Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder - My Story of Living With BDD
Strong, Confident, unbreakable
Weak, broken, fragile
somewhere in between
this is the reality of living with BDD
life exists as a series of adjectives.
today I feel strong, confident, unique
tomorrow who knows
so I live for today, I give up the notion that I have to be perfect to be of value
I accept my flaws as “life marks”
today is a new day
live it
It sounds like a terrible cliché’, hell even the image attached to this post is. Honestly, I rarely sleep like this guy, all curled up so nicely on his pillow without a care in the world, but when I do, it’s pure bliss.
One way to avoid being terribly disappointed in yourself is to get some sleep.
Part of the ups and downs of body image disorders is a tendency to stay awake.
Some of this has to do with anxiety and I have noticed when I am feeling the most vulnerable I tend to box up and try to focus on something so that I can forget about my nose or my cheek.
Also, still for some reason outside of the house I meet me my enemy, and my love – the open light source that exposes all my imperfections.
So if I can I will retreat into the safety of indoors.
I find the freedom I seek outdoors by being alone, it removes the anxiety and I can get in touch again with nature.
Last night I stayed up till 3 am again after boxing myself up for 24 hours while being extremely productive.
My wife took the kids for a couple of days to spend time with my mother in law so I can get away with this, also I was able to sleep in for the first time in a long time.
I woke up feeling refreshed and ready for my coffee.
We all know sleep is restorative, but it is hard to pay it its due diligence when we are depressed and anxious.
Try sleep I say every night.
Tonight I will try to call a good friend and get to bed before 1 am.
The sleep always makes a difference.
When I was in high school the first dance I ever attended was during my sophomore year.
It was the winter formal and I was asked to attend with my friend as part of a double-blind date. Although it wasn’t placebo-controlled.
I was excited. I had never had a “real date” before and this was an opportunity to have a good time and get to know somebody new.
My friend assured me that my date was not only very nice but quite attractive. I don’t remember feeling nervous, I liked to dance, I considered myself a friendly person and figured we would have a good time together.
When we arrived I met Jackie. A knockout blond, with long slender legs and a beautiful winter formal dress. She was gorgeous. When we met she smiled casually, we took hands and jumped into the back seat of the limo Jamie’s parents had rented for the 4 of us.
We arrived at the gymnasium snapped some photos and then it happened. She ditched me.
I remember having a big zit on my nose for the evening of the dance, I was self-conscious about it. It had started to appear the day before the dance and then on the big day it came out to play. I was angry at the powers that be for having to endure this large, red, painful blemish that would not only haunt me for the night but likely for the entirety of the upcoming month.
I was already very self-conscious about my acne and envied all the guys and girls with clear skin and great complexions. Especially all those attractive teenagers on the Clearasil commercials.
My date was one of them.
Jackie had a kind smile, she was naturally pretty and it never crossed my mind that when we got to the dance she would simply walk away and leave. My friend Jamie went with them, his girlfriend and my date were best friends after all, I didn’t blame him.
It felt horrible to be left behind like this, not necessarily because I was abandoned, but because I was abandoned before I had even had the chance to meet my date. She ditched me because I wasn’t up to her standards. In my mind, she ditched me for all the reasons I hated myself. My bad complexion, my big teeth, my funky hair, my short stature, my braces and most of all, that big zit on my nose.
I was relegated to the gymnasium bleachers to think carefully about my shortcomings as a human being.
It wasn’t the first time I had to sit by and watch the cool guys get the girls. As a nice guy I was always there, doing what nice guys do; keeping everyone else happy, smiling to the world outside, while inside I felt self-conscious and ashamed.
I did return with Jamie, his girlfriend and my “date” in the Limo later that night. Back at their house they were headed inside to play some drinking games. I didn’t drink so I called my mom and she came and picked me up.
I saw Jackie years later, she was a bridesmaid for one of my best friends weddings. I was serving as best man. We were both with groups of our high school friends. We talked and laughed and shared stories along with the other’s in the room. I am not sure she even remembered what she did that night years before.
But this incident solidified a feeling I had about myself already. It was the reality test and confirmation I needed to prove that my negative feelings towards myself were not merely assumptions, but they were, in fact, true.
Although I would go on to attend many more high school dances after this one, this, being my first, stuck. It is amazing how this incident from over 24 years ago still affects me today.
