My daughter just spent a month in France. It was the graduation present from university that her grandmother gave her, and I fretted about her safety the whole time. Whew! Now she's home and I can relax.

When I contemplated what she had done, I wondered if I could have done that when I was her age.

I remember hitchhiking to Colorado from California to see a friend who was living in a commune there, and I recall sliding sideways on the ice in a convertible going 70 miles an hour somewhere in Utah, walking without a ride for most of the day on an Indian reservation in Arizona, and then riding up the coastal highway from Santa Barbara to San Francisco in the back of an open pick up truck on the way back, but I don't know if I could have gotten on a plane and flown half way around the world to live in a country where I couldn't speak the language.

Such a question relates to one's self-concept. Do you perceive yourself from the inside out or from the outside in?

Some people have an internal locus of control, but other people have an external locus of control. The first group believes they can make things happen, but the second group believes they must wait for things to happen.

The first group might say, "I can do that", while the second group might say, "Circumstances are too difficult".

The internal locus of control people, in a sense, see themselves from the inside out, while the external locus of control people see themselves from the outside in.

This same question of how a person perceives him or herself is in play when it comes to the sense of appearance.

Do we feel good or do we look good? If we are aware of how we feel, that is proprioception ? the sensation of the body as it keeps itself in balance. If we are aware of how we look, that is perception, the sensing of stimuli that come to the body from outside of it.

We feel our bodies moving, or we look at our bodies and contemplate the reflection.

In what is called body dysmorphic disorder a person becomes overly concerned with the appearance of some feature of his or her body.

The person may be sensitive about several features and condemn herself for not looking the way she "should".

He might begin to see himself, in a sense, from the outside in, sometimes painfully self-conscious in this way.

It is the sense of the social audience, that others can see the features this person him or herself condemns and rejects that is so powerful.

People may drastically adjust their eating and exercise habits in order to change those features that seem objectionable. They may have the sense that their behaviour is extreme and somewhat out of control, but they repeat it nonetheless. Often, these people develop eating disorders such as Bulimia or Anorexia in the process of attempting to change how others might see them.

In contrast, people who experience the body from the inside out may also diet and exercise, but they orient around what it feels like to do those things while inhabiting their bodies. Many are comfortable with a blemish here or there as long as they know they are fit and as long as they can sense their bodies "from the inside out".

I was out of the gym for about a year, but I've just returned. I'm through the sore muscle phase, and now I'm starting to feel my body respond. There is new energy in my step. I can feel those muscles firming up a bit; however, during that year I added fat, and I hate what that looks like. When I look in the mirror, I see it. I also see the ageing that is marching relentlessly forward. I wonder how much longer I'll be able to work out the way I like, the way that makes me feel good. I have no choice but to live with the miserable things my skin is doing as it loses elasticity or grows various barnacles.

Seeing oneself from the inside out or from the outside in is not an all-or-nothing kind of thing. We all shift back and forth between these two ways of experiencing ourselves. The trick is to be flexible with it so that one does not become fixated in one or the other and lose perspective.

Dr. Philip Brownell, M.Div., Psy.D. is a psychologist at Benedict Associates. He can be contacted at 295-2070 or send e-mail to pbrownellbenedict.bm