I look like my mother. How do I deal with this?
October 20, 2013 1:12 PM   Subscribe

Many facial features I have are very similar to my mother's. She's not ugly or anything, but I don't have a good relationship with her. I am having self image problems because of this.

I was emotionally, verbally and physically abused by her as a child. I am dealing with the abuse well. It's just that when I see myself in the mirror, I absolutely hate the way I look. Has anyone else had any similar self image problems? I'm sure therapy would help, but I live in a very remote location & can't afford it. I'm really doing well besides that. I would like to have a more positive self image, instead of seeing my reflection and being reminded of someone that treated me so badly for so many years. Can anyone offer any coping advice?
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (13 answers total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
If no therapy (worth working on long-term), try a totally different haircut and color? take photos of yourself doing YOU things and put them where you'll see them? (if you don't want to put them in your home, put them in a folder on your computer and flip through it.) Get a friend to help you if it'll result in better photos. In other words, overwrite your mental images. Exposure to lots of images can really change how you view things, so I think it might be worth a try here.
posted by wintersweet at 1:42 PM on October 20, 2013 [6 favorites]


I'm with you on this. I look very much like my mother. She wasn't the best mom in the world. I try to feel compassion for her, while realizing that I am very lucky—I get to be the best version of my mother. I am the person who is most like her; I get to be what she could never become. I feel sad for her. She didn't have opportunities to grow and make good choices and achieve her potential. She didn't even get to learn from her many and heavily-consequenced mistakes. She doesn't even know she made them. I am living out the life she could have had; should have had, really. I look in the mirror and I see her. I sometimes wish she could see me too. But the best I can do is live forward, carrying the pieces we share and making the most of them.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:47 PM on October 20, 2013 [44 favorites]


Wow, I 've never had the chance to talk to other women about this particular issue before. I think part of what is hard is that you have seen her/your facial features in negative images that can be hard to forget. For example you have seen the mouth twisted up and screaming and spittle flying from it. You have seen the eyes get small and hard and filled with malice. My own issue is the nose and I have thought seriously about getting a nose job bc of it. It's hard to explain but it's largely because of certain facial expressions the nose was involved in and looked a certain way.

My suspicion is that EMDR might be able to help. Something that is about allowing you to let go of certain thoughts or images that were etched in your mind during fraught or traumatic experiences.
posted by cairdeas at 2:44 PM on October 20, 2013 [7 favorites]


Nobody would say Marilyn Monroe looks like them, they'd say they look like Marilyn Monroe. Between you and your mom, you're the star, so you don't look like your mom, your mom looks like you.
posted by kindall at 2:49 PM on October 20, 2013 [6 favorites]


While my past circumstances are similar to your own, I don't have this problem. I think I don't have it for one reason: I wear glasses, whereas my mother does not. So, you may want to try doing something to alter your appearance so you look less like her.

But, really, I can only offer this advice halfheartedly. This is because it's so easy to conflate "Alter your appearance" with "Alter your identity." And I don't want you to alter your identity. I don't want you to be in a position where you feel you must change who you are and how you self-present to the world in order to overcome this issue. That idea makes me so incredibly sad--it makes me feel great compassion for you.

Perhaps a good starting point would be to focus hard on who you are and who you want to be. Having grown up with an abusive mother, you may not have as explicit a sense of your identity as other people do. (Lord knows, I don't!) Striving to understand your identity as a person will help you come to understand your appearance. You'll be able to see which parts of your appearance matter for expressing your identity. And that will give you a good starting place for determining how you may benefit from adjusting the way you dress yourself, wear your hair, or otherwise present yourself to the world.

This is a hard thing to explain how to do. Maybe an example would help. For a long time, I thought perhaps I would like to get a specific tattoo. I wasn't entirely serious, just floating the idea around. My idea was to get a recreation of a famous (but simple) painting. I was toying with this idea for a decade. I thought that this tattoo, were I ever to get it, would do an excellent job expressing my personality, my values, and who I want to be as a person. But then, a few months ago, something clicked: I realized that that tattoo wasn't perfect for me, it was perfect for my mother. In selecting that potential tattoo, I was conflating my mother's personality with my own, and I was failing to see myself as an individual distinct from her. I don't want that tattoo anymore; instead, I want to find one that's me.

