Seeking mental reframing techniques about a tattoo

July 14, 2023 1:01 PM

A recent tattoo seems to have gotten a lot of negative emotions bound up in it, for both objective and subjective reasons. Help me not feel bad when I look at it.

Here are the things that I think are factors (sorry for the large brain dump but I want to be specific in case people have ideas for addressing individual aspects):

- I asked for a specific type of flower, for my own reasons, but I also sent several examples of the artist's flowers of that type. I guess she thought of them as a different type of similar-looking flower, so she drew something a little different that lacks some of the verve of the ones I liked. (Imagine that I said "jonquil" and sent a bunch of references, and she was like oh well those are daffodils so I'll have to draw something different.) I did speak up on the day but only got small changes made; I didn't want to make her redraw the whole thing which she implied would make her send me home and make another appointment. So I am feeling both overly fussy and cursed by my own stupid un-thought-through choices (for specifying a flower), and cowardly (for not speaking up more). For some reason I think this part bothers me most.

- This artist isn't quite my usual style (and is EXPONSIVE) and I vacillated a lot before making the choice, which is setting off all my "this is your fault because you made a bad decision/should have thought harder" triggers.

- It's the hardest heal I've ever had, was super painful to do, and has a little scarring plus some white ink highlights that to me look like pimples because white ink is so thick. So I think there's a lot of discomfort associated with it still.

- An element that is supposed to be straight is a little curved because of how my body was positioned during the tattoo. This part probably bothers me the least but definitely has body size/shape/performance/irregularity associations.

- The artist spent the whole time telling me her grievances with other artists. I don't think this was a factor but maybe... negativity... vibes?

- Also possibly a factor is that I'm in a big Regret Era in a more global sense.

This was I think my eleventh tattoo and I've never felt like this before, not even close, even when things weren't perfect! I am not going to change, remove, or cover the tattoo, which is large and also objectively very nice, maybe even beautiful, but I urgently need to reframe my thinking about it because it's becoming actively distracting—it's in a visible spot and CANNOT become a placeholder for "every decision I make is wrong." Have you done something to successfully reframe your thinking about either a piece of body art or a natural body part? It's okay if it's a little goofy or woo-woo, I'm open to options!

posted by babelfish to Grab Bag (14 answers total)

Best answer: I think if there was a perfect tattoo to sum up the motto "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good", you just got it. The truth is, especially with a tattoo that is right in your eyeline, and especially with a new tattoo that has not yet become background-noise in your visual field, there was always going to be something wrong with it. And if it WAS absolutely perfect with none of the little quirks of tattoos, you'd get a bug bite or a cut that left a little scar in it.

And from the woo side, make yourself a cleansing ritual to get the bad vibes off it. Do a ritual bath or shower, literally cleansing it, and then annoint it in the tattoo-friendly product of your choice. Welcome it to your ecosystem, declare that all former connections to it are washed away. Re-affirm it as a good and highly-desired choice, and a beautiful part of your body. The new moon is in a few days, and that's the moon of fresh starts.

If you're in a big Regret Era, maybe consider it a ward against regret? Like, there's so little point in regret; we make the best decisions we can in any given moment and things don't always work out like we'd hoped in that moment, but they turn out some kind of way and that's just part of your life and your story. You got this lovely tattoo, your inner regret monster wants to make a whole thing out of it, and to the monster you are saying: fuck off.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:17 PM on July 14, 2023 [38 favorites]

I feel for you! I recently didn't fight enough for an element of my tattoo to look like I wanted it to and expected to be similarly distressed. However, it seems I've processed it as part of the beauty of aborting with an artist to mark my skin. A lot of it is me and some of it is them. If we must have perfection and exactness we need to use machines, and yet we as a people have never invented a tattoo printer, we want the humanity of it which sometimes means we don't get quite what our ideal would be. I don't bother explaining to people that the element is supposed to be, for example, a Porsche, it's enough that it is perceived as a car.
posted by Iteki at 1:19 PM on July 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: One thing I've had to accept about my physical form - both the stuff I was born with and the ways it's changing as I age - is that it's actually pretty damn good, even if it's not what I'd prefer. It's taught me a lot about accepting what's Actually Good instead of nitpicking the Good thing because it's not Perfect. I in fact have a really healthy strong and conventionally attractive physical form, compared to many other people my age, through a combination of good habits, genetics, and luck. I can look at myself and see that I'm lean and tall, and that my wife loves my full lips and proud nose. Or I can look at myself and see that I have less muscle tone than I want, I have the start of a belly I never had or wanted, I hate my weird thick lips, I have odd drooping eyes.

