Why Do We Sometimes See Ourselves Differently Than How Others Perceive Us?
How do we learn to represent our body mentally? Do you have a different perception than what others tell you? Find out why.
Since we were kids, our psyche and our awareness of the body is formed thanks to the relationship with other people. Especially with parents in the first years of life. How do I know that I have a head, two hands or two legs with which I can move through space?
When we were babies, our parents changed our diapers, caressed us, bathed us, put cream on us, looked at us, etc. all of this was normally accompanied by words that anticipated or matched the movement. “I’m going to put cream on your arm” (and the baby feels that part of his body is being touched), “I’m going to lift your bottom”, and he feels that a part of his body is lifted, “give me your hand” and you hold his hand…” Little by little, the child integrates these connections that help him to feel the different parts of your body, which will later allow you to make use of them.
This integration of the different parts of the body helps the child form the body outline If she has felt that she has an arm and a hand that can move her, she will be able to represent it in her body, and will begin to make use of it. That is why it is so important that we caress our children, that we put them on the floor, that they experience and feel the different segments of their body so that they can later use them.
This, which most of the time is something intuitive and natural, is not always carried out by us, because routine, other siblings or responsibilities of everyday life They demand too much from us. The child is cared for, he has been bathed, his diaper has been changed, he has been fed, but we forgot the most important thing, emotional feeding, enjoying him, really being there.
Without the other, without another person to help him connect with the world, to put words to his body, to his emotions, the child does not feel content, he does not know the limits of his body. This makes him more defenseless before the world, and there will be many nerve connections that will not be carried out. It is never too late, but there is a period in life of greater neuronal plasticity.
If the child does not experience his body, the symbolic and mental representation capacity They look impoverished. We then find children in consultation who have learning problems and on many occasions we realize that they do not have their body schema integrated. If a child has not managed to integrate the space-time representation into his own body, he will hardly be able to represent mathematical concepts in his head, or not confuse b/d, or q/p. We have to go back to the beginning, help them experience with the body to be able to represent with the mind.
These are some of the difficulties that we can find derivatives of the non-integration of the body scheme. Where then does the distortion that we sometimes have with what we feel about our body and what others perceive from the outside come from? This dilemma has to do with body image.
Just as we constitute the body schema based on the feeling of our body with the environment and contact with others, from the moment we are born we are given a image of ourselves, a body image. “How handsome my boy is, what big eyes, what eyelashes!” or on the contrary we grow up listening, even if it is affectionately, “oh my boy, what a wonderful ear” or “how nice” (but handsome doesn’t listen with such intensity).
People grow by integrating what we awaken in others and this marks how we constitute ourselves psychically. We build our body image based on the social contacts We develop it according to the experiences we obtain through the acts and attitudes of others. It is not something static, it is acquired and receives its structure through continuous contact with the world.
Why does our body schema affect self-perception?
We understand then that body image is created through the relationship with other people and that it arises from the first encounter with the other. From the moment a father has the expectation of what his child will be like when he is born, and it coincides with what he had imagined or not, when he holds him in his arms, the child is receiving data about self-image.
This is why both the body schema (if we are more or less clumsy based on the awareness of our anatomical segments) and the body image (if what we think about our body more or less adjusts to reality and we feel good about it). him), will mark how we move through the world. Therefore, thirst conscious that every word and every gesture is registered in the other’s psyche and that our first language is through the skin. Don’t stop playing with your children, jump, climb, dance, and never stop creating.
