Fear of Accidentally Seeing Your Reflection is more common than you might think. However, this post was originally going to be about Fear of Mirrors. Many a horror movie has a scene where a protagonist notices something horrific in the mirror. Whether it be an axe-wielding murderer behind them, a bad hair day, or some sort of paranormal figure that has suddenly appeared, bad things happen when a mirror is involved. With all of those seemingly spooky things considered, a realization was made: is there anything worse than accidentally seeing yourself in a reflective surface? Hence Fear of Accidentally Seeing Your Reflection was born. Don’t worry though, I’m sure there is still a way to talk about mirrors in general. Perhaps you want to write that one yourself? Let me know!
The Mirror’s Truth: Fear of Accidentally Seeing Your Reflection
First of all, that should be a book title. So just going to go ahead and say patent-pending on that one to add to the collection of Things I Fear books available. I’m sure that’s how patents work so no one better tell me anything different. Anyway, so Fear of Accidentally Seeing Your Reflection. It happens more often than you might think. Sometimes you might be washing your hands and then look up to discover yourself staring back at you. Or perhaps you are eating your favourite cereal or a bowl of soup and notice your concave and/or convex-face within the spoon. Utensils are designed to help you eat food, not to evaluate whether or not you know how to put on lipstick. That’s like going to that house of mirrors at a carnival to determine whether or not your dress fits. When you find yourself asking a clown for fashion advice, you need to reevaluate some things in your life.
When you’re not expecting to see yourself, it can be horrifying. Now this could be because a sudden reflection can make it seem like there is someone standing in front, behind, or beside you when you walk into a room. It could be because you realize you look a certain way and therefore that means other people have seen you look like that for days or weeks. Or it could be because the very presence of a mirror shakes you to your core as having a moment to reflect on yourself (literally) creates an existential crisis whereby you have manifested a world of cascading thoughts of self-doubt filled and begin endlessly spiralling with self-deprecation based on flaws you’ve created for yourself not on facts but instead on fundamental ideologies likely stemming from previous traumas you may have concealed from yourself as a form of unconscious self-defence that become suddenly triggered by a reflection causing you to question your appearance and very existence in which you are now separated from the very world you live in. Or maybe you have a little piece of spinach in your teeth from lunch. Ew!
Reflecting on Fear of Accidentally Seeing Your Reflection
Mirrors are nice. Well, they can be nice. They can help you assess your visual appearance so you can look your best. When you look good, you feel good. When you feel good, you tell your friends all about Things I Fear and share it across your Social Media network. Contrary to popular belief, most surfaces in this world are not reflective and therefore there are limited opportunities to see your own reflection. If you have a Fear of Accidentally Seeing Your Reflection, this is a good thing as it means you can usually walk down the street and barely have to worry. Instead, you can focus on things like bees, or birds, or the sun, or cars, or spotting someone you know, or getting lost, or leaving the house in general. But not about seeing your reflection. So what are you worried about? Get out there! But you might want to take a look in a mirror before you go outside. You’re not wearing that, are you?