Both of those perspectives are true, but one of them leads me to stand tall and proud and be happy with this amazing physical form I get to have, and one of them makes me shrink and dislike my luck and genetics and chastise myself for not being more of a gym rat (which I don't think I'd even enjoy otherwise). Either way, it's the same damn body! So I try to look at myself and see what other see, not what I see, because I'm way more critical of and aware of my 'flaws' than anybody else.

Anybody else looks at your tattoo and sees a really lovely piece of art on your body. You know that the path to it was imperfect and it isn't exactly what you wanted. You can focus on that, or you can focus on having a lovely piece of art on your body that you get to display and enjoy. I think Lyn Never has some good suggestions - find a ritual or a method you can use to discard the path to this place, and let it just... be what it is. Which is amazing.
posted by Tomorrowful at 1:40 PM on July 14, 2023 [11 favorites]

Best answer: I like to think of my tattoos as exercises in combining into a delicious aioli a range of human experience that includes vanity, hubris, circumstance, serendipity, aging, taste, changing tastes, hubris, expectation, disappointment, yielding, enthusiasm, error, beauty, gravitas, hubris, and all sorts of other essentials. I promise you this one won't have the feelings attached to it tomorrow that it has today.

For reference, I had an old friend (who did my first real piece) do a small but deeply-charged-with-meaning bit of text almost fifteen years to the day after that first piece. It's in a language he doesn't know. We got so wrapped up in conversation that I didn't realize until afterward that he'd broken the text at the wrong point and inverted the segments. For a while I was like, no no that's even better now it's boustrophedonic! But now I look at it and smile because it still means what I meant, and it's charged with the memory of my friend, the day, the comedy of error, and no one knows but me.

Tattoos with struggle inside them... maybe even better in the long run than tattoos without. I hope you feel the same way, too, in time.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 1:46 PM on July 14, 2023 [14 favorites]

I don't get tattoos but I am a crafter with some anxiety/ self-negativity (stick with me). And there is a point near the end of many projects where I absolutely hate it. I see every single mistake, I acutely remember all the struggles and disappointments and frustrations. But if I put it away for a few days/weeks and come back with fresh eyes, I see how objectively awesome it is. Like if anyone else had presented me with that craft as a gift I would be so grateful and impressed by their skill.

It might be difficult for you to put this tattoo aside, but can you try and depersonalize it a bit? Like, if you saw this tattoo on your twin or clone, not knowing the backstory, you might think "fuck, that's a great tattoo!"
posted by muddgirl at 2:24 PM on July 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

I’m generally pretty good about not regretting or worrying about what I can’t change; but when I do get stuck on something, like you pointed out, it’s generally because I’m upset with myself about not living up to standards or expectations that I set for myself. Usually what helps is making sure I understand why I did (or didn’t do) the think I’m upset about, and making a plan to act differently next time. If that sounds like it might be helpful for you, maybe that would look like practicing sticking up for yourself or pausing to give yourself more time instead of feeling pressured into a choice you are uncertain of - not replaying the same situation from your tattoo over and over again, but imagining other situations you might find yourself in in the future where you might feel pressured to make a choice too fast, and envisioning what you would say or do to give yourself the time you need.

My two tattoo experiences so far have both been really great from a human interaction perspective, not simply a transaction of paying a skilled artist for the tattoo, but I’ve had the good luck of working with two artists on custom pieces who were both very understanding of how personal a tattoo can be. (And hopefully I have paid them fairly for that additional aspect of their labor!) It sounds like your experience was really not-that, which I can imagine must have been disappointing and a bit disconcerting after what sounds like ten previous positive experiences. Part of the re-framing might be noticing that this is not your fault - that part of the job for tattoo artists who do custom work based on client-generated ideas or requests is to actively listening to their clients and checking in effectively to ensure the client is comfortable. Not all tattoo artists do that sort of work, because it is extra work, and isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea! From what you describe, this tattoo artist also could have handled the whole situation much better than they did, regardless of anything you did or didn’t do. That you extended trust and had positive expectations is a testament to your generosity of spirit, as well as a reasonable expectation based on your decent number of past experiences.
posted by eviemath at 3:10 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think you should try covering the tattoo temporarily with that waterproof bandage stuff with opaque gauze underneath or cloth wrap on top. Maybe just opaque athletic tape, or makeup if you have that skill. Either way, keep it covered for anywhere from a week to a month, avoiding mirrors when you change the covering for hygiene. Give your mind a distinct break from what you had been imagining before it got inked and what you have now, let your memory of it get a little indistinct. Then when you take the covering off you can appreciate it in contrast to all the little mistakes and annoying bits that your brain is focusing on right now. Maybe you won’t suddenly love it, but you’ll come to it with fresher eyes and be able to work towards acceptance more smoothly. It’s so easy to hate the results of a creative endeavor you’ve been working towards for a long time right when it’s finished, but allowing myself to not engage with it for a few weeks always helps me appreciate the art in the end.
posted by Mizu at 3:34 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

The thing is there were a lot of things in this experience you did right. In any and every experience I’d bet.

