An article on Body Dysmorphic Disorder by Nandini Rana
About 90% of the time, when you feel bad about yourself or feel unworthy, it's probably because you compared yourself to someone else. Ironically, that someone else might be comparing themselves to someone else and so on. The cliched and straightforward solution to this, stop comparing yourself to others . Stop comparing how much you accomplished within a day or over your lifetime to what someone else accomplished in theirs. Stop trying to copy how someone else acts. Stop comparing your looks to someone else’s.
Although it's easier said than done, we all do know about this.
And so does the young teenage girl. She has hair on her head, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, teeth, a chin, neck- everything that you would consider a normal, average human being to have. Every morning when she wakes up, the first thing she likes to do is walk up to the rectangular-shaped glass, shielding her from the cold morning breeze, and gaze at the sights outside. If she really felt like it, she would open the barricade and step through, the morning smell and sun gradually waking her from her groggy state of being.
Life is peaceful.
She comes back inside and walks around while getting ready for the day. She comes across another rectangular glass; however, this time, the view is reflected.
In contrast to the view before, this one sucks up all her energy like a hoover and fills her up with dread.
In the sense of urgency, she goes back into her room, locks the door and stands in front of another glass, this time one that is meant to be reflective. It’s a mirror and, for the girl, a concoction leading to incredibly low self-esteem and self-hatred. She doesn’t just see a face; she sees all her flaws, poking, itching, taunting her. No matter what she does to cover them up, no matter how others reassure her, all she can see is a grotesque structure. Compliments don’t matter because she knows they’re lying. She feels that she shouldn’t go out of her room to spare others from seeing her. She is filled with negative words. She is filled with frustration. And her eyes are filled with tears.
Her morning and another day is ruined.
While every one of us has something or the other that we aren’t always enthusiastic about in relation to our body, and while we are usually our own harshest critics, most of us learn to accept them and move on. Or ignore them and move on. However, not everyone can do that and some tend to be fixated on that specific flaw that others can’t even see and obsess over multiple times a day- each time sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of self-hatred. This is what people suffering from Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD go through every single day. Moreover, many go undiagnosed as while BDD is becoming quite common, it is still a disorder that very little is known about in boys and girls.
Nobody knows what exactly causes BDD, but the most widely accepted and likely cause is that it stems from a combination of issues, such as a family history of the disorder, abnormalities in the brain, and negative evaluations or experiences about your body or self-image and builds up gradually this way until it starts to get so bad that you feel hatred strong enough to lose the will to live.
In fact, experiments have shown that people with BDD can actually process faces differently. Using an eye tracking device, a comparison was made between how and what a healthy person looks at in different people’s faces- including their own- and how a person with BDD looks at them. Interestingly enough, it was found that a healthy person would usually go by the same triangular pattern of looking across the person’s eyes then down to the mouth to discern the sort of expression being portrayed, as both our eyes and mouth are very revealing in terms of facial muscle movements. The person with BDD, however, showed a very different and very random pattern. Their eye movements were all over the image, and consequently, it was found that their brain also showed an abnormal amount of activity in the visual cortex- more than that of an average person’s. It was almost like they avoided looking at the salient features- not just in faces but over all- and missing all the essential features because they didn’t know that simply looking at them might give them a much clearer answer.
Even if it's their own family, walking outside or meeting people is a nightmare for people with BDD. They often feel like they’re too ugly even to exist. Every laugh, glance, and word uttered around them, even though they know it's probably not related to them, is like a punch to the gut and believe that it's all because they’re ugly.
It's tiring. Mentally draining. And takes away a massive chunk of their day.
Everyday.
Body dysmorphic disorder may sound like an extreme level of self-hatred, but it starts from the more minor, habitual, almost insignificant things and is different for everyone. It can create from social media, from the altered images of influencers and celebrities. It can start with comparing yourself with your friends or when others criticise your ‘flaws’. Or it can develop as you negatively critique yourself, nearly driving yourself to frustration. Thus, in essence, the lack of self-acceptance and self-love takes up an extreme form as disorders. And ironically, self-love just happens to be one of the most widely talked about topics that are practised.
BDD is a disorder that isn’t widely known. Due to this, many people who suffer from it feel like they are the only ones to feel this way and don’t open up to people about their problems as they fear being perceived as vain. Misdiagnosis is also common, and thus many people go for the wrong treatment. This is why awareness is critical. Especially for the people suffering from this, it's crucial that they can relate to other people and understand that BDD is just an illness in the mind that can be coped with thorough treatment and that there's nothing to be ashamed about. Recovering from BDD and any other mental illness is an arduous process as it requires you to change your opinion and believe the absolute opposite. And since compliments don’t mean much when you are in that state, you have to train yourself to accept yourself as you are forcefully.
Recovery differs from person to person as there is always a specific thing that can make you feel better, which may not be valid for somebody else. Still, some general procedures include forcing yourself to stop mirror-gazing, having a trusted person, a friend to talk to, doing something to occupy your mind with, exercising, taking therapy, etc. At first, it may seem impossible, but it is possible to learn how to cope with time.
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