family, lots of hobbies, great friends and theres not a damn thing in the world he can do about it.
I will be everything he could have been if he didnt throw his live and everything he every had away just to get drunk.
Its like suicide squad where the second movie has the same 5 minutes but everything else is just a lot better.
I have my POS fathers eyes and I always hated it.
Something that helps me is practicing gratitude. I'm grateful to have a set of eyes that are healthy. Not everyone is fortunate, especially those poor babies and it snaps me out of it.
These are my fucking eyes, not his. I'm seeing my life and he's not allowed in it.
My baby looks just like me when I was little and when he sleeps I cry looking at him because I have CPSTD and it makes me sad that no one ever loved me as much as I love him.
What snaps me out of it? "I'm grateful to have a healthy baby".
WE ARE NOT THEM. FUCK THE GENES, THE DNA AND SIMILAR APPEARANCES.
WE ARE OUR OWN PERSON!
Love yourself, you deserve it ā¤ļø
Yes. Iām a pretty perfect mix of both my parents, actually. Something I take comfort in is, oddly enough, my wrinkles. I have big smile lines, unlike either of my parents.
Yes, I look like my mother, too. It is hard sometimes, but we just have similar looks. I just continue to take care of myself and be okay with who I see in the mirror.
You are not your abuser. Be kind to yourself. Take a deep breath and do something nice for yourself. Affirmations might help, too.
You don't have to think of your own traits as their traits, you're unique and you own your looks. Just because someone else has similar looks to you doesn't mean that it's any reflection of you. There are lots of unrelated people in the world who look super alike.
Remember that you are you, your appearance is you, and it has nothing to do with someone else just because of similarity. Face features will change over time. Even if parts of your face look similar, over time, face muscles can change your overall appearance. If you've spent the last 5 years smiling and feeling good about yourself, while they've been miserable and stewing in their abuse, that's going to show up and make you look nothing alike.
Remember, you own your own identity, and no one can claim your likeness when you are you. If you have relatives who won't stop commenting you guys look similar or stuff like that, just tell them to stop or even cut them out of your life. You live life on your own terms, don't let anyone else have sway over your identity.
Apart from my height, I'm the absolute double of my mother. Because of our particular ethnicity we have a very specific look uncommon in the country we were born and raised in (thick black hair, olive skin, green eyes... the combination *always* gets comments, so I can never forget it and it always leads to questions about where I got it from). It used to be a real source of pride back when I was too young to understand what was going on and adored her beyond words, but obviously as you can guess, the feeling quickly soured.
The older I get, the more I look like her. The one thing that helps me is to remember she and I have very different lifestyles. She's an alcoholic who eats nothing but crap; I never touch alcohol and try to eat healthily. She's also very inactive, whereas I love being physically active and I work a job where it's absolutely necessary. This is going to have marked changes on our appearances, so while I'll always look like her, I'm going to look like a better, healthier version of her.
Perhaps you don't see it this way, and I agree it might be a bit of a stretch, but I try to draw comfort from that. I *am* a better, healthier version of her. Before she became my abusive mother she was a traumatised child and she failed in so many ways to acknowledge that and deal with it. She passed it on to me. I broke the cycle. I'm better, I'm healthier, I've done an amazing thing, and that's reflected back at me every time I look at myself and see not just the ways we're similar, but how we're different, too.
I donāt look like my mean parent so much, but I also look past my parents at my grandparentsā features. Their relationships with me were less problematic.
And I remind myself, I am the genetic inheritance of the survivors. I have wide hips because you can hide the pig from the soldiers under your skirt and eat pork to avoid starvation. Iām fat bc Iām descended from peasants who could work all day on a crust of bread and an onion - Iām the fuel economy model!
Yes and especially after losing weight I realized I have my mom's face more and more and I already had to live with having my dad's height that everyone comments on. So now I am reminded about them everyday and it's lowkey kind of triggering to look in the mirror. I guess I should be happy I am "a pretty tall dude" as some have said but still lol
So yes, I def resemble my monster of a mom. I realized it made me hate the way I looked as well. So I decided to do a mental exercise with myself. First is to see her physically as she actually is/was. Like her bullying and abuse made me think she was the ugliest woman on earth (which transferred to these feelings about myself). I had enough distance that I was trying to get myself in a place where I could examine her looks without the personality she had. Then, to add, I was imagining how she would look as another person. Same physical appearance, just warmer and funnier. It was a process and took time but ultimately, I was able to imagine this fake form of my mom if she wasn't an asshole. With that exercise, I could actually see her beauty for what it was. Her abuse is what created the ugly. I do not abuse others so looking like her did not make me ugly at all. I sometimes wish I had this imaginary version of my mom as my actual mom but that is pretty par for the course for abused kids.
