Hello to my fellow community,

I am Joe and I have encountered a problem with mewing, hopefully you guys can help me, before I start telling you guys what happened, excuse any English mistake I do, it is not my first language. I started mewing on April 6th of this year and stopped on May 1st which is 3 weeks, I think I mewed for those 3 weeks between hard/moderate mewing, since I was very determined. I stopped this type of mewing when I started to feel odd and decided to soft mew for some weeks, until I realized the changes (bad) in my face and decided to stop mewing at all.

I will let you guys know the changes I noticed and please let me know if there is a way I can make things go back to “normal” and after that I will write my mewing journey. I am in need of all the help I can get, I am asking this with the most humble heart. I thought I was doing the correct technique, the whole tongue on pallet, the back third activated, etc... Honestly, I wish I hadn't even mewed to begin with.

Changes I noticed on my face:
- Eyes seem more inside the skull, I also feel I have a different “gaze” not in a good way
- Zygomatic archs look more noticeable, but that makes my left zygomatic arch somehow seem tired-looking. (this is what I am most unsatisfied with)
- I am sore on the face, near masseter muscles, and I might have encountered with TMJD.
- Face looks and feels chubbier
- Eyes feel tired
- Dark circles are more noticeable
- Cheeks look bigger, not in a good way
- Face looks a little wider
- Face asymmetries got more noticeable, which I hadn’t noticed before, which is that my left side seems more projected than the right.
- My face in general looks different than before, and honestly I just want things to go back as they were, I am not feeling myself.
- I miss my old smile, the one I have now feels awkward, and when I laugh I feel very weird…
-Somehow from a side view, a part of my face looks like it is sticking "out", or projecting more, the zygomatic arch, with my cheeks seem more "out"
-Somehow my face feels and looks different, the whole system.

What should I do? Who has been through a similar situation? Who should I contact? Honestly It has been hard. Is there any professional help? What can I do? I am asking you r
In the next paragraphs you'll see my mewing journey and why I am asking for help in this forum.

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First, let me explain why I started mewing in the first place. All my life I have felt there is something odd about my face, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was, either way I had my good angles and bad angles, and do consider myself an attractive-ish guy. Then, I went to my orthodontist this January and he told me that I had a weak chin, which when he told me it finally made sense that some angles of my face were a bit odd, or not as harmonious as I would want. My orthodontist told me I might need the orthognatic jaw surgery, which is super expensive by the way, because he suspects I might suffer from sleep apnea.

So after he told me that, I remember I saw somewhere, something about mewing, I don’t specifically remember how I bumped into it again. I had seen stuff about mewing in the past, like a year ago, and kind of read about it but didn’t pay any real attention to it at the moment. But this time, when I saw that it might help me with a better jaw development, I got hooked, I thought that all my insecurities about my face were finally getting resolved by this exercise and how could I not try it since it was free and everyone was talking wonderful stories about it. So, that moment was when I began with my mewing journey.

As I previously stated, I began mewing on April 6th, and since I got really hooked by all the benefits it can bring, some people even saying it could give you “model-like” features, I started mewing consistently everyday for 3 whole weeks, which might have been between moderate and hard mewing because I was too determined to make things better.
So, I began mewing really excited and after the first week and a half I was getting a bit tired of the exercise, and I could feel my face was tired, I looked into it and it was supposed to be normal so I kept mewing. After the 3 weeks went by I decided to stop with my intense determination to mew because I could feel my face getting really tired, waking up with dry eyes and just tired in general. That day I was in a bachelor’s party and I remember I started to soft mew because I was too tired, being exactly three weeks since I started mewing.

I hadn’t quite noticed any drastic changes, and the changes I did notice I blamed them on how tired I was from all the mewing and that they will go away once I soft mew and rest more. So I started soft mewing, which I wasn’t too consistent at because I was more concentrated on resting from all the previously hard mewing I did.
Days were going by after I rested and I didn’t see any of the changes I noticed going away, which I blamed on me being tired. I kept telling to myself to rest or whatever and everything will go away. It was at friend’s wedding on May 22nd where I noticed real changes in my face, I noticed my stare was a little different, noticed my zygomatic arch from the left side more noticeable, which doesn’t help me look good, it makes me look tired, somehow I felt my chin was even more weak, and overall I felt I was looking chubbier. After the wedding, I went to Houston for the covid vaccine, and I remember I was going to the mirror every 5 minutes analyzing what was going on in my face. I convinced myself that they were good changes and that mewing was giving me great benefits and whatever, even my mom told me she liked how my eyes looked (they look more "in").
So by this time, 23 days have gone by since I stopped with my consistent mewing, and just soft mewed sometimes, when I remembered. Finally, when I came back home it was around May 26th when I realized these changes were not good, and I was not liking at all the changes mewing caused on my face, so I even stopped with my inconsistent soft mewing.

