I was wondering does anyone else have those dissociativemoments when staring into a mirror? Like you’ve lost your sense of “self”? It’s a weird thing that I notice happens to me if I stare into a mirror for a long time.
Kids: Do not try this at home.
Yes. It’s easier to experience it with a double-reflection, but I have experienced it with direct reflection. Sometimes accidentally (“who’s that weirdo looking at me?.. oh it’s me”) and sometimes deliberately as you describe - while starting right at a mirror.
A similar thing sometimes happens with words. If I think about a word too much it seems to lose it’s meaning and sound weird in my head, eventually I have to ask - Is that really a word??
I dissociate in general, but making eye contact with myself in the mirror is a surefire trigger. For this reason, I avoid doing so.
Wow, I am SO glad that this happens to other people as well.
It doesn’t happen to me too often anymore, thank goodness.
Ahhh another “thank goodness I’m normal” moment on the SDMB. I wonder what causes this. The word thing that Lobsang described happens to me on occasions as well.
I do the “word thing,” but staring at myself in the mirror produces nothing except a determination to finally figure out what color my eyes really are.
I do this, too! “Are they green? Are they blue? Wait, there’s some brown. Honey! What color are my eyes?” (yes, I really asked my husband this once. He said “blue” so maybe it’s a self-perception thing…odd)
I don’t feel so alone anymore.
I say they’re green. Everyone I ask says they’re blue, except one ex, who got really close to me and said, “Hmm, maybe they are green, after all.” My eyes change color with moods and what I wear.
Another “thank goodness” moment for me too, though I’m not normal by any means.
I’ve always wondered if it had to do something with the eye muscles?
You all really need to stay off the hallucinogens.
Of course, so do I.
Whoa, man, like, the drugs are getting to you, dude!
So do I. It usually happens in the morning or late night, when I’m half-awake and expecting my mirror reflection to eat my brains or something.
A friend of mine at school (many years ago) claimed this was called ‘Mirror Scrying’ and that if you stared into the reflection of your right eye, you’d see yourself in the future, whereas the left eye would show you yourself in the past (coughbullshit!cough), but I thought Id mention the term.
Is that your right/left eye or your reflection’s right/left eye?
I’m going to try it later tonight and let you know what happens.
This happens to me quite a lot and I think it is actually quite common, although I have met a number of people who simply didn’t know what I was talking about when I described the phenomenon, so it may not be universal (or it may be that they’d simply never happened to experience it.
So, START, anything happen?
Isn’t that kind of like the phenonmenon where you say a word over and over and suddenly that word has no meaning?
Like if I say “Dog.” My mind conjures up the image of a four legged beastie with a wagging tail. But if I say “Dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog, dog…” I would get a brainfart and the word would no longer have any meaning.
Heads off to find a mirror
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