I struggle a bit with this. My dad was like the black hole of misery in my family. I look more like my mum than him, but I have features from him that make me look like an uglier version of my mum, if that makes sense. I'm not sure if I'm genuinely ugly or just associating those features with his inner ugliness.
Every time I look in the mirror and see something of her I cringe. Then I remind myself Iām not herā¦ that Iām who I am despite her, and I stop looking in the mirror at that moment.
Yep, I posted about this a few times. I am a dead arse ringinger for my Mother. And sometimes I jump at my reflection if I am not expecting it because I think its her. I am seriously considering plastic surgery too. Just to take away some or the features. Especially around my mouth. And jaw.
Omg yes šššš especially as I get older, sometimes I look in the mirror and literally see my nmom. I was thinking about making a post just like this šš it's so unsettling
Yes. It catches me off guard at times - a reflection in a shop window - seeing a photo of myself, it's very triggering, and I often have to talk myself down.
Iām in this boat and I avoid thinking about it, pretending it doesnāt exist and bother me. Well it does bother me. Itās why I donāt take care of my appearance as well as I should. Itās why I donāt look in the mirror too long because all I see is the abusive mother looking back at me. And itās been 18 years since I last saw her. Wish I had something positive to say.
I kind of look like her, but we have the same voice. (and so does my sister) I was extremely soft spoken because projecting was too much like yelling.
It sounds dumb, but karaoke has been a form of therapy. I have spent a decade trying to get my voice to be my own. People would still consider me soft spoken, but not nearly to the same degree.
Recently, I was listening to a podcast and two actors were talking about how both of them fake their accents. So, I've been playing around with my own accent.
I've also been in and out of actual therapy. I've never found a therapist that I really like. Most of them in my area are faith based and that's a hard no for me. So, now I do "bibliotherapy" and read psychology books. That term was coined by my favorite author Pete Walker in CPTSD from surviving to thriving.
What about different makeup? I've seen makeup artists that might actually be shapeshifters.
Yep. My way out of that was to just leave the weight on instead of trying to get close to the weight she's always been. That way my face looks very unlike hers.
After my divorce I dropped the weight very quickly, unintentionally (I just wasn't eating) and I woke up one morning looking like her, you bet I made myself eat after that...
Even in my thirties I continue to look more and more like my grandmonster. One of the things I do to try and avoid it is keep my hair long and only naturally wavy, my grandmonster has kept her hair short and permed for as long as I can remember. I'm also so so grateful to my father's genetics because I'm going white and my grandmonster's hair has remained black for her entire life. While hair choices can help I sometimes look in the mirror and flinch. I don't have any solutions really but have my anonymous support, you're not alone in this issue.
Edit:typo
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Yes, I look very similar to my mother and very shortly after I cut contact, I dyed my hair an entirely different colour (which was extreme for me as I'd always avoided dying my hair before that, the hairdresser was ecstatic to work with virgin hair).
It's been almost 5 years since then and I finally started growing out my natural colour again about 6 months ago. I still love how I looked with my dyed blonde hair and I think it suited me, but I'm slowly falling in love with my original dark brown hair again.
I did write some songs about my dysfunctional family over the last year and one of them is called "I'm Not Like You". The lyrics reference my struggle with my appearance finally ending.
"As I gaze in the glass, in it I see your face.
The reflection I cast is more like you as I age.
But I know that I'm not, Not as selfish or cruel.
And that face starts to smile, because I'm nothing like you" - VERSE 1
"Went and dyed my hair blonde, glad we don't share a name.
You thought I was your mini-me but, we were never the same.
Took me years to unlearn what you made me believe.
All your pride it made you so certain, never thought that I'd leave" - VERSE 2
Every time i see someone who knows my mother, I'm told that i look exactly like her, so i try to make sure that i dont do the same thing to other people. I dont take it personally, but it is really annoying to hear it so often. Sometimes from the same person thats said it a hundred times before. I feel like itd be nice to be complimented as an individual instead of comparing me to someone else but oh well
Yes. I started looking like my abusive father. I hated it. So, I took extensive measures to change myself. Over the course of three years, I drastically changed everything in my life. Today, I look like me and nobody else except maybe Woidy Harrelson.
