Hello! I (F28) have a friend (M36) who spent more than 8 years without looking at himself in the mirror. He’s slowly getting back to look at himself and now even takes pictures and have social media profiles, very good progress I believe. 

I know him since I was six years old, he was my brother’s best friend and at some point he started isolating himself some days of the week, throughout the years he became very difficult to reach out to the point where we completely lost touch.

He knowledges he is schizophrenic, we talk with each other every once in a while. He seems to have his ups and downs and I’m trying the best I can to be supportive. 

I know he was bullied in school, the bullies would tell him he looked like indigenous or Mexican to try to get him to feel offended, that somehow remained with him and for the longest time he’d look in the mirror and se an Indian Or a Mexican instead of himself. What’s the hardest thing about this whole background is that he’s constantly sending me pics asking for reassurance regarding his skin color, he does not want to look brown, he tries at any cost to deny the possibility of him having any connection with those races.

I tried telling him that he needs to accept his own color and feature the way it is, I tried very hard many times to get him to realize that he does not have to be afraid of looking certain way. 

Have any of you encounter this same problem, what I can do or say to get him to be free from this feeling that haunts him so much?