Facial dysmorphia is literally taking over my life

Advice Needed

I almost never post on Reddit, but I just wanted to clear my head about this. Ever since my early teens (like age 13) I've noticed that I look drastically different in mirrors/selfies as compared to the back camera. I have consistently looked bad in every single photo someone has taken of me, whether its off a camera or an iphone, whether its taken at a distance or up-close. My midface becomes so much longer, my entire facial structure and proportions are just morphed and I don't even recognize myself. I feel like I've struggled with this on and off, and there were times where I was actually content with how I looked because I wasn't really getting photos taken of me, and so I kind of relied solely on the mirror to see how I looked. However, in the past couple of weeks, I made the mistake of looking at photos of me from my high school graduation and have literally fallen into the same spiral of hating how I look, questioning which version of me is "real", and overthinking my appearance literally 24/7. There is such a clear difference in my facial structure when I compare selfies to the back camera. Even worse, all of the people in the photos with me look exactly the same as they do in real life, just serving as confirmation that this isn't "lens distortion" or any other excuse, and how horrible I look in those photos is how I look in real life. I know a part of it is definitely symmetry, but that's not even the whole issue because even when I invert photos taken from the back, I still look bad. I don't know how to come to terms with the fact that I am simply an unattractive person and the image of myself that I am comfortable with isn't real. Ever since looking at photos of me from the back camera, I have just fallen back into the spiral of hating myself and wishing I looked like how I do in the mirror and in selfies. Why does everyone else look the same in all three, but for me, my entire face is morphed depending on what type of photo is taken? I literally spend hours just looking at photos, comparing selfies to back-camera pictures, and even going on editing apps and just editing my face to how I wish it looked, which literally serves no purpose and just makes me more upset knowing that at the end of the day, I still look like the original photo. When I look at myself, I try to think about what cosmetic procedures I need to look better, but I don't even know where to start because my face is just so bad and I don't even know if surgery would save me. I know this sounds really lame and I'm not trying to gain sympathy or fish for compliments, I just want to know if someone else relates to me and how I can get over this. I'm literally so tired of feeling embarrassed to go out just because I'm such an unattractive person. It's so frustrating seeing other girls-- both in person and online-- who are pretty and I just wonder why I couldn't be born the same way.

Posted Feb 19, 2026, 3:18 PM UTC · locked

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