Asymmetric (uneven) Face

mh... i think i have what that little girl has. Well, not sure i hae hemifacial microsomia, but the way she looks on the second picture reminds me of myself. My family is in denial that there's something wrong with me too, they just say i'm crazy.

Ms. Bean: i'll soon be pm-ing you. I also owe some pics to opposing... i haven't forgotten, ok? i just haven't gotten around to it. Sorry!!
I just haven't been able to get a nice break from work (where i use the internet to participate in this forum, don't tell my boss, haha) to carefully read all the new posts since the last time i logged in.

Ok, that's all for now!

Methos: In the first set of pictures i couldn't really tell there was anything wrong, it looks as if you were just tilting your whole face. In the pictures where we can see your full face, the asymmetry is noticeable, in some of them. Just not in the ones you labeled as decent pics, lol. I have lots of those too, where i think my asymmetry isn't that obvious. At least i hope it's not.

I know what you mean about not noticing before... i just noticed a couple of years ago (i'm 26 now). Since i was a teenager i wondered why i looked weird in front facing pictures, but just dismissed it as 'making a funny face' when the flash went off. I peel open my eyes, or smirk a little, or my brow (that has a mind of it's own) would perk up, etc.. etc... I now know that my jaw is misaligned, and i haven't figured out quite yet if my nose is slanted or if one of my eyes is higher than the other too (a la shannen doherty), sometimes i think there's something else crooked about my face other than my jaw, but can't quite put my finger on it, even though i've analized my face a lot in pictures, drew lines, composed a face of mine with only my left side, and with only my right side, etc... etc... Sometimes my eyes look very different, and other times i think they look fairly the same. Ugh.... how i obsess about it!

I also wonder if it's that obvious to other people. I really haven't had anyone say anything... other than my xbf and a girl who took a front facing pic of me at a photo place, she showed me the picture and i asked her to take another one cause i had one of my eyes half closed, and she said 'well, you DO have one eye bigger than the other'. Oh, how i hated her, little miss perfectly symmetrical face!
Oh! and one of my co-workers asked me if my nose was crooked, but she does stare at me a lot. haha. Pays more attention to me than others, she asks me just what color my eyes are, and other things about my appearance too. And that's about it. I wonder if EVERYONE knows and just don't say anything cause they don't want to be rude or point out the obvious. Like i know a woman that has a droopy side to her face, and her eyes are way too bulgy, and one of them droops too. I wonder if my disfigurement is as obvious.

Anenome: i read your other thread, and, dyan's advice is great, but i have to say... I too have read that one side of the jaw can grow more than the other. According to a lot of internet sources this is a fact. Of course i'm no doctor and i'm not 100% sure this is true... but i really think it is.
I was recently told i have condylar hyperplasia (meaning one condyle is bigger than the other) and supposedly, when you have this, one side of the jaw is convex and the other is kind of concave. I can feel this difference in my lower jaw.
Also, i've seen a lot of cases on the internet of severely deviated jaws which have been fixed by getting rid of the excess jaw growth on one side and then using braces to balance the bite.
So i really really think that one side of the jaw growing more is totally possible.

Methos, maybe you have condylar hyperplasia as well? Your deviated mouth and chin look kind of like mine do too.

Waiting for the pic JBNJ!

yeah thats the problem. is that it seems like im just titling my face, but thats actually how it looks when im staring straight at someone or something.

the only thing i ever noticed from before, was that my jawline protrudes on the left side and not on the right. but i never realized that my chin was that crooked. and really thats kinda what stands out the most. after looking closely i noticed that from the ear down, my face completely tilts over to the left.

with my eyes sometimes one is bigger than the other, but thats just cause i probably focus with one more than the other. so every so often i have one eye appear larger than the other, and sometimes they are both the same size. but thats just something that happens with everybody. so i never cared much for that.

now im constantly wondering if people dont point it out to me, just so they wont seem all rude. but ive never noticed anyone looking me up and down. usually when im talking to someone face to face, they always look me straight in the eye.

i would think i have the same condition you have. cause i saw the pic u posted and thats about the same as me. i finish classes in about 3 weeks. so im hoping my parents will schedule an appointment with an orthodontist shortly after im done with school.
and that way i will feel somewhat less stressed in knowing whats going on with my face.
cause im already stressed out as it is. and the terror i have to go thru in giving presentations of my research paper in front of a class. cause ur up there and people will be staring u down as u speak about the topic.
so that doesnt help me any knowing people will probably notice my crooked face.

I know what you mean... i get all paranoid now when i'm talking to people. Though i've been like this since i was 15 or 16, and i never noticed. So aaall these yeaaars!! clueless. I was looking at pictures of me when i was a kid, a teenager...
And as a kid i was very symmetrical. It all started to go wrong at around 14, when it was barely noticeable, and it just got worse and worse over time. Hitting it's peak at about 17, and from there it was steady, until i got braces.