In your case, it isn't a potential tattoo, it is instead the physical actualities of your body. That means you can't wish away your mother's abusive hold over your personality and sense of self as easily as I wished away my mother's abusive hold over my tattoo preferences. But your way out of this problem may be the same as mine: I freed myself, in this tiny way, but recognizing who I am, and how who I am is different from who my mother is. If you can do the same, then you will be able to shape your physical identity to reflect who you are rather than her. You can find a way to self-present that makes your features look to you as yours rather than hers.

That's not an easy task. I know you said therapy would be hard, but I think it could do you so much good. It has done me incredibly good! Without therapy, I probably would have some day gotten that tattoo, and I would have spent my life with a body that reflected my mother's personality rather than my own. But with therapy, I have rejected that sad path. I have learned how to self-define more generally. I bet therapy would help you, too. So, take me as supporting that getting to therapy might be a long-term goal to hope for. Hopefully, someday, it won't be too expensive and too far away.

More immediately, start thinking about who you are. Start thinking about your physical appearance is a reflection of your personality, your identity. Start focusing on those elements of your appearance that are in your control, and start toying around with different ideas of how you are you, rather than her, and how your appearance can reflect you, rather than her. (But, don't get a tattoo!)
posted by meese at 3:05 PM on October 20, 2013 [3 favorites]


I have a haircut that my mother would never have had, and I wear clothes in a silhouette that's very different from anything she would ever have worn. I also have my ears pierced, which she hated.

This helps.

Also, running or weightlifting or yoga or anything that makes you more present in your own body might be good.
posted by emilyw at 3:22 PM on October 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


I can empathize – although my mother was not horrible, I never felt I was much like her nor wanted to be like her, or live a life like hers.

One thing you can do is some family history. If you resemble your mother, you may also bear a resemblance to other people in your family, both alive and dead, on both sides. Maybe it would feel better to know you look like a suffragette great-aunt or a heroic soldier of the Great War, if you can find photos of them.

You can broaden this quest to consider how you resemble other people of your ethnic heritage. I've learned, as I age, that I may look like my mom, but I am also reverting to a certain type of older woman of my own ethnic background.

Genes are not so unique. You share some look with your mother, but also with tens of thousands of others. Maybe visiting your country or countries of genetic origin will make you feel this more immediately. It did for me.

I don't know if that helps. I hope so.
posted by zadcat at 3:26 PM on October 20, 2013 [4 favorites]


I have a pretty good relationship with my mom, but the thing that has rankled the most is that everybody seemingly considers me to be her physical clone, and she has a very low opinion of her appearance and frequently vocalized this while I was growing up while never understanding that I interpreted all of that as direct commentary about my own appearance.

These days I am much happier about my appearance and I sometimes wonder how much of that is actual comfort with it all and belief that I'm attractive independent of my mother's opinion of herself, and how much of it is the fact that as I've gotten older it's become more evident that parts of me look more like my father, and also all of the things I do differently style-wise from my mom. I have bright blue hair and wear very different clothes than what she would choose for me, and though we both wear glasses our taste in frames is very different, and so on. These style choices are all temporary. I can remove them at will, or have to keep reapplying them to make them stick like the hair dye. I'm now the age my mother was when she gave birth to me. Sometimes when I catch myself in the mirror I'm struck with "my god, I look like my mother!"

So you ask for coping advice. I think that for you, therapy is an important goal and if you can work towards making that happen for yourself that would be fantastic, but I understand how there needs to be something between now and then to help you get through. My above paragraphs are really just to put a drop in the anecdote bucket to help you understand that the outward problem you are having - issues with looking like your mom who harmed you in some way - is extremely common when all the different levels of this are taken into account. One thing that you can do is remind yourself that a considerable percentage of humanity looks very similar to their biological parents, and it's a cliche to be dismayed that you look like them. You are not alone in this area of stress, and your feelings are normal, and valid.