These, my friends, are the makings of BDD.
Read part 1: Acne and the makings of Body Dysmorphic Disorder
It’s been tough lately, we are headed home.
I can’t believe it has been a year since we left California on a 24-hour flight to South Africa to begin a year of travel around the world.
We have spent the last month in Taiwan, and it has been more than I could have ever imagined.
Traveling with our 2 small children has had its up and its down. I would say many more ups than downs, but then again, after a trip like this we are more likely to filter away the bad stuff.
Living together in small rooms, out of backpacks, eating not always so healthy food, but exploring the world and taking life as it comes has been a truly epic experience.
I can’t believe it’s done, I can’t believe the journey is over.
We left for the year because at 38 my life has needed a reset. This was a grand experiment of sorts: do something that scares the hell out of you and see if it is enough to knock some sense in you.
I would like to say after a year of travel, of meeting fascinating, wonderful people, venturing to strange and exotic places, working day in and day our as a family to overcome many obstacles… solved my BDD problem. But it didn’t.
Before I left I was suicidal, I am happy to report a year later that that thought is way off my radar. I still can’t go outside, stand in elevators, or brightly lit rooms without feeling self-conscious. But that is what I am going to work on when I get home.
One thing I know now is that BDD requires therapeutic support. Having overcome my bout of BDD in college I thought I could will it away. The second time has been tough, because of the permanence of my facial scars after my accident 2 years ago.
Nobody cared or noticed in the past 346 days while traveling through the world. I made many friends and interesting acquaintances. My idea of what is normal in life has changed drastically.
I see the world as a loving and harmonious place.
I downloaded a new iPhone app called Talkspace which is supposed to hook you up with an online counselor. I suppose nobody wanted to help a person with BDD, because even a week after I signed up for the service, not one counselor contacted me.
I decided to give it a try because studies have shown that virtual psychiatric care is just as beneficial as the in-person kind, and I could afford $25 per week. The truth is, I need to invest in my future by spending money on a good counselor. This has always been the barrier that kept me from doing the right thing and getting the help I need. I fear it is more of an excuse though.
If anything came from our trip it is this: and understanding that I need help.
I also am going to force myself to sign up for a club. I am thinking a cycling club would be good. Or possibly taking a sport such as Brazilian Jujitsu. We had the opportunity to spend a week doing Maui Thai kickboxing as a family in Thailand and it was a great way to work out some aggression. I may take the class with my 5-year old son who really loved it, and I will try to talk my daughter into it so that we can make it a father/kids bonding experience.
That is the update for now, I am super excited to see the US pass a gay rights bill in the courts yesterday. It gives me hope that the future of the US is a bright one. As someone who suffers from body dysmorphia I have always felt it was a tragic front on civil liberties to deny homosexuals the same rights as all Americans. This makes me feel a lot better about the country my family is returning home to!
Cheers!
It rained like cats and dogs today, making my way through the last 3k of my hike through the Malaysian Rainforest I am afraid I fell victim to daydreaming.
It feels so good to be sipping a cup of 3/1 and enjoying the view perched up here above the valley. It feels good to be back to where I began.
It’s been 261 days since we left our home to head into the world for our year-long family gap year.
We left our house, our cars, our cat, our stuff and escaped. My only fear now is that it is just about time to go back, home.
There are a lot of ways to get therapy for BDD. I have always found my therapy through travel, in obtaining distance from societies perfectionist tendencies. Getting back to what is important, what is “real”. For me, this is getting away from the mirror, and back into the “real world”.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau
Yes, I went into the woods because I was afraid that when I came to die, I would discover I had not lived.
Trust me when I say you do not have to travel to the Malaysian Rainforest to live life, but sometimes if you are on a certain path, and you fear you won’t make it back alive, it helps to find another one. For me, over the past few weeks, especially since my wife had her bike injury it is in the forest that I am gaining insights that have led me through the woods.
I am reading a book called Shattered Image “My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder” by Brian Cuban. It caught my attention because I am a big fan of Mark Cuban’s show The Shark Tank and the book was available on Amazon Unlimited.
Mark has always seemed like a guy who has his shit together, reading Brains story has been motivating. It is wonderfully refreshing to hear the story of another male BDD sufferer, this may be the first