Our partner

heracles
Consumer 6
Consumer 6
 
Posts: 491
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2012 7:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (10)
Archives
- May 2023
Looks and Personal Identity
   Tue May 23, 2023 8:47 pm

+ November 2015
+ July 2015
+ December 2014
+ November 2014
+ June 2014
+ February 2013
+ January 2013
Search Blogs

Feed
Next

Looks and Personal Identity

Permanent Linkby heracles on Tue May 23, 2023 8:47 pm

Recently I’ve seen a few photographs of myself that totally devastated me. One was a driver’s license photo and the other a candid photo of me crossing a finishing line at a local race. Both were absolutely awful. It seemed I was in the full throws of geezerhood.

Since then I’ve been able to convince myself, as usual, that it was the lighting, the angle, and the general circumstances in which these were taken, and that my much better---or less awful---looking mirror images were more true to life, by reading some articles and watching several YouTube videos. I suppose I cherry-picked all these to console myself.

At some point, I felt better, as I usually do, and went back to a more positive facial self-image. Everything was fine. I was grossly over-blowing it. Hey! I could pass for 30! I was uniquely, almost disturbingly, youthful! (Of course in the back of my mind, I knew this was probably just another fluctuation, reality would smack me in the face once again, and I’d be due for another round of despair.)

The larger issue is---and there are plenty of people who sneeringly ask this question---“why do I care so much about how I look?” Am I more obsessed about this than most people? Most men? People sneer at “vanity”, yet it doesn’t take much searching to find how many products there are on the market to improve personal appearance, not just to stave off the signs of aging, but for younger people too. Attracting a mate is surely part of this, but I think it’s much deeper and more nuanced than that. I also think blaming it on advertising, media and society is ultimately a copout.
Oprah Winfrey once had Luther Vandross on her show after his radical weight loss. She declared in amazement that he looked like “a completely different person”. No, not the same person who’d just lost a lot of weight, but again, “a completely different person”. After a large weight loss at about 30, my brother made the same comment to me. It’s hard to explain, but there’s something very significant about this perception. I think it’s called “the halo effect”. It’s not just how you’re “seen” by others, but how you’re “felt”, and in some inexplicable way, who you are.

A YouTuber by the name of Danny Mabley did a video on his weight loss journey. He went from looking middle-aged to a youthful 20-something, and yes, it was like he had become a “completely different person”. To me, even his voice and mannerisms seemed younger. Reality, or illusion? Where does outer beauty end and inner beauty begin? I don’t see any easy answer that question. It’s ageless.

Luther Vandross on Oprah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOzoiP3pMqE
Luther After Weight Loss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snXaYujtDUc&t=64s
My 140 lb Weight Loss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxoqoGphvO8&t=70s
The Halo Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzZ6HvFHBk

Okay. So, what? This is what: most of us want to be seen as the inner self, the inner person, that our body matches. There’s a certain enjoyment, sense of well-being in that experience. If you’ve got looks, you can shrug at this. But you neither know, nor probably care, what it feels like to people who don’t and never have. Or to those who had them but are losing them. When I was young, I scoffed at all these hair transplants and face lifts, but as they say, “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone”.

Maybe some people don’t feel this at all. Maybe some feel it only a little. But I think a lot more of us feel it much more, despite the tendency of most people to deny it out of the social conditioning that it’s vain and shallow. They are satisfied with the unreflective platitude that “beauty is only skin deep.” I am not.

Will I ever accept my aging face and body? Will I ever be able to re-invent myself? Will I ever be able to accept my new niche in society, as I drift ever further towards its margins? Will I let go of all my old youthful fantasies?

I’m working on it. But it won’t be easy. I’d be a fool to think it will b...

[ Continued ]

0 Comments Viewed 1684 times

Gerascophobia

Permanent Linkby heracles on Sat Nov 28, 2015 7:51 pm

This will be another "sub-log" which I'll add entries to from time to time, many of which may be "mined" from other posts, from this or other forums. The following was on the NPD forum, on a thread on narcissism and ageing.