You might want to start paying specific attention to the small things you do every day that affect the people around you in positive ways. Have you tried keeping a diary? Life has a way of marking us. Did you cook a meal for a friend and have a little burn on your hands? Do you have smile wrinkles from talking and laughing with people over the years? These are things that you have done entirely apart from your mother, that aren't on her body but are on yours. Although they build up, most people don't have any sort of record of them apart from their marks of age. It could help you to write these actions down, so when you aren't really seeing yourself in the mirror, you can hold a physical object that reminds you of all the good you've done, and all the different experiences you've had, with the face that you have.

If you have photos of friends and family, could you put them up in your home? It might help to see the faces of the people who know your face as yours, who love and know you, not your mother. When they look at you, they see you, and nobody else. Although you might rationally know that, invasive thoughts might be more easily banished if you have a visual reminder nearby.
posted by Mizu at 3:33 PM on October 20, 2013 [2 favorites]


Lots of good advice above that I'll reiterate. I agree with the idea of making sure your hair color and style are quite different from hers. Also you can play with your makeup to make sure your style is your very own. Beyond that, if she's pale, then tan. If she's tan, make sure you absolutely always use sunscreen/hats. Play with accessories that she has never worn--hats, scarves, headbands, or chunky necklaces. If that's her style, then don't wear them ever.

I would imagine she has a rather sour expression at her age. One of the biggest things you can do is make sure you have laugh lines rather than looking grim and dour.

The other thing you can do is limit looking in the mirror. Have a smaller magnifying mirror to do your makeup. Set your full length mirror to where you can see your outfit, and you'd have to squat slightly to see your face. When you do your hair, make sure that's what you're focusing on, rather than looking for comparisons.

Beyond that, stop looking for any resemblance, and start looking for differences. You're not a mirror image, so find what is different and focus on that. Eye color? Cheek bones? Face or lip shape? Ears? There's bound to be something.

Find some quotes that resonate with you and post them above your mirror:

Most especially, if there are things you don't like in the world you grew up in, make your own life different.Dave Thomas

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to be accept yourself.

Beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to be accept yourself.

Live as who you really are, that will make you beautiful.

Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.

A Meaningful Life is not being rich, being popular, being highly educated or being perfect. It Is about being real, being humble, being strong and being able to share ourselves and touch the lives of others. It Is only then that we could have a full, happy and contented life.

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.
Richard Bach

Meditate and focus on who you are, not what you look like.
posted by BlueHorse at 3:39 PM on October 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'll just say that there's a reason I'm the only redhead in the family. It helps to be able to look in the mirror and see something that is very uniquely you. I know some people who've done piercings and stuff for similar reasons, but obviously the viability of that depends on your job and stuff!

In the if-you-can't-get-therapy vein, there's a book called "Feeling Good" which is not as good as actually going but way better than not doing anything at all, and which helped a lot with moving past my own history to be functional.
posted by Sequence at 5:35 PM on October 20, 2013


I understand where you're coming from. I have a beauty mark on my face that runs on my mother's side of the family. Every female on my mother's side of the family has a small beauty mark on their right cheek and even though it looks attractive on my cheek I want it off. I hate my mother's side of the family and have done everything I could to dissassociate from them. I changed my name. I also dyed my hair (although I did this mostly because I honestly don't look good in my natural hair color)... I would change my social security number to make it ultra legit if I could. I haven't seen any of them for years, but since they have my social security number I'm always afraid they will track me down one day.

I think if you really hate looking in the mirror you should just get a makeover. Change your hair and clothes. If none of that does it I think you should try using your looks as an F-U to your mother. After all you have her looks AND you are younger than her AND you can achieve things she never did and establish relationships she never did by not acting the way she did. It's like you're taking her genes and doing everything she never would with them. Depending on how much of a B- your mother was that would absolutely piss her off with jealousy.
posted by manderin at 5:45 PM on October 20, 2013


I look a lot like my Mom, much more so than my sisters. She was a hardcore smoker, a habit I used to have, and I have other similarities to her. She and I had a very difficult relationship.

