I was talking with friends about body dysphoria today - not the gender kind, but where a person just doesn't feel like their body looks like "the real them" at all, perhaps they perceive their body as very ugly. And it turned out that we (all women) had a whole range of mental images of ourselves in our heads.
Two of my friends think of themselves as really ugly, in a way they admit is disproportionate to what they actually look like, both nice looking women. One friend said she has an almost 2D cartoon like picture of herself in her mind, another that she pictures herself as looking different to what she actually looks like. A few of us think of ourselves as more beautiful than we really are. I'm like this. It's hard to explain: I know what I look like, obviously, and think I look plain and average (can point to features I like and features I don't) but in my head (or my "minds eye" or whatever you call it) I am beautiful, and look a bit like Emma Stone. Hilarious, to say out loud. It's not that I think this when I'm actually trying to seriously picture myself, it's more of a "vibe" or general background feeling. Some people had no idea what we were talking about and either don't picture themselves at all, or picture themselves as lookin exactly like they look like.
So anyway it got me wondering how other people picture themselves when they're not really thinking about it. How do you picture yourself in your own head?