Albert AlcaineHow many times have we looked at someone and exclaimed:“I look so much better! But is this perception real?
The moment we look in the mirror, our silhouette is projected in a real and objective way, but the body image we have of ourselves depends on the “glasses” we put on to see it.
We must differentiate between how we are and how we think we are. People are a mixture of psychic, biology and socialisation with a pinch of reasoning, which differentiates us from other animals.
Beyond the physical, we function with an intellectual part made up of ideas, beliefs and thoughts and another part with emotions. In addition, the physical body as such. Personality is the “how we are”, the mixture of attitudes, ideas about ourselves and our environment, feelings and the way we act .
But this is not all: there is also what we think we are, our own ideas, beliefs and opinions about ourselves, constructed from our perception of what our brain interprets, of the world we relate to.
And the key word directly related to self-image is self-esteem: the higher the self-esteem, the better the body self-image. We often tend to be perfectionists by testing physical or mental parts of our body, and often we don’t know exactly why we do this.
To complicate matters further, we must remember that social parameters of “beauty” are not a reality, although it is easy to fall into the trap of simply accepting them without questioning them, and this is sure to generate a negative self-image, even more so if our self-esteem is low or damaged.
What factors play a role?
Our upbringing and the environment into which we were born is important: the style in which we observe our parents talking about themselves contributes to a more or less demanding design of our self-image.
Genetics may also have something to say: “inheriting” a personality with a tendency to see reality more objectively and practically as opposed to distorted thinking, for example.
Comparing ourselves with others is a psycho-trap for our self-esteem, not only because we will come off badly, but also because comparisons cannot be used as measuring sticks.
What we project to others, i.e. our public image, contributes to being a pillar or a mine for our self-confidence.
Social roles also reinforce our self-image, although it can be another social trap to turn us into self-demanding marathon runners if we are not aware of it.
But the most important factor is how we identify with ourselves, which will determine whether our self-image is positive or negative.
Age as a number
Mental age fights against chronological age, which is why there are people with a high “numerical” age who look younger than they are, and when they look in the mirror or in photographs they do not recognise themselves. This is because their mentality and their optimistic way of interpreting the world and everyday situations has led them to eternal youth.
But it is true that this does not depend on our will alone: a study by the University of Waterloo in Canada states that older people have greater difficulty than younger people in distinguishing the order in which events occur in time , because with age the processing of information, especially the concept of time, becomes distorted.
From the age of 50 onwards, the very desire to “stop ageing” can make us think that we are younger than we really are, just as when a high-school parsley wants to achieve independence as quickly as possible and may perceive that he is older than he really is.
We perceive changes more strongly in others, which has to do with our internal self-perception.
But we play with a double yardstick: on the one hand, there is subjective perception (which we attribute to ourselves) and on the other hand, objective perception (which we use to observe others). This is rooted in the generalised tendency to fear ageing, which we associate with death: if it is the other who ages, we remain calm. It is a defence mechanism to avoid the awareness of a painful reality, and even a specific protective factor against affective disorders such as depression . But socially, it also obeys the discourse of associating the young with beauty and the passing of years as something negative and less attractive.
Feeling younger than we are makes us act as if we really are , and this contributes to a higher self-esteem, a more positive attitude and positive consequences in our life .
If old age did not have a negative value, there would be no need to say that you feel younger.
Finally, age is not just “floating” in our brains, it can be felt: a team of South Korean researchers examined the brains of 68 healthy older adults and found that those who felt younger had thicker grey matter and suffered less age-related decline .
How do you think you have your grey matter?
📎 Alcaine, A. [Albert]. (2024, 05 August). Do we look younger than we are?. PsicoPop. https://www.psicopop.top/en/do-we-look-younger-than-we-are/
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