For those of you who missed that part about me, when i was 21 i got braces just on my upper teeth with the sole purpose of bringing a potruding right canine down. This flattened or receded my teeth on that side, plus, the new teeth arrangement made me bite a little further to the left, thus making my asymmetry somewhat worse.

Were you guys normal as kids too? Sniff... as i was looking at pictures of me growing up... i couldn't help but wonder... what the hell happened to me? i used to have a symmetrical face! I blame my adult teeth. Maybe my jaws grew crooked in my last growth spurt. Who knows.

Just breathe, Methos... if we went a lot of years being clueless about our own crookedness, and i bet we payed a lot more attention to ourselves in pictures and in the mirror than any other person normally would... chances are no one will notice. At least that's what i like to think... sigh.

Ugh... i'm gonna vent about something here, ok? i just remembered something and it made my stomach turn. This comment was made by a friend of my then bf, when i was clueless about my asymmetry (and i'm sure my bf had already noticed, he has like a huge radar to notice each and every flaw i have).
The friend was talking about his sister's bf, and how he dumped her... he said "damn jerk, he even said "Biani" (his sister's name is the same as mine) has a crooked mouth". HIS sister's mouth is NOT crooked. Back then i just thought 'what a jerk' and dismissed it. NOW i realize he was talking about me, not his sister. It was just the subtle way of the friend to burn my bf for saying that behind my back, most likely. Or something like that. Or they both were making fun of me right in front of me. Jerks.

same for me. when i was like 16 or 17. thats when i was having issues with my jaw and that one day it just went out of place i believe.

my mom keeps saying braces would fix it all. but im like nah i need my jaw fixed up. but its like yeah just wait till i see the orthodontist. might see him sooner than later, just to put my mind at ease.

but yeah i had a normal straight face, i never fell down on my face, i never got punched in the face. which is why i never would have taken notice or realized that my face is crooked. but it phases me more now cause im older. so its more of a concern. whereas when i was a teenager, all i cared about was playing video games and stuff. so looking back i can sorta see why i wouldnt have cared.

i wish if i hadnt noticed that the whole world wouldnt notice. but maybe this is why people always stared me down when i would walk into the classroom. they would stare at me even while i walked to my chair. so its like were they staring at my crooked face? or were they just staring at the stranger that walked in?

thats kind of unsettling to have your significant other talk like that about you.
youd think something like that would be overlooked, but if they are constantly criticizing your imperfections...well thats just not someone you want to be with. especially if it hurts your feelings.
cause if i were someones boyfriend who had this particular issue and i didnt. id only point it out, out of concern. not to make fun or embarass you , or throw it in your face in the middle of some arguement.

if u could post a pic of ur whole face or urself from a distance, thatd allow me to see whether its noticeable or not.

but really my crooked face is the only flaw i have. aside from that im really skinny, but ive been working out , so i hope to look somewhat better in the near future. but that type of thing never bothered me or had me feel self conscious about myself. whereas the face is a whole other thing, cause everyone sees ur face , u cant cover ur face.

Mmh... same here. No accidents, no falling down... it just happened. An ortho told me it was most likely fixable with braces, i'll let you guys know what they tell me when i go back there and they have analized my x-rays and everything.

And yeah... it sucked to have a boyfriend who made fun of my defects. Sometimes he would stare at me, pull one of my eyes down, push my nose to the left and my mouth to the right... like setting me straight or something. It didn't bother me so much that he told me and we talked about it when we were alone (only when he made a big fuss with how weird and ugly i looked in the reflection of a mirror), what really bugs me is that he talked to his friends about it. I imagine them just having a big laugh about it. This guy is no longer my boyfriend, but now i'm totally self conscious and think that maybe that's why he couldn't love me? i'm thinking i won't be able to get close to any other guy ever cause then they'll see?? I'm kind of depressed right now...

Let me see if i can find a picture where i'm facing front...

haha all trying to rearrange your face.
well if he made a fuss about how u looked in a mirror. then he must have seen you differently face to face.
yeah thats not something you make fun of, unless you yourself are making the joke. otherwise thats just inconsiderate to have someone pointing out your flaws. and to have it be the boyfriend of all people.

cause if i were the guy in that spot. i would think well its something that can get fixed. just need the funds. so if i cared that much for the girl, hell i would work my ass off just to raise enough money to have her get her face fixed back to normal.


in the short time i had a girlfriend, she never brought it up. so i assume she never noticed. yet she would always stare at me. cause she was one of those that would always point out her imperfections. yet to me she was beautiful and i loved her personality even more.
so i can only imagine that my personality meant much more to her than my physical appearance.