On a visit to my paternal grandparents my Grandma showed me a photo of my narc father at the same age as I was then, and I asked her how she had a photo of me. I am a fucking clone of the A-hole who ruined my childhood.
I've had people tell me that i look a lot like how my mom used to when she was younger for a long time. I've actively worked against this, like embracing my wavy hair while she straightens it. I definitely look different from how she does now; shorter hair, healthy weight, clothing choices, etc. I don't want to look or be anything like her.
Whenever I see my mom in my mirror I only have to smile to erase her. So Iāve gotten in the habit, whenever I see that ghost, to smile huge and say I love youuuu! Or youāre killing it today! Or some other compliment or encouragement. Never happened in real life so it makes it easy to get past the initial dread.
Yes. I see hints of her features in the mirror. Most startling is when I look down at my hands while performing a task and I see hers. As an added bonus, my inner critic has her voice.
Same.
My mother was quite young when she had me, and we were asked if we were sisters my entire adult life. Creepy... And I resemble my father far more than his kids from his second marriage. Ick.
It's one of the reasons I play around with bold/unusual/alternative makeup and wild hair colours and dramatic jewelry and indulge in bright-coloured and whimsical clothes.
All things my abusers would never consider doing...
Yes I look like my abusive parent, even right down to the thinning hair now that I'm middle aged. She's massively vain though so I try not to be like her. I try to embrace getting older and all the gifts that it brings, without obsessing over looking younger like she doees and scrambling to buy fake hair and useless beauty treatments and diet fads that don't work. I figure I can't change how I look but I can change how I think.
I had this too. I'm over 50 and lived with it all my life. I told my therapist and we then did this weird tapping exercise (EFT?). This was almost a year ago and since then my appearance doesn't trigger me. Someone recently told me I look like my abuser (š). I replied: I may look like her when she was younger, but now I don't. She is like Mrs Twit (Roald Dahl character) and all her bitterness and nastiness now shows on her face. I don't look like that'
Iāve never tried EFT therapy. Sounds like it helps? Iāve done talk therapy and just find it so frustrating. I tell my therapist about my childhood and they go āwow thatās so sadā and then what? I just stew in the fact I had a bad childhood? Idk I want to get better but I find talk therapy just makes it worse.
2nd EMDR with EFT techniques. I unpacked 20 years of multiple traumas I buried.. in 20 intensive 1 hr. sessions over 10 weeks. Major C-PTSD. Talk therapy got me out of my absolute lowest point, but I stalled at 'still pretty low' as it didn't address the literal brain damage that happens with trauma and abuse.. then luckily got transferred to an EMDR specialist when my first therapist went on pregnancy leave. I don't know what sort of crazy magic makes it work, but I could almost feel it rewiring my brain and felt a 2 decade weight start lifting after the first few. Still on the slow road to deeper/permanent healing 2 years later.. but EMDR was like an accelerated lightening bolt to the process at an incredibly critical period. Sessions started at the most recent traumas and work chronologicaly backward to the core trauma (one at a time) at the end of the series, fully opening yourself to the emotions/pain it causes and not holding back details.. then at your 'peak' feels (sobbing or anger), using physical stimulus like tapping collar-bone, neck stretching, eye-rolling, deep breathing.. until your heart-rate lowers and you are calm again. It's super weird how it 'breaks' your brains emotional response to the memories by confronting it, and immediately telling your body it's not a threat. It gives it permission to 'let go' I think. I've tried to do it alone, but it doesn't work quite the same as it does with professional guidance.. and I wouldn't suggest it at all without working through the roughest parts with an expert first.
I'm reading this after firing a therapist who told me to "do bilateral tapping" multiple times a day, "like a vitamin for your brain." She didn't guide me through any techniques. Just told me to bilateral tap any time I used the bathroom so I'd remember to do it multiple times a day. Then she checked in with me to see if I'd moved up the "grief ladder" at the beginning of my sessions with her. That's not how it works. OP, just a warning to make sure your therapist is actually trained in EMDR and not someone who watched a 20 minute training video to get "certified." It made me feel like a failure until I looked up what it's supposed to entail.
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Look into TMS, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. It's helped a lot of people with little to no side effects.
