What my therapist calls the moving target

Something that helped was reducing how much I looked. Not as a punishment. Just less often, and it made the looking less loaded.

I liked how I looked before as well. That is a complicated thing to say in most places and it is straightforwardly true.

The mirror thing comes and goes. Some months I barely notice and some months it is the first thing I think about, and I have stopped trying to control which.

Thank you for the update. Threads that stop are the worst kind.

"You look well" landed strangely for a long time. I know it is meant kindly. It still made me feel observed.

I found the comments from people who had known me a long time hardest, because they carried an implied opinion about before.

Building on what Gwyth wrote rather than answering the original question.

I had assumed this would resolve itself and it did not. It needed actual attention, and in my case some therapy, and I resisted both for a year.

What I would say is that this is harder than the physical side and gets a fraction of the discussion. I am glad this circle exists for it.

Photographs are difficult for me and I have stopped apologising for stepping out of them.

My experience is that other people's attention was the destabilising thing, more than anything about my own body.