i too think that damn ill never be able to have a girlfriend or whatever, cause my face is the way it is. and its not all that bad, but i mean it has this big imperfection that i myself cant look past. so i think right off the bat that no one else can either. also i think it shows up more now than when i was a teenager.

itd be great to see a pic. just to see if i would notice the same issue on someone else. cause i look at pics of friends, and all their faces seem symmetrical and normal.

lol, yeah i guess. He did say i looked very different. But then he went and 'rearranged' my face from time to time, so i guess he did notice the crookedness sometimes. I guess that in the mirror he saw kind of like what i see in the double mirror. Such a freak!!!
But if i was him i wouldn't be making a fuss over asymmetries... his nose was kind of crooked, pointed to one side! lol. I never made fun of it or anything... i didn't mind, and really i only noticed it when he started poking fun at me, i was on a mission to find something wrong with him so i could shut him up. All that time his crooked nose was staring me right in the face, but i hadn't noticed until i purposely looked at him trying to find something "wrong".

Ok, found some pictures. They ARE from really far away, so they're kind of pixelized, maybe that's why i don't feel that self concious about uploading them. And besides, what was originally holding me back from uploading was my bf too... i didn't think he would like me uploading pics of myself for everyone to see... but now, i just don't care, haha.

Ok, wait a bit, ok? i'm uploading to photobucket.

yeah thats how i would assume it would seem. i freaked out when i saw myself in a double mirror.

haha crooked nose. did he notice his own crookedness? or did u have to point it out to him?

i guess some people are childish with that sort of thing. if i knew that something was a bit off and if u knew the same, i wouldnt bring it up again cause if it didnt bother you, it wouldnt bother me.
i would hate to have someone pointing out my imperfections and then tell other people and joke about it. id feel all sad.

i dont think you should feel all self conscious about uploading pics , especially on here of all places, since its what the subject matter is about.
i figured the hell with it, just to see if others would notice what i notice. or to see if someone else had the same situation going on with them.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh31 2/bianitas9/me7goodside.jpg
http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me6.jpg
http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me5.jpg
http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me3.jpg
http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me4.jpg
http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me2.jpg
http ://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/biani tas9/me-1.jpg
h ttp://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bi anitas9/crookie.jpg
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh3 12/bianitas9/me8otherside.jpg
h ttp://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bi anitas9/mefront.jpg
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/ bianitas9/squinting.jpg
h ttp://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bi anitas9/walking.jpg

Ok, i got carried away with so many pics. Some of them are from 3/4, where i think the asymmetry isn't obvious. You guys tell me.
Also, i think i look very very different from my right side than from my left side. Do you guys think i look different too?

Alsooo, excuse the squinting in some of the pictures, the sun was hurting my eyes, lol.

The last two pictures and the one titled 'crookie' were taken without me posing, in one i was caught off ward, and in the other 2 i didn't even know i was going to be in the pic. In the one titled crookie i think it's very obvious my jaw is out of whack. Also in the ones where i'm facing front.

I don't really remember if he already knew his nose pointed to one side... i think he did.
I think he was kind of hurtful... i remember telling him that if i wanted to be made fun of like that i would go back to high school thank you very much (where kids made fun of everyone about *something*). He claimed he was just being honest and that i was being overly sensitive.
Sometimes i would get very depressed, and i would even tell him he should get a pretty girlfriend... and not to stick around with an uggo like myself. The guy didn't help my self esteem much. He would tell me i was not pretty at all, and would tell me how pretty so and so was.

And yeah, after seeing lots of people here bravely post their pictures, well, i finally worked up the courage to post some of my full face, even if they're not cristal clear or really up close. Most of us here are on the same boat after all.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh31 2/bianitas9/me7goodside.jpg
in that one i cant really tell. other than ur jaw is kinda sticking out. thats pretty much the way my left side is.

http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me6.jpg
in this one i cant even tell.

http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me5.jpg
in this one i can see your chin is slanted. but like me, because of the skin color, you cant really tell that something is all off center.

http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me3.jpg
right here i notice that your nose is slightly crooked but your mouth and face seem normal.

http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me4.jpg
right here is where you look just the way i do. where you can tell that at some point your face goes crooked.i dunno if its cause you are smiling or if your not smiling and thats just how it is.

http: //i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bianit as9/me2.jpg
in this one i cant tell. cause it seems like your head is tilted. so its not as obvious by first glance, but because im especially looking for the crookedness, i can tell that its there.

http ://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/biani tas9/me-1.jpg
this one looks fine. its there but it doesnt stand out at all.

h ttp://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bi anitas9/crookie.jpg
cause of hte shadow i cant tell in this one as far as your chin, but i do see the slanting of the face from the way your mouth isnt quite centered under your nose.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh3 12/bianitas9/me8otherside.jpg
this one is deceiving. i have some like this where you cant really tell, but u can see that your chin is indeed crooked. its just not at all bad looking like it would be in a pic where your facing forward.