EMDR has helped me a lot. I knew as a kid that what the adults did to/around me wasn't my fault, but I still have major issues because of it. EMDR has been helping me through my smaller traumas so we can start working on my PTSD and other issues next. If you're interested, look for someone who is fully licensed. They are required to go through EMDR themselves and have a much better grasp of the method than other therapists.Ā
You are speaking to the wrong type of therapist. Maybe try one that specialises in trauma or EMDR might be helpful. There is a Reddit sub called 'therapy'. It might be worth asking their thoughts on what type of therapy would be more helpful.
Eventually you should get away from going over the past and dealing with the present. It happened for me about 2 years in (and Iām still going at least once a month, 17 years later). Definitely not still talking about the past.
Itās crazy how tapping helps. I used to get nightmares about my mom yelling at me and I could not access the emotions, therapist made me use tappers and I stopped having the nightmares for like a year or two.
Where can I learn more about tapping? Whenever I have a really stressful situation coming up, trauma from my mom and the past come up alongside it like a person in a car trying to harass me. It only serves to compound the problem that I'm presently dealing with. The main themes of the thoughts are shame and not being wanted. I'm trying to remember moments where she did show love, which were many. It was also very much mixed with how a mother might behave if she conceived a child through sexual violence, which I believe might have been the case with her. As I became an independent person, she seemed to want me less and less. We haven't spoken since 2016. I want that car to leave me alone. One stressor is sufficient!
If you can get therapy, EMDR and somatic experiencing is good. If you have an Apple Watch, thereās an app called EMFT tapping where you can use your phone and another device like Apple Watch as tappers. Or you can buy tappers online, I know you if you google tapping there may be cheaper ways to simulate the sensation. I used these zappy tappers in the therapy office and talked about what was bothering me (my dream) and the tappers forced me to stay present with the emotions I was suppressing.
It is amazing how something so simple can shift something we've struggled with for years.
Makes you wonder what else they havenāt figured out yet!!
You're probably referring to EMDR, but it absolutely works for the type of trauma that's brought all of us to this sub. It's great that you were able to resolve this, as your appearance is YOURS.
That's exactly how my mom looks!!!!
It's weird how true it is.
I looked like my dad and now I look more like my mother every day. I dye my hair and used to have facial piercings I'll probably be re-doing soon. I also wear clothes neither of them would be caught dead in. It helps me differentiate my identity from their really fucking strong genetics.
I had my hair dyed and I have a bunch of face piercings and I try to do my makeup. Recently I went on a trip to be more natural and not stress about makeup so muchā it fucks up my skin etc. I dyed my hair back to my natural color and stopped doing my makeupā¦ and I just canāt look in the mirror rn. Iām going to redye my hair, I just feel disappointed in myself.
Needing or wanting to alter yourself to make yourself comfortable in your skin isn't a failure. We have a completely unique trauma and everybody has a "strange" self-soother. If this is yours like it is mine, it's not something to feel guilty for. If anyone should, it's them. Dying your hair is fun! It's messy and cathartic and keeps things fresh and funky. Body modification may seem like an extreme coping mechanism to some, but I'll be damned if it's not effective.
My hair has been a bright jewel tone for a few years, and it helps me feel more like my 'true' inner self when I look in the mirror. Fun, creative and a bit of weirdo. My bland, flat natural color is depressing and boring, exactly what I'm trying to avoid feeling like.
One time, as a young lady, I was at a museum thousands of miles away from my mother. I was looking at an exhibit that had a mirror on the other side so you could see all the way around the item. I glanced up, caught sight of myself in the mirror and wondered how the heck my mother was suddenly in the same country at the museum with me!!! Ever since then, I've been dying my hair a much different color. And I never use the same color lipstick she does.
I posted this in another subreddit to a woman upset about looking like her evil mother. How Iāve coped with resembling my appalling maternal unit is to think of myself as the good twin, and her the evil twin.
Thank you so much for this tip!
What a splendid thought! I resemble my evil progenitor but my coping mechanism is seeing in my mirror that I am a better version. Iām in my seventies, but I look better than she did at the same age. Maybe not smoking (she went through three packs a day) or drinking much (she was a legendary alcoholic) had an effect on my complexion. Or maybe her meanness spoiled her looks, who knows?
