Self Image or Actual Image

YOUR SELF-IMAGE IS MORE POWERFUL THAN YOUR ACTUAL IMAGE
Dr. Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon who became interested in "self-image psychology" because of his confusing observations of patients who had undergone plastic surgery. Some patients who only received minor facial changes changed their personality and life dramatically while others with greater facial changes didn't seem to change at all.

A boy with large ears had been told he looked like a taxi cab with both doors open and had been ridiculed all his life. He had become withdrawn and shy. After surgery he became much more outgoing.

Yet others, such as a shy Duchess who was given a truly beautiful face in surgery made no noticeable improvement in her personality. Maltz concluded that the reason was because these people continued to think of themselves as ugly, different, abnormal, or defective people. It was their self-image that was the main problem--not their actual physical appearance.

His conclusions caused him to begin to focus on improving people's self-image and eventually write books such as Psychocybernetics. For years this was one of the self-help books most frequently cited to me by clients as a book that had helped them change their lives.

One of my clients came in because she lacked confidence in herself--especially in meeting men and relating to them. Through her teen years she was grossly overweight. Only in the past few years had she taken good care of her body and lost weight. She was happy about that, but she said that she still saw herself as fat and ugly. In fact she was beautiful--she could have won a beauty contest.

I was amazed that she still saw herself as fat. We discovered that a message she had received from her mother was that it was wrong to show off and stand out. This part produced feelings of guilt whenever she tried to dress well or attempted to appreciate her own appearance. She would not even accept what she saw in the mirror.

It became important to reject these beliefs about being a "show off." She had to overcome those thoughts that interfered with her self-appreciation. To overcome her fear of self-appreciation, her repeated thoughts like, "It's wonderful to look at a flower and appreciate the beauty in it, and it's just as wonderful to look at myself and appreciate the beauty in my own body."

My good readers, are you in tune with your actual image as created by God and in the process of forming you into the unique individual He has created. Or, are you living out some of the childhood messages that say you are inadequate in some fashion? At the age of 69 I’m still eradicating some of those very strong negatives. Actual image over perceived image!

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