[TheoA]

Hi all,
Full disclosure - I'm 35 and back on this board. It was a main place of support for me in my late teens and early twenties.

While I still get a lot of self-injurious urges, I've worked hard on adapting my coping mechanisms and finding other things that work for me (a lot of sport, for example). That being said, I have a lot of scars all up my arms and over my things. They're pretty noticeable just by the volume and nature - some are quite ridged.

Fast forward to now - I'm a pretty successful professional in my chosen field, I manage people, I'm doing a doctorate. Given that so much of work has been remote (obviously with Covid lockdown, and my job was mainly remote for a couple of years before that, and I mainly saw friends who know me and I've known for years) I guess I developed a kind of cognitive dissonance about my scars. I don't really see them any more, because they're just part of my body, and - and I know how odd this sounds - I forget that other peoples' bodies aren't like it?

Anyway it's hot as f*** in my country rn, this means I've gotten a tan which of course makes the scars stand out more. I'm going into the office and uni much more regularly. I guess I just forgot that my arms look like that and the amount of comments I've had where people just will grab my arm and say "what happened to your arm?!". These are people like my PhD supervisor, people I manage at work....

I guess I don't really have a question or a solution here - I just wanted to know if this was something that other people experienced? And am I the only one with this weird cognitive distortion?

Thanks y'all as always.

T