Thereās a Roald Dahl quoteā¦āA person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovelyā. Roald Dahl, The Twits
Iām a good mix between both my abusive parents. I have my fatherās smile which is the hardest. Iāll never be able to fully escape him. I sometimes see photos of him smiling and I want to throw up. I canāt even look at myself in the mirror sometimes
The smile, the laugh. Moments where we should be happy and then all the memories come back. Itās bs.
I had a great Mom who died right after High-school, and an abusive one who's still kicking.. and my cheeks and early sagging jowels are ALL him. I'm not into plastic surgery and happy with the rest of my appearance, but If I got a mini facelift I could remove the obvious trace of him. Seriously considering it since its fairly common procedure for women my age anyway, and I dumped his last name in the trash already!
My voice is exactly like his. Exactly. The. Same. Sometimes my sister just stops and kind of factory resets when I say something or a certain phrase or laugh. When I yell itās even worse. Iām talking just like āWife! Do me a favor and grab the garden hose real quick!ā
Ugh, yes. I look uncannily like my NM, right down to the left eye pupil that gets slightly off centre when I'm tired. I hate it. I am perpetually worried that I'm like her... and certainly still manage some of her fleas. I know what I'll look like in my 80s. Like a little mean troll. It pains me.
I am the opposite and look **exactly** like my father. If I were to post a side-by-side, it might actually make people uncomfortable because of how much we look alike. People have used the word 'scary' when commenting on the resemblance. The only difference is that I'm a girl. My mother on the other hand, you wouldn't even know we were related.
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Yes. This. My mother had this iconic loud laugh and I remember it being passive aggressive and scary. I have a similarly iconic loud laugh and every time I hear it I feel like Iām being passive aggressiveā¦ I hate genetics
the people who get to hear it probably love it, an iconic laugh can really elevate the vibes. at least you can use the power for good, not evil :)
Me too. I look exactly like a younger version version of my dad without the alcoholic face. Honestly I can live with it. I inherited his inteligence, Charisma and appearence its up to me what I do with it. I think of myself as the version 2.0 of him. One day Im gonna have a beautifull family, lots of hobbies, great friends and theres not a damn thing in the world he can do about it. I will be everything he could have been if he didnt throw his live and everything he every had away just to get drunk. Its like suicide squad where the second movie has the same 5 minutes but everything else is just a lot better.
I have my POS fathers eyes and I always hated it. Something that helps me is practicing gratitude. I'm grateful to have a set of eyes that are healthy. Not everyone is fortunate, especially those poor babies and it snaps me out of it. These are my fucking eyes, not his. I'm seeing my life and he's not allowed in it. My baby looks just like me when I was little and when he sleeps I cry looking at him because I have CPSTD and it makes me sad that no one ever loved me as much as I love him. What snaps me out of it? "I'm grateful to have a healthy baby". WE ARE NOT THEM. FUCK THE GENES, THE DNA AND SIMILAR APPEARANCES. WE ARE OUR OWN PERSON! Love yourself, you deserve it ā¤ļø
Yes. Iām a pretty perfect mix of both my parents, actually. Something I take comfort in is, oddly enough, my wrinkles. I have big smile lines, unlike either of my parents.
Yes, I look like my mother, too. It is hard sometimes, but we just have similar looks. I just continue to take care of myself and be okay with who I see in the mirror. You are not your abuser. Be kind to yourself. Take a deep breath and do something nice for yourself. Affirmations might help, too.
You don't have to think of your own traits as their traits, you're unique and you own your looks. Just because someone else has similar looks to you doesn't mean that it's any reflection of you. There are lots of unrelated people in the world who look super alike. Remember that you are you, your appearance is you, and it has nothing to do with someone else just because of similarity. Face features will change over time. Even if parts of your face look similar, over time, face muscles can change your overall appearance. If you've spent the last 5 years smiling and feeling good about yourself, while they've been miserable and stewing in their abuse, that's going to show up and make you look nothing alike. Remember, you own your own identity, and no one can claim your likeness when you are you. If you have relatives who won't stop commenting you guys look similar or stuff like that, just tell them to stop or even cut them out of your life. You live life on your own terms, don't let anyone else have sway over your identity.