**********************

How I see myself, externally and internally, fluctuates. Often, when I look in a mirror or reflective surface, I will still see a young man of 28. I'm sure it depends on the lighting, its intensity or quality. Other times, in certain predictable mirrors I tend to avoid, I see a man every minute of 57, or older. Even when I see the young man, if only in the back of my mind, I wonder, or strongly suspect, that there's "magical thinking" going on, that I'm filtering out what my mind fears to see, and filtering in what it wants. But I never know for sure, one way or the other. In any case, even if time's treated me well for longer than others, my magical thinking can't last for ever, and I know I must get old, visibly and otherwise.

Why does this matter to me? Intellectually, I know it shouldn't, but it does. Gerascophobia. I've been obsessing about the passing, the racing by, of my youth, since my mid-20's. Most people are worried about the big 3-0, I was agonized about the big 2-7. It really shouldn't be all that surprising. In my struggle to rise above it, to let it go, I've been delving into the literature, film and lore----of gerascophobia---and have been compiling a bibliography and filmography about it of sorts. I'm not the only one who's had this disease. It has a long, long history. And I'm sure, though they've all had the basic similarities, the fine details of the feelings of every gerascophobe, I suspect have been very different.

It's not just the loss of youth. It's the loss of a time, a place, a world-----an identity.

We may all know the old saying, "One picture is worth a thousand words". So far, the cold, clinical, binary, reductionist language of "clinical psychology" (or whatever it is) cannot convey what my gerascophobia feels like. So what I have done is posted links to a couple film clips, which, in their "thousand words" have some chance of hinting at, much closer to any "scientific" formulation, what I feel.

I was hoping to include a clip from the 1935 version of She, of the final words of "She Who Must Be Obeyed", but I couldn't find one separate from the film itself. They were painfully poignant-----"I remember......long ago.......a garden.......in the sun...."

The Guest not only has gerascophobic themes, but perhaps narcissist as well. But it's not the glamorized narcissism. It's the tragic and nightmarish. The scene of young Tess, only 18, in the graveyard with the young drifter is just so powerful. I saw this episode decades ago, maybe as a teenager myself, and it stuck with me all these years. I only just watched it again on DVD.

The Guest, Outer Limits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJs7pZg_ngQ

I'm not a stud or Casanova like the swimmer, but I can relate a lot to him. All the dreams of strength, power and competence...and all the emptiness that finally finds you. I was hoping I'd find a trailer with the final scenes of his dark homecoming, but I couldn't, so I settled for this one. You can't really put all this into words, tie it up in a neat explanatory bow. It speaks its own language.

The Swimmer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIegoQAayFs

The sadness of aging is probably ineffable. It cannot be easily analyzed. Now, I don't feel it all the time---often, I'm just fine----but sometimes, when I do, it can be so intense, it's excruciating. Glib advice about the benefits of "cognitive behavioral therapy" or "neuroplasticity" are so inane in the face of it, if they weren't so clueless and insulting, they'd be laughable.

If I live any longer, I am going to get old and be old for a while. I'm working on coping strategies for that, but please...

[ Continued ]

2 Comments Viewed 4419 times
1 out of 52 out of 53 out of 54 out of 55 out of 5

A Stepford Heracles

Permanent Linkby heracles on Thu Jul 16, 2015 4:46 pm

Throughout my teens and adulthood various members of my family have tried to reach out to me----siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins... Beginning in my teens I started becoming more and more alienated from, more and more aloof to them. I feel tremendous guilt that I ignored several aunts and uncles until they died, and that I'm ignoring some who will die before I ever visit them, many of them who were very kind to me in my childhood, teens and twenties. I understand that they may "love" me, I suppose, "unconditionally", but as a schizoid these are vague and abstract concepts I don't feel or genuinely appreciate. (Sam Vaknin says some schizoids are "shriveled narcissists" and despite his gratuitous brutality, he may be right.)

