Response to My Previous Post

In response to my last post I received an email from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous. I post this on my blog with this person's permission, of course.

"I have always worried about my body image while growing up, the issue was always whether I appear appealing to the opposite sex? Because I am male I was not worried about trying to overly dress up or anything of such but still I had one fear deep down within me which was would she refuse me because of how I look? I was not comfortable with the way I walked and talked. I was shy of all these things.

I am still shy but not because of how I appear to people but rather because I find it comforting to be shy around people(a lady or a group of people respect) I am meeting for the first time. I might still experience shaky legs when meeting a lady for the first time, like when walking up to her and trying to chat her up not because I am scared of rejection but I think just my conscious body trying to remind me to comport myself because I am around a person that the positive first impression I give them matters a lot.

Naturally as I grew older all the worry about my body image went away, I don't exactly know why but may be because I had a couple of successful boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. Lo and Behold! some of the things I was not comfortable with were what some ladies found attractive like my tiny eyes(I think men don't know anything about ladies or at least I don't know anything about ladies speaking for myself, this I am sure of, just digressing a little bit). So I understood that your body image is all in your head. So began reconstructing a more attractive me upstairs.

Problems don't seem to end, do they? I am now faced with a new problem, each time I look at the mirror I find myself very attractive, more attractive than my portraits and pictures. This bothers me because it might be a sign of having too much confidence, I don't know if its OK to be like that. Am I on the verge of becoming narcissistic?"

First of all, I believe it takes a long process to move from being uncomfortable with one's self image to being comfortable with it, and overly so to a point of narcissism. To be honest, you don't sound narcissistic to me. Personally, I can hardly ever be satisfied with pictures, I always think I don't come out looking good, but then I am reminded that there is such a thing as being photogenic. We are not all photogenic but that does not imply that those of us who aren't are not good looking people. So thinking you look good when staring at yourself in the mirror is not a bad thing. I did that this morning, I had to pull myself away from the mirror. We all have those days, and then we have those days that we don't even want to stare at ourselves in the mirror. 

Thanks for writing! I wish you more consciousness!

L.S