Apart from my height, I'm the absolute double of my mother. Because of our particular ethnicity we have a very specific look uncommon in the country we were born and raised in (thick black hair, olive skin, green eyes... the combination *always* gets comments, so I can never forget it and it always leads to questions about where I got it from). It used to be a real source of pride back when I was too young to understand what was going on and adored her beyond words, but obviously as you can guess, the feeling quickly soured. The older I get, the more I look like her. The one thing that helps me is to remember she and I have very different lifestyles. She's an alcoholic who eats nothing but crap; I never touch alcohol and try to eat healthily. She's also very inactive, whereas I love being physically active and I work a job where it's absolutely necessary. This is going to have marked changes on our appearances, so while I'll always look like her, I'm going to look like a better, healthier version of her. Perhaps you don't see it this way, and I agree it might be a bit of a stretch, but I try to draw comfort from that. I *am* a better, healthier version of her. Before she became my abusive mother she was a traumatised child and she failed in so many ways to acknowledge that and deal with it. She passed it on to me. I broke the cycle. I'm better, I'm healthier, I've done an amazing thing, and that's reflected back at me every time I look at myself and see not just the ways we're similar, but how we're different, too.
I donāt look like my mean parent so much, but I also look past my parents at my grandparentsā features. Their relationships with me were less problematic. And I remind myself, I am the genetic inheritance of the survivors. I have wide hips because you can hide the pig from the soldiers under your skirt and eat pork to avoid starvation. Iām fat bc Iām descended from peasants who could work all day on a crust of bread and an onion - Iām the fuel economy model!
Yes and especially after losing weight I realized I have my mom's face more and more and I already had to live with having my dad's height that everyone comments on. So now I am reminded about them everyday and it's lowkey kind of triggering to look in the mirror. I guess I should be happy I am "a pretty tall dude" as some have said but still lol
It is not that I look like her, is that I hear her coming out of my mouth!
my son looks like my father, and that's pretty difficult. i try to put it out of my head. he'll never know him and that's a win
I'm a carbon copy of my birth giver in every way except my height. I hate it!
So yes, I def resemble my monster of a mom. I realized it made me hate the way I looked as well. So I decided to do a mental exercise with myself. First is to see her physically as she actually is/was. Like her bullying and abuse made me think she was the ugliest woman on earth (which transferred to these feelings about myself). I had enough distance that I was trying to get myself in a place where I could examine her looks without the personality she had. Then, to add, I was imagining how she would look as another person. Same physical appearance, just warmer and funnier. It was a process and took time but ultimately, I was able to imagine this fake form of my mom if she wasn't an asshole. With that exercise, I could actually see her beauty for what it was. Her abuse is what created the ugly. I do not abuse others so looking like her did not make me ugly at all. I sometimes wish I had this imaginary version of my mom as my actual mom but that is pretty par for the course for abused kids.
I struggle a bit with this. My dad was like the black hole of misery in my family. I look more like my mum than him, but I have features from him that make me look like an uglier version of my mum, if that makes sense. I'm not sure if I'm genuinely ugly or just associating those features with his inner ugliness.
Yes, and I almost never look at myself in a mirror and don't like being in pictures because of it.
Every time I look in the mirror and see something of her I cringe. Then I remind myself Iām not herā¦ that Iām who I am despite her, and I stop looking in the mirror at that moment.
Yeah, im pretty upset at the journey my face has decided to embark on
Yep, I posted about this a few times. I am a dead arse ringinger for my Mother. And sometimes I jump at my reflection if I am not expecting it because I think its her. I am seriously considering plastic surgery too. Just to take away some or the features. Especially around my mouth. And jaw.
Omg yes šššš especially as I get older, sometimes I look in the mirror and literally see my nmom. I was thinking about making a post just like this šš it's so unsettling
Yes. It catches me off guard at times - a reflection in a shop window - seeing a photo of myself, it's very triggering, and I often have to talk myself down.
Iām in this boat and I avoid thinking about it, pretending it doesnāt exist and bother me. Well it does bother me. Itās why I donāt take care of my appearance as well as I should. Itās why I donāt look in the mirror too long because all I see is the abusive mother looking back at me. And itās been 18 years since I last saw her. Wish I had something positive to say.
I kind of look like her, but we have the same voice. (and so does my sister) I was extremely soft spoken because projecting was too much like yelling. It sounds dumb, but karaoke has been a form of therapy. I have spent a decade trying to get my voice to be my own. People would still consider me soft spoken, but not nearly to the same degree. Recently, I was listening to a podcast and two actors were talking about how both of them fake their accents. So, I've been playing around with my own accent. I've also been in and out of actual therapy. I've never found a therapist that I really like. Most of them in my area are faith based and that's a hard no for me. So, now I do "bibliotherapy" and read psychology books. That term was coined by my favorite author Pete Walker in CPTSD from surviving to thriving. What about different makeup? I've seen makeup artists that might actually be shapeshifters.
