The difference between saying “you’ve been brainwashed” and “we’re all constantly subject to propaganda which affects all of our perceptions and none of us is immune” is very large. In the former, we eventually get to a conversation where I aggressively overshare and you reveal nothing, as below. In the latter, we could have kept it impersonal and talked about the nature of the propaganda affecting us.

My perceptions come from a combination of my experiences and beliefs, not more subject to brainwashing than anyone else.

The experiences that led to this belief were probably the multiple body parts my mother lost during my childhood (a decade of aggressive cancer and more aggressive treatment). A certain kind of pragmatism was instilled in me about what you actually need to keep going, and why that’s important (also we’re all autistic, which almost certainly has something to do with our attitudes about this).

So yes, some people have an altered sense of self after a bad haircut, but I do not. My head has been shaved and worn every type of mullet (I grow it out and then buzz it to donate every couple of years).

I once had a broken orbital, which made it painful to smile. I am a smiley person, so it was an adjustment (which means brain changes), but I started flaring my nostrils to my friends instead as an inside joke, and retained all of my smiliness after the orbital healed(not personality changes). I have had a pact with my sisters that we’ll get a mastectomy the second we have a tumor since before I had breasts, and I will keep it without hesitation. Hell, if my sisters both got breast cancer, that might be enough without my own symptoms (they’re older than I am, so I tend to get their health issues on a delay).

Perhaps a finger would make me a more withdrawn person, there’s no way to know until it happens. I don’t think I’d suffer significant long term personality changes though.