The Eyes in the Mirror

Have you ever looked in the mirror and wished you could look away?

For those of us with dermatillomania, the mirror can become a place of judgment rather than reflection. We see the wounds. We see the red spots, the scabs, the scars. We see everything we wish we could change.

But what if, instead of looking at everything we don't like, we could find one small thing we could love?

For me, that was my eyes.

In my last blog, I focused on self-love. I encouraged you to begin by looking into your own eyes in the mirror and telling yourself, “I love you just as you are.”

That sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

But when your picking is primarily on your face, looking into your own eyes can be anything but simple.

If your picking is focused on your limbs it's easy enough to cover your spots with clothing so you won’t see those wounds when you look in the mirror. But for those of us whose picking is primarily on our faces, mirror work can be considerably more difficult.

When I first started this practice, I rarely dared to look in the mirror for any length of time without my “full face” on. Only after I applied multiple layers of concealer and foundation—and sometimes a second coat of concealer over the worst spots—and then added a full regalia of eye makeup was I comfortable enough to say to my reflection, “I love you just as you are.”

Sometimes, even then, I still had to blur my eyes so the spots that refused to be concealed would meld into the mirage of my once-smooth complexion. But I had to begin somewhere in my journey to accept myself for who I am, wounds and all.

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re a lot like me. There have probably been times when you’ve totally and completely beat yourself up over a picking session that you just couldn’t stop, no matter how hard you tried. Your anger and self-loathing led to a backlash of shame over creating the newest wounds—wounds that you knew would now take forever to heal.

But here’s what I learned: continuing to focus on self-hatred and shame only creates more of the same. Think about it. Don’t we sometimes pick simply because we hate ourselves for picking? It doesn’t make any sense! But it’s true, and it can become a vicious cycle that feels impossible to escape.

Or can we?

Can we change our thoughts from self-loathing to self-love?

If you’re like me, you’ve no doubt looked in the mirror and had thoughts like, “You’re disgusting! I can’t stand you because I can’t stop picking. I can’t stand the sight of my sores, and I hate you!”

I’ve screamed—literally screamed out loud at the top of my lungs—at my reflection: “Why?! Why, why, why…?”

Not a good feeling. Not a good look.

You know what did look good, though?

My eyes.

When I was finally able to look into them, I could see their beauty. When I could focus just on my eyes and ignore the rest of my face, I could see something beautiful that had nothing to do with my wounds.

The eyes we have today are the eyes we were born with, and we can’t change them. Our eyeballs can’t be picked at (thank goodness!). Even when our vision gets weaker as our bodies age, each of us has a pair of eyes that are ours and ours alone.

So, can we look into those precious eyes, beyond the visible wounds, and say, “I love you just as you are”?

Or perhaps, “I love you for who you are on the inside" if the outside is still unacceptable?

No doubt it will take multiple attempts at repeating “I love you” in the mirror before you can actually feel the truth in that statement. But I encourage you to keep practicing.

You’re worth it.

Something unexpected happened as I continued my mirror work. It allowed me to uncover a wounded place in my heart. It was deep and old, created before the onset of my dermatillomania, when I didn’t get the love I needed from my mother.

Those of us with dermatillomania may have wounded places that originated when we didn’t get what we needed at the time. Whether it was love, compassion, encouragement, empathy, support, or simply a non-judgmental listening ear—if we didn’t get enough of it, we may have had to bury the hurt because we didn’t know what to do with it.

We weren’t equipped. We hadn’t been taught how to process those emotions.

For me, mirror work became a way of beginning to uncover that buried hurt—with compassion instead of judgment.

Love is an emotion that we were born with. It’s always there, every moment of every day. We may not always feel it for ourselves, but we can be assured that love is forever flowing through us as we live and breathe on this planet.

Go to the mirror and practice saying, “I love you just as you are” over and over until you feel that love—the love of your perfectly beautiful soul—flowing through your veins.

Feel it vibrating in every cell and atom of your body.

Allow that feeling.

Don’t doubt it, and don’t push it away.

We must start here before we can begin to heal.