Take the time to look at ways you are not like her. I am extroverted like my Mom, but kinder. I drink, but not to excess, and I don't use alcohol to let my emotions run amok and cause huge messes. I look like her, but have developed my own sense of style. I wish I had some of her abilities. I'm happy that I have some of her abilities, not so happy I inherited the heart condition. I don't look at all like my Dad, but I inherited his huge head, and a lot of who I am and what I value comes from him.

Take the time to analyse who your Mom is, and why she's that way. Sucks that Mom was an alcoholic. I'll bet I'd be taller, maybe healthier, if she didn't smoke and drink so much. But she almost certainly had some version of bi-polar disorder. She couldn't deal with her own emotional intensity. I'm kind of working on some of my reactions to that. I did my best to have an honest but also loving relationship with my Mom, with some success. I have compassion for her, because she had her own difficult childhood, and she did what she could with what she had.

Take whatever good she has to give you, and let go of the rest. If you got her great eyebrows, translucent skin, pretty hands, make the most of them. If you got her frizzy hair or receding chin, learn to compensate as well as you can.

As long as you are in opposition to your Mom, as long as your reactions to your looks and anything else are tied to her, she's got too much control. You're you, a mix of the genes of 2 people. You've got the raw material from them, you've learned about the world from them, but you get to do as you choose with what you've got.
posted by theora55 at 9:54 PM on October 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


So much great advice in this thread.

I too look a lot like my mother. I rarely say so, for the very same reasons as you. I'm able to say otherwise thanks to a few things that hopefully can help you, too! First, in my instance, I was named after a great-grandmother who my paternal grandfather absolutely adored – she had been his mother. He constantly told me I was her spitting image, what a neat woman she had been, and how I showed the same compassion, intelligence, and humor she'd had. Is there anyone in your life who has told or tells you things like that? That, essentially, you are someone who is loved, and as such, your appearance reminds them of love? Friends said similar things to me too, which may sound as if I had the ideal life apart from parents or something, but I was also brutally teased for my appearance in middle and high school, as well as called "ugly" by my entire family apart from paternal grandparents, so it was really a choice of valuing people I cared about rather than those who didn't care. That's easier said than done, but it can indeed be done.

Also, as others have suggested, really focus on what's you. Presumably you are not an abuser, so it's very likely you have expressions of warmth that your mother did not, or only rarely had. For instance, the seething contempt that my mother constantly oozed, eventually showed in her face. She didn't have to be angry to look it – wrinkles from spiteful outbursts, furrows from constant harangues, and even all-body tics from being on the edge of "contemptuously patient" only to suddenly veer into "contemptuously screaming" (you know what I mean, right... that "I'm being patient with you because I am obviously a good parent except you are NOT a good child HA SEE I CAUGHT YOU") all eventually shaped her face into publicity for the emotions she most often voiced. She had me when she was 21, so I remember her well throughout her 30s. I'm now in my late 30s, and I can tell you... the stress of looking like her has gone from being "omigod, will I really turn into my mother" to an immense relief of, "wow... my face looks like that of a woman who smiles and laughs." And is sad sometimes, I've noticed, as well as others. That's also different, though; my mother disguised her sorrow with rage.

I'm willing to bet that you can find similar characteristics in your face. I'm also willing to bet that while you probably look like her structurally, you do not "look like her" when it comes to mannerisms and expressions, which have more to do with character than DNA.

Knowing yourself does have a lot to do with this, and I wholeheartedly agree with people here who have said how important that is, and how much therapy can help! I hardly even ask myself the question any more, thanks mostly to therapy. When I see myself in the mirror, I see myself. It's only when I have a dream about my mother, or I cross a photo of her, that I jump, but that's because of the memories of abuse. It takes a while now for me to remember/realize that, yikes, I kind of look like her. And that's okay! I'm my own person, with a life I too created (my own, I mean), and am now more aware / conscious of. Therapy has a price, yes, but is a wonderful investment.
posted by fraula at 1:06 AM on October 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


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