The problem is that to visit or interact with them, they expect affection and warmth from me, and if they don't get it, they feel hurt or rejected. In order not to hurt them, I must wear a mask and put on a performance, which are very, very internally awkward to me, because these are so inauthentic. It can be excruciating. To me, my family is "society". I can magnanimously ignore society most of the time, but if I have be thrown into the midst of it and pretend to love it, inwardly I begin to seethe with resentment, and it's very hard to hide.

I have to hide my monster, because my family is so naive, it would just be too traumatic for them to see it. It would devastate them. Even though I admit I have "blunt affect", I do feel guilt and remorse for this, perhaps all the more reason I'm very avoidant about it.

Does anybody remember "Peter" from the old Folger's commercial?(www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4kNl7cQdcU). One fantasy I've had for some time is that somehow a "Stepford heracles" could be created. Some sort of android, that would look like me, but be like "Peter" to my family. A warm, loving young---actually now, middle-aged---man. The real heracles could then recede into his own world, free from guilt, knowing his family would be emotionally provided for.

But alas, that is just a fantasy, and I'll just have to suffer the torment of guilt for the rest of my life. I just hope my sentence in purgatory won't be too long.

2 Comments Viewed 35899 times
1 out of 52 out of 53 out of 54 out of 55 out of 5

My Buddhism, My Narcissism: Amended

Permanent Linkby heracles on Fri Dec 05, 2014 10:42 pm

I feel I should clarify something. I did a little research on "Classical Theravada", and I realize I probably can't call myself a "Classical Theravadin", at least not a in a strict sense. I would say that I lean much more toward "classical" in my interpretation than "modern". Also, as I've said before, I look to what extent I do believe in it as an ideal, since I'm currently very lax in my practice.

0 Comments Viewed 35009 times
1 out of 52 out of 53 out of 54 out of 55 out of 5

My Buddhism, My Narcissism

Permanent Linkby heracles on Fri Dec 05, 2014 7:07 pm

I have been a Theravada Buddhist for 36 years, since I was 20. I am not a secular Theravadin, but a religious one. I think the preferred term for what I believe in is "classical Theravada" and this differs in many respects from what most Westerners and I'm sure most of the posters on Psych forums think of as "Buddhism". But I'm not here really to get into debates about the myriad schools and interpretations of Buddhism, just to share some thoughts about how my Buddhism relates to my narcissism.

When I was in my 20's, I was much more assiduous and enthusiastic in my practice. As time went on, I slacked off very badly, and my practice is pretty much just trying to follow the precepts and giving, i.e., generosity. Although I always hope some day I can get back to following a stricter path, right now, I feel I have to follow other pursuits. I know that most classical Theravadins would see this as the foolishness of Malankyaputta, but I must read and think freely at this stage in my life---other philosophies, other theories. So I respect the Dhamma, but cannot live up to the expectations of the Theravadin community as to how I should follow it, so I am somewhat estranged from it by my own choice. I also admit, though I still believe in it,, my heart isn't in it as much as it was when I was younger. I wish it were, but it just isn't.

I know my somatic narcissism and gerascophobia are delusional and bring me suffering. I don't defend them. They're deeply ingrained addictions I hope I can one day overcome, and I am trying to do that in my own way. I know, intellectually, that I am foolishly clinging to an ideal past I can never return to or experience, again, like some sad character in the old Twilight Zone series.

Another thing, which I think ultimately complicates my angst, is that I don't know what kind of circumstances I will be reborn into, if the teaching is indeed true, and I will be re-incarnated. Even if I'm fortunate enough to be born in the human realm, will I live a life of disappointment, confusion and regret, like I have in this one? What kind of society, what kind of world will I come to? (I know this question would be met with scorn by other Theravadins, but I'm just trying to bring my worries out into the open.)

0 Comments Viewed 35350 times

Who is online

Registered users: AdsBot [Google], Aries411, Bing [Bot], Google [Bot], Google Feedfetcher, IainEtc, ViTheta, vortexvoid