Perception drift: how people get addicted to filler and Botox

Have you ever seen photos of cosmetic surgery-fixated people like Jocelyn Wildenstein and wondered how they got there? Although an extreme example, it’s actually quite common for people to become obsessed with “fixing” their appearance to the point of losing sight of what they look like. This is known as ‘perception drift’, and is a phenomenon that can happen as people undergo new cosmetic procedures and their self-perception shifts. Even though we might question why someone would want to completely alter the way they look with these procedures, many psychologists recognise perception drift as a very real form of body dysmorphia. 

Psychologically, there are many reasons why someone might begin to lose sense of their appearance. Focusing too much on negative thoughts of yourself is what psychologists refer to as cognitive biases, or the spiraling thinking that can distort our perception of ourselves. Psychotherapist Kimberlin Shepard finds that these overly negative thoughts are usually the cause of perception drift. “Our minds have a troubling way of catastrophising something when we give it too much attention. By continually feeding into the negative narrative about a physical flaw, we train ourselves to believe it and distance ourselves from reality,” she says.

Subsequently, becoming detached from reality can have serious consequences. Perception drift occurs when our looks become so altered that we begin to forget what we originally looked like. This is extremely common in the case of cosmetic surgery. When patients become especially critical of their looks, they’ll stop at nothing to change them. Because after you fix the “one thing” you dislike about yourself, it seems like tonnes of other things start to make themselves known. Perception drift literally distorts the way we see ourselves, and the perceived flaws we once didn’t even notice become another box to tick off. After one successful cosmetic procedure, the possibilities for improvement can begin to seem endless.

Having warped ideas of ourselves is nothing new, especially because we rarely think of others as harshly as we do ourselves. “When thinking about ourselves, we are introspective, factoring our feelings and emotions into our perceptions of self,” Shepard says. According to her, we’re much more forgiving when it comes to others. “When we see others, we do not have an emotional bias distorting our view, therefore we see them strictly for what is truly observable.” Obsessing over your self-image can often lead to the undying desire to change it.

Social media has not helped with this obsession; thanks to the way it has conditioned us to constantly be aware of what we – and everyone around us looks like – the desire for cosmetic surgery has skyrocketed and procedures have become more normalised. With a growing number of the people we see online and in everyday life getting work done, we’re increasingly used to the sight of surgical or injectable-altered faces. On top of that, in the era of clicks and likes, we’ve become accustomed to the feeling of instant gratification – and for those experiencing perception drift, cosmetic surgery can have the same effect. “Once patients begin having procedures, they receive this positive feedback where they look and feel better; so they seek out more ways to keep feeling this way,” says cosmetic surgeon Dr Chidester.

Kasi Communale recalls a time when she found instant gratification in the pain that cosmetic surgery caused, because it meant she was “upgrading” her looks. “The physical pain of it all was addicting. It’s a feeling hard to describe if you never had it done,” she says. “Injections don’t feel good but, to me, it was a pain that meant something was getting fixed on my appearance so that feeling became an addiction, like I was reversing the clock.” Communale found that her obsession with cosmetic surgery caused her to lose control of what she actually looked, and looking back on that time now, she realises how “ridiculous” she actually looked.

@eatlitfood Zon’t zo it #filler ♬ original sound - Albert Cho

“I had two breast augmentations. They were way, way too big, but at the time I thought I looked phenomenal. The same thing happened with my lips. Once I started getting them, I went bigger and bigger until it looked like I had an inner tube in my mouth. I looked so horrible, but just couldn’t see it,” Communale says. After completely altering your looks, it can become easy to not recognise what you actually look like. And like Communale mentions, it can turn into a never-ending cycle of wanting more.

Dr Chidester says that perception drift is the main reason why so many people are unable to tell how drastically cosmetic procedures have actually altered their looks. After you undergo a handful of procedures, you can lose track of what you looked like in the beginning. This is why lip filler is often referred to as a “gateway drug” by TikTokers. With a temporary procedure like lip filler, you can grow so used to how it makes you look, that you find yourself needing to get more and more injected in order to notice a difference and capture that same feeling of satisfaction.

Perception drift can also relate to more temporary changes in physical appearance too. If you’ve been on TikTok recently, you’ve definitely come across people claiming to have suffered from “eyebrow blindness,” or the inability to perceive their eyebrows for how they truly look. For TikToker Maia Papaiyaa, eyebrow blindness was the result of overdoing beauty trends. “We’re told thick is trending, [then] thin is trending. We all jump on board,” Papaiyaa says. She notes that when eyebrow trends really take off, we become so used to them we can’t see them in a negative light until later on. “It’s hard to tell how thick is too thick if everyone has thick eyebrows”.

The never-ending trend cycle is another big reason why so many of us struggle with self-perception issues. Just when we feel like we’re content with the way we look, a trendy cosmetic procedure pops up on our For You Page, or a new eyebrow trend makes us feel outdated. And because it’s so easy to be critical of the way we look, it’s even easier to lose sight of what we actually want for ourselves. Perception drift can seriously warp our cognitive biases. So before fixating on all the things you don’t like about yourself, make sure to appreciate the things you like about yourself too.