Overcoming BDD

August 7, 2020 7:31 AM

Has anyone here fixed their body dysmorphia? If so, how?

I used to feel fat all the time, until I lost my baby fat. And then, totally unexpectedly, I started obsessing about my facial flaws and now am anxious / hate my face.

Objectively I know I look fine. It looks good enough. I don't want like plastic surgery or anything like that. I want to be one of those confident people who never think about it. How do I stop worrying about this?? Has anyone ever been through this and have advice about getting to the other side?

posted by existentialwhale to Human Relations (9 answers total)

I developed body dysmorphia when I was about 42. I thought that I had the face of a crone and could not look in the mirror. Literally. All I could see was a prematurely and hideously aged face. I was convinced that when people spoke to me, they were focused solely on my wrinkles. To be clear, I had the totally normal face of a 42-year-old woman who had been pretty good about wearing sunscreen.

Because I've had OCD for many years, I recognized the obsessive quality embedded in this belief, in particular, the way it had taken over my life. When I had been in an OCD spiral previously - and for me, this is often mixed with depression and anxiety - medication was the most efficient and efficacious path to healing. I've tried it both ways: waiting it out and using meds. Waiting it out did result in healing but it took more than a year. I don't think I gained anything from that approach other than the knowledge that I could endure a certain amount of suffering. I'd be glad to give that knowledge back in return for a year of mental peace.

For me, stress is often the catalyst that gets an obsessive episode rolling. In my forties, it was the return to dating after having been married for 11 years. I could make connections in therapy to that stress and the obsession but I couldn't budge the obsession even a bit. I elected meds and remember that I got relief very quickly. I knew I was better when I could look in the mirror and feel pleased to see my 42-year-old face with laugh lines and freckles.
posted by MissPitts at 7:47 AM on August 7, 2020 [9 favorites]

I feel the same way as you and I'm not entirely free of it, but a useful thing to me is to look at lots of people (in real life, NOT photos, photos make me feel worse) and think about a) how much variety there is in human appearance, b) how literally everybody has their own unique beauty because of the mere fact of being a human and c) how different it is to look at someone else, see them from all angles and in all lights and moods, compared to looking at myself in a mirror, photo or video. This helps me "correct" my thinking away from feeling like my impression of my appearance is accurate, and more towards an awareness that I'm a unique person with a 3D body that other people see in their own way, which probably is almost unrecognisable from how I see and judge myself.
posted by Balthamos at 7:52 AM on August 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

I used to hate my nose. Hate hate hate hate it. Piggy short nasty thing, all visible nostrils and euurgh. I really really wanted one of those noses that have the nostrils nicely tucked away underneath, not with the tip tilted up like mine so you can see partway up them from the front.

Dealt with that by making a regular practice of making horrible faces at myself in the bathroom mirror (complete with maximum achievable nostril flaring) until I made myself laugh. Did that every day. Took a few months before I noticed that my face as a whole was actually kind of friendly when it was smiling and that this was a good thing.

For what it's worth, never in my life has anybody ever said anything to me about my nose, positive or negative.
posted by flabdablet at 7:53 AM on August 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Things I have done to help with BDD:

1. Stop using Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat, and reduce facebook to once a week. They push people that photoshop/use plastic surgery through their algorythms. Use ad-block to avoid photoshopped models in ads.
2. Do look at Danaemercer's instagram page. Read through her posts and stories. She is a ED survivor, and helps us see that most posing and social media is wrong/fake. She encourages you to be who you are.
3. Look at people in real life. Don't just look at the attractive people. Look closely at the features you care about in the mundane people. Nobody is as beautiful as terrible media makes us feel.
4. Try to appreciate beauty in people's accomplishments, not in how they are. Find inspiration in makers and doers, and think about training for a 10k/15k/climbing a mountain / building something beautiful. You have energy where you want to improve something - try to channel that into creating beauty.
posted by bbqturtle at 7:57 AM on August 7, 2020 [9 favorites]

Physical activity helps me appreciate my body for what it can do, not how it looks.
posted by the_blizz at 8:11 AM on August 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

Things that have helped me:

1. Looking at art, and the way bodies and faces of all shapes and descriptions are celebrated there.

2. Recognizing that a certain kind of looks have been commodified in our culture, and become a kind of currency has led me to the concept of "commercial attractiveness." There are plenty of things in the world that don't act as currency yet still have inherent value and beauty. I find that concept very comforting on the bad days.
posted by rpfields at 9:09 AM on August 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

When we have core beliefs of this kind (belief: my body is unacceptable), there are often even core-r beliefs underneath (perhaps, I am not lovable? I am worthy of rejection?) that are worthwhile to uncover and do parts work on. I've been dabbling in parts work recently and would be happy to tell you more about it if you're interested. DM me if so!
posted by namesarehard at 11:49 AM on August 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

From professional experience: Therapy with someone specialized in OCD or BDD. SSRIs to target the ruminative thoughts. Look up work by Katharine Phillips, MD—psychiatrist who is an expert on treatment of BDD.
posted by namemeansgazelle at 2:17 PM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

For myself, I found focusing on what my body could do rather than what I looked like was very helpful, along with a certain amount of acknowledging my own discomfort but consciously deciding not to let it keep me from doing things.

That wasn't so much about my face though... but maybe you could focus on what your face can do? Smile at people and try to get them to smile back (babies are great for this), focus on honing your facial expressions to get across what you are trying to communicate. Currently many of us have the opportunity to practice working on the expressions in our upper face and conveying emotion with what is visible in a mask.

It occurs to me that you might be missing the feeling of having people smile at you when they look at you, and it might be affecting how you feel about your face. There's not a lot you can do about this now for in person interactions, but maybe have more video chats with people who will smile? Though that might be difficult, depending on what people are dealing with... maybe try watching videos of people looking at the camera and smiling?
posted by yohko at 11:07 PM on August 7, 2020 [1 favorite]