h ttp://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bi anitas9/mefront.jpg
i dont notice it here. just that your nose is slightly slanted. but the rest of you face looks normal.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/ bianitas9/squinting.jpg
just the nose here. like i said before because you dont see where your chin ends cause of the lightness of your skin, its not at all obvious.
this is what i would consider a 'decent' pic haha.


h ttp://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/bi anitas9/walking.jpg
dont notice it at all in this one.


all in all if i were your boyfriend, it wouldnt bother me any. i think because your face is a bit more rounder than mine, that its not as distinguished as my jaw. cause to me the only obvious thing that i catch in each photo, is that your nose is slanted over.
the pictures of you upclose are a bit blurry and pixelated. so i dont see what youd probably see if you looked at yourself in the mirror upclose.
i dont think it makes you unnatractive though. i mean its there but i dont think it makes you look less attractive.

i suppose if i were to give you my opinion on what to do. id say that unless you got problems with chewing or your jaw locks up , id say dont bother with surgery.
but im just basing that opinion on the pics that ive seen. cause im sure its a different perspective if i saw you face to face. under different lighting and what not.

haha, yeah, well, i did choose the pics in which i think i look less bad.

I think my nose looks slanted cause, if you look closely, my whole head is tilted to my left, so the thing that appears to be ok is my mouth. Look at my eyes on the pics where you say my nose is slanted, they aren't on a horizontal line. I think my nose is a little crooked too, cause sometimes on some pics, where i'm not facing totally front, my nose looks like i am. I think it points a little to my right. This one i think it did get a little screwed up cause in high school i received a basketball right on my nose... it bled... a lot. I didn't think any more of it, but on one side the bone between the brows sticks out a little.
And on the ones you say you can't tell where my chin ends, look at my mouth, that sure gives it away.

Also, i think it's worse when i'm not smiling at all. I think my little smirk actually camouflages the whole thing a bit.

yeah i got the same thing happening with my nose. cause the whole face is just tilted over and pulling everything with it.
thats what im going by. is lining up your eyes cause thats how i look at my pics, and from the eyes down i can see my face then tilts over.

but because the pics are pixelated, i dont notice the asymmetry in your chin. the nose is the only thing that stands out thats crooked.

so i went ahead and did to your pics what i did to mine. which was flip them over. and thats when i can very clearly see the asymmetry of your face.
was the most obvious in this one
http ://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh312/biani tas9/me-1.jpg

im not sure if thats how u see yourself in the double mirrors. but thats how i see myself in two mirrors. is when the image is flipped over.


ouch basketball to the face yeah thatd do it lol. one of my students got hit with a baseball in her nose and it ended up all crooked. but her parents immediately went and got her nose fixed.
so if thats the damage a baseball can do, i cant imagine a basketball.

Thank you on the compliment.

I didn't see your last message when i replied.

Mmh... funny. I always think that guys should find someone who's more in their league too. It's like there's no one that's on my league! haha. I mean, there are loads of pretty girls around, i have felt bad for the poor suckers that have been with me. On top of it all i'm boring. I like to think of myself as just the quiet type, but, as my last boyfriend once told me, i come across as insipid and boring.

I really think we should stop the pity party, we do have good points to ourselves, right? lol. I mean, we HAVE to. Everybody does. Not everyone sees it in everyone, but like they say, there's someone for everyone. Lol, here i am typing this and am still questioning if that's true for me... We really need to get our self esteem back, huh?

Hey, got another question for everyone with a deviated jaw...
If you guys press on the back of your neck, does it feel tender? Not only there, but generally all in that area? like in the base of your skull almost behind the ears, below the jaw, the front neck muscles?
I thought it was normal that they felt this way... turns out it's not. Well, that's what i've been told. I don't know what the rest of the world feels like.

Lol, yeah, the basketball was bad.

In double mirrors i look way more crooked than any flipping of the pictures could ever do. My right brow and eye almost always look perked up while my left side is a looks half asleep, and that looks insanely streched out further. My nose also looks like waaaay to the right, and my mouth and chin waaaay to the left. A whole lot more than the asymmetry i'm used to seeing in pics, flipped pics or in the normal mirror.

Again, i didn't see your last message when i last replied. I guess you reply while i'm typing. lol. I'm slower i guess.

That's how i figured out what was crooked on me too, by lining up the eyes. Although i wonder if they're symmetrical. Sometimes they look to me like my right one is a little bit higher than the other, even though i've made my little experiments with my front facing pictures and have determined they're leveled and the same size even. Although my lids can look a bit different, one side folds differently sometimes. My tests proved they're ok. But they sure don't look like that all the time to me.