Like if this tattoo decision were a mosaic I would be willing to bet that the bulk of the pieces were things you did right.

You picked an experienced artist. You arrived at the shop safely. You arrived home safely. There are probably many bits of the work itself that are as near to perfect as ink INSIDE OF SKIN can possibly be.

You are a rock star of deciding. Even better? The things you are currently focusing on, the tiny pieces of the mosaic that you are currently doing regret over? You are learning so much from them that you will be an even bigger rock star next time. You used to be someone who would get a tattoo they were not sure of and I feel very certain you no longer are! Or at least will make different assessments with the new information you’ve gained from this valuable life experience!

💫🌟⭐️
posted by hilaryjade at 5:26 PM on July 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

In my admittedly biased (generous and kind friends who are tattoo artists/hair stylists) experience, tattoo artists are much like hair stylists in that they have to play therapist to their clientele, all day, every day. Unless they have an extreme amount of clout, they have to sit with people for hours and be kind about their moods, negative or otherwise. A bad mood of their own, a capricious client, or changed sketch might mean that they lose the commission they were depending on for rent. You might be able to reframe this as a moment when you could return them the favor of providing a space for difficult feelings, of giving them grace when they were imperfect and impatient. And then you could use that to see your actions, and your imperfectly perfect tattoo, as evidence of a good deed.
posted by rhythm and booze at 7:08 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

A little goofy or woo-woo? The flower you chose to 'grow' on your skin via needle and ink had some growing of its own to do; that little curve exists because there are few perfectly straight elements in nature.
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:25 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I have lots of floral tattoos all up my arms. As they've aged with me some of them have gained scarred spots or areas where the ink has started to blur and the lines aren't as crisp, particularly as my skin has changed during my transition and has become less smooth and soft. I sometimes struggle with the feeling that I've somehow "ruined" this beautiful piece of art (even as I realise this is a silly thing to feel). But what has helped me the most is looking at flowers and plants in nature and realising that they often have imperfections, holes, damaged spots, broken lines, etc etc. They are beautiful partially because of those natural imperfections, not in spite of them. So the imperfections in my tattoos reflect those natural forms, as well as the natural forms of my own complex human skin, and that makes them a beautiful thing.

Practically speaking, I expect it will take time. The sting of the bad experience will fade and you will get used to the tattoo. As you live your life with it, it will gain new memories, nice photos of you with it, people you like touching or seeing it, and so on. It's totally okay to feel annoyed and complicated about it, so take it easy on yourself. Let time heal the wound.
posted by fight or flight at 4:45 AM on July 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I felt this way intensely about one of my tattoos. I projected a lot onto it. And then, suddenly, when things were better mentally for me I stopped. And honestly I didn’t even think about those negative feelings anymore to the point where until I read this question I had forgotten how intense those emotions were. I think in some ways it acted as a processing device for all the hard things I needed to process, and when it had served that purpose it just sort of fell away from my mind in that way. So, I would say perhaps when you start feeling regret directed at the tattoo, allow yourself to sort of glance at the bigger life regret that feels too overwhelming to process and let a little bit of that get sucked away by the tattoo. You have something relatively minor to regret (an objectively beautiful tattoo) that can help you move the bigger regrets out of your body.
posted by Bottlecap at 7:16 AM on July 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: As others have pointed out, the tattoo is imperfect, because it was created by humans, like you. You're imperfect, and that's great, because that's the Only Human Option. I, too, have struggled with whether I advocated enough for myself in similar situations, and eventually came around to forgiving myself, and the artist, for being imperfect beings making imperfect art. That helps to ground me in being messily human, sometimes a little too prone to people-pleasing - and more ok with all of the above.
posted by ldthomps at 6:29 PM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just blame myself because I was drunk when I did the whole process - artwork & ouchy part - but I love the story behind it and it gets frequent compliments so that makes it OK. Also, another artist gave me some tips recently on how to alter it if I decide to.
posted by bendy at 12:57 AM on July 16, 2023