I was getting really anxious, sad, very wild emotions about everything, very upset in general, because I was expecting the opposite of what I was seeing at the moment. After I accepted that I was not into my “new look” dark days came over, I was barely eating, barely getting up from bed, I thought I had ruined my face forever. I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror, I was not seeing "me". Not only did it cause bad results, it also made my only good angle not as good anymore, which was the charm I felt I had on my face. I started to actually feel like an ugly person, which is a very hard feeling or perception to have about one-self to be honest. I started to feel I was losing worth, I know it sounds superficial, but it was something that was happening internally for me.

After all of this, I began to feel that my masseter muscles were a bit sore, and so I discovered I might have TMJD which got revealed by mewing, hence the swelling on my face (I think, I read about it on another forum) and also started to feel pressure on my temples. I was very desperate to make things go back as they were I was feeling ugly, feeling sore as hell, I was not recognizing myself on the mirror, finding the solution was consuming me as well as it was all I could think about. It came to a point where I accepted the fact that it was going to be a process and it will not be as easy to find the solution as I would like to, so I decided to accept the new changes for the moment and slowly to look for the answers, without letting it consume me.

Days were going by since I decided to take things slowly and I was sleeping better, enjoying life better and in general living better, it was not consuming me as much. Of course I had my sad moments, and moments of crisis of “will things be normal again?”, by this time, the thought of me mewing again was scary as hell. Even though I sometimes soft mewed, without me noticing.
After I started taking things slowly I noticed that the TMJD discomfort, and masseter muscle soreness was still there, sometimes it disappeared and then it came back, but in general I was feeling sore and noticed that if I didn’t smile I will not look as sore around the cheeks, so I decreased my smiling during the day. Also, my smile started to feel a bit weird/awkward, and I used to be smiling all day, all the time. After days of me smiling less, I could feel my personality changing, I began to be a more quiet person, more serious, wasn’t laughing as much and internally I felt I was a whole different person, kind of dead to be honest. All of this was happening in the month of June, last month. I saw videos of myself before I mewed and felt I was a whole different person, physically and personality-wise, sometimes I had dark days and really just wished things could be normal again. During this time I was looking in forums, searching for problems people have encountered with, and wanted to see if I could bump into something similar, but I wasn’t finding a solution.

I decided to get professional help, so I went to my orthodontist and told him what happened, he had a skull scan of myself from January from the diagnosis of the weak chin and possible sleep apnea, so he made a new skull scan, this was around mid-June. I could see the Doctor listening to what I was telling him and not really believing it, he was brushing it off and telling me it is impossible to move your skull bones (somehow I wish what he was saying was true, he was telling me it might be muscular not skeletal).
After he compared the skull scan of January and the new one he had made of June, he told me everything is exactly the same, he showed me some measurements and angles from both skull scans and it changed only to some degree but he said it was because of the different position of my neck but that everything was the same.
Somehow I felt it was true, but honestly I know that things ARE different I can SEE it, any tiny differences I doubt it would show as a big noticeable difference on the scan, he didn’t even help me with this new TMJD discomfort or anything yet. I am different in photos, my face FEELS different.
After some days went by I was having good days and bad days, not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. I decided that writing a post about it would be the better solution, to get my story out there to see if if there is any possibility of people having more knowledge about this to help me solve it, or went through a similar problem.

After going to the orthodontist, I was avoiding writing this post, since it required too much emotional baggage and I was not ready to write, but It has been like two or three weeks of me avoiding this post and finally I am writing it.

So I am letting you readers, experts, experienced people, someone/anyone who went through the same process, and anyone who has tried out mewing, if you are reading this and have any idea on how to help or how can I make things normal again, please let me know.

Who should I go to? What can I do? What is going on? I am afraid also I might mew during the night without me noticing, since I was very determined to mew when I first started. I have suffered enough from this, I wish I hadn’t even mewed on the first place, I am tired, I miss my old personality, I don’t feel as ugly like in the beginning but I don’t feel as handsome, I want to smile like I used to, not feel swollen with the TMJD nor the pressure, I feel trapped. I accepted the fact that things might never be the same again, but I do have hope, please, reader, if you can, please help.

Thank you for reading this and I'll be here, much love.

-Joe