Hide Self View
By: Jianna Heuer
I've been seeing Dr. Gold, for over 15 years and I always look forward to our appointments. He plays Kings of Leon and Jane's Addiction, we chat amicably when he’s not poking inside my mouth checking to ensure my teeth are not falling out of my head. We had an easy relationship, that is, until 2021 when he suggested I try Invisalign. If I hadn’t spent the last year staring at my own face 30 hours a week on video calls, I might not have been so susceptible to the temptation, but much like most of my psychotherapy patients, constantly seeing my own face was making me notice things I had never seen before. The line in between my eyes, looked like a ravine etched into the middle of my now less smooth than I thought forehead; my eyes looked two drastically different sizes, there was always a hair out of place, worst of all was the one tooth that didn't align with the rest, the one that was tucked just slightly behind another and looked awful on camera, almost like it was missing. I had fallen victim to the zoom effect, a phenomenon where people find flaws, that are amplified because we are staring at our own faces far too much. I said “yes, please fix me.”
My "invisible" adult braces were ready a couple of weeks later. I fitted them into my mouth and within hours my lips, gums, tongue, and inner cheek were filled with tiny puss-filled sores. After four days of being unable to eat and the blisters getting worse, I called the dentist back. He said it seemed like an allergic reaction; within a week, my Invisalign journey ended, and I was stuck with my imperfect smile and a slight mistrust in my once beloved Dr. Gold.
In 2022, the Telehealth service I used to conduct my therapy sessions finally added a Hide Self View function, and I immediately started using it and my self-esteem ticked up a couple of notches almost instantly. I was again, able to be fully immersed in my patient's issues and not on thoughts like does that mole look cancerous?
The irony is not lost on me. My job is to help people see themselves more clearly, look deeply at their patterns and relationships, to see their whole self, and here I am recommending they all hide their self-view. Some people were as excited about this new function as I was, immediately hiding themselves as soon as our session began. Others were more hesitant. They wanted our boxes side by side.
After I turned my self-view off, I became certain that it was also best for my patients. Talking about hating yourself while staring yourself in the face can't be healthy. But, in my dedication to my craft of modern psychoanalysis, I followed the contact function; if they needed to see themselves to see themselves, then that is what we would do.
I admit on social calls, and sometimes when I am in my own therapy, I can't help but toggle between seeing myself and not. When I'm worried I have something in my teeth or feel a hair in my eye, I'll check in on my self-view for a second and then toggle off right away so as not to pull a narcissus and fall too deeply into what's wrong with that mirror image of myself and get distracted from the task at hand of exploring my inner life or listening to my friend tell me about how her baby has brought home another stomach virus from daycare.
I know I am more focused as a therapist when I hide my self-view and make my patients my full screen. I can fully tune in to their emotional experience, subtle facial expressions, and gestures. When I'm not distracted by a new wrinkle on my forehead I definitely have more empathy for them and more tolerance for myself. But I can't unsee what I saw before the hide self-view function existed. I am aging. Even with the light TikTok told me to buy, the makeup from Sephora that will give me a youthful glow and my hair perfectly coifed the unforgiving computer camera has made me stare into myself and has shown me that I am not who I feel to be, the young and fun 25-year-old who first met Dr. Gold. I am in my 40s with deep set lines, grey hairs, and age spots, only getting older every day.
Jianna Heuer is a Psychotherapist in New York City. She writes Nonfiction and Fiction. Her work has appeared in Months To Years, The Inquisitive Eater, Across The Margin, and other literary journals. Her flash non-fiction has appeared in two books, Fast Funny Women and Fast Fierce Women. Check out more of her work here.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram: @Jianna Heuer