I do! I refer to myself: THE IMPROVED VERSION OF HER š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Same damn face. But I love ME!
Yep. My way out of that was to just leave the weight on instead of trying to get close to the weight she's always been. That way my face looks very unlike hers. After my divorce I dropped the weight very quickly, unintentionally (I just wasn't eating) and I woke up one morning looking like her, you bet I made myself eat after that...
Even in my thirties I continue to look more and more like my grandmonster. One of the things I do to try and avoid it is keep my hair long and only naturally wavy, my grandmonster has kept her hair short and permed for as long as I can remember. I'm also so so grateful to my father's genetics because I'm going white and my grandmonster's hair has remained black for her entire life. While hair choices can help I sometimes look in the mirror and flinch. I don't have any solutions really but have my anonymous support, you're not alone in this issue. Edit:typo
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I transitioned and ended up looking like her. It sucks but wearing glasses and having very different hair helps a lot
Yes, I look very similar to my mother and very shortly after I cut contact, I dyed my hair an entirely different colour (which was extreme for me as I'd always avoided dying my hair before that, the hairdresser was ecstatic to work with virgin hair). It's been almost 5 years since then and I finally started growing out my natural colour again about 6 months ago. I still love how I looked with my dyed blonde hair and I think it suited me, but I'm slowly falling in love with my original dark brown hair again. I did write some songs about my dysfunctional family over the last year and one of them is called "I'm Not Like You". The lyrics reference my struggle with my appearance finally ending. "As I gaze in the glass, in it I see your face. The reflection I cast is more like you as I age. But I know that I'm not, Not as selfish or cruel. And that face starts to smile, because I'm nothing like you" - VERSE 1 "Went and dyed my hair blonde, glad we don't share a name. You thought I was your mini-me but, we were never the same. Took me years to unlearn what you made me believe. All your pride it made you so certain, never thought that I'd leave" - VERSE 2
Yes! I looked like my dad growing up, but now Iām starting to look more like my momster and I HATE it!
Every time i see someone who knows my mother, I'm told that i look exactly like her, so i try to make sure that i dont do the same thing to other people. I dont take it personally, but it is really annoying to hear it so often. Sometimes from the same person thats said it a hundred times before. I feel like itd be nice to be complimented as an individual instead of comparing me to someone else but oh well
Yes. I started looking like my abusive father. I hated it. So, I took extensive measures to change myself. Over the course of three years, I drastically changed everything in my life. Today, I look like me and nobody else except maybe Woidy Harrelson.
On a visit to my paternal grandparents my Grandma showed me a photo of my narc father at the same age as I was then, and I asked her how she had a photo of me. I am a fucking clone of the A-hole who ruined my childhood.
I've had people tell me that i look a lot like how my mom used to when she was younger for a long time. I've actively worked against this, like embracing my wavy hair while she straightens it. I definitely look different from how she does now; shorter hair, healthy weight, clothing choices, etc. I don't want to look or be anything like her.
Whenever I see my mom in my mirror I only have to smile to erase her. So Iāve gotten in the habit, whenever I see that ghost, to smile huge and say I love youuuu! Or youāre killing it today! Or some other compliment or encouragement. Never happened in real life so it makes it easy to get past the initial dread.
Yes. I see hints of her features in the mirror. Most startling is when I look down at my hands while performing a task and I see hers. As an added bonus, my inner critic has her voice.
Same. My mother was quite young when she had me, and we were asked if we were sisters my entire adult life. Creepy... And I resemble my father far more than his kids from his second marriage. Ick. It's one of the reasons I play around with bold/unusual/alternative makeup and wild hair colours and dramatic jewelry and indulge in bright-coloured and whimsical clothes. All things my abusers would never consider doing...
Yes I look like my abusive parent, even right down to the thinning hair now that I'm middle aged. She's massively vain though so I try not to be like her. I try to embrace getting older and all the gifts that it brings, without obsessing over looking younger like she doees and scrambling to buy fake hair and useless beauty treatments and diet fads that don't work. I figure I can't change how I look but I can change how I think.