[thegirlwho]

Hello everyone,

My name is Cláudia, I'm 30 from Portugal. I was first diagnosed with Depersonalization Disorder when I was 22, but I've felt the symptoms since I remember. Through my life, I've always been an anxious and quite shy person, always trying to be "invisible" despite I wasn't comfortable with that. I had several depressions and mental breakdowns. Recently, I quit my job because I started to feel stressed, with lots of panic attacks and the DP symptoms became frequent again. I'm living alone in a new city, and I've always felt that my family and my friends couldn't understand what was "wrong" with me, even when I tried to explain. I grew up listening things like "you're crazy", but I don't fell crazy. I feel like I'm too awake and I overthink. I am too conscious about the others and little conscious about me and I've never felt supported. This drove me to insecurity and fear.

I'm doing my final degree year in Arts and Multimedia and I've just decided that my final project is going to be a photography and sound self-portrait project, but I wanted it to be a collaborative project. In someway, I would like to show other people that to see ourselves through the other and through others is an important mechanism to self-conscious.

Also, I'm interested about questioning the limits of body, mind and relationships to create the self-representation. I would like to fight the "selfie" concept as a vanity mechanism and assume the self-portrait and the portrait as an important tool for identity construction.

I was searching the internet about Depersonalization Disorder to fundament my thesis, and I found this forum. I thought that talk and discuss my ideias with other people that feel the same would be interesting, not only for me, at this moment, but also to make decisions about my project. And that's it. I would love to know your feedback, what do you think about this and if you find the idea pertinent or even if some of you already use self-portraiting as therapy.

Hope to hear your experiences!

(P.s. - my english is not in shape, but I'm doing my best.)

Thank you all,

xx

Cláudia

 

[tfiio]

I think that sounds like an interesting project. there's a somewhat common problem on this forum that people are actively discomforted by seeing their own face in a mirror or in a photograph. I wonder if that may influence your idea.

 

[Lichaart]

Good project , since we're most of the time detached from reality , i think like we're dreaming or living in the spirit world , where nothing materialistic seems interesting . Even our portraits .

I Can't look at my eyes in the mirror . Eyes are something in portraits like they are the only thing real .

 

[thegirlwho]

Dear Lichaart: Thank you so much for your inputs! I think exactly the same, that eyes in portraits are the only thing is real. When I'm painting portraits, I often feel the desire to leave the eyes as a blanked or coloured spaces. In photography, as in reality, I'm always looking for myself in the eyes of others. I've gotten used to look at people in the eyes and I do have this need: to look at people in the eyes.

Dear tfiio: Thanks for your response! That's what I really would like to understand: why are we discomfortable with our image? It is possible to reduce this discomfort by repeatedly look to ourselves through photography?

What had always happened to me is that I usually don't recognize my face in the mirror. When I look at photographs taken by others where I appear, I often feel like that's not me, that's another me, lost in time. When I photograph myself, doing these selfportraits, it's like if the camera could bring me to reality, to here and now. In fact, when I selfportrait, what I am really doing is to allow myself to "exist" in that moment. After I took the photographs, I no longer feel that the girl in the photos is me. I feel I'm better than her! And I have this ridiculous need to share that "me" with others, because it makes me to want to feel better, to be better.

 

[epiphany906]

wow thats cool, finaly somebody with a voice. i believe you can make ahuge difference by using your talents to portray what many including myself find so difficult to put into words for the gen pop to understand. last time i did that was by accident in highschool 20 yrs ago when a "friend" shared my private journal to the whole school and the responses were overwheling how many other people got me. turns out i ditched that friend for other reasons and found a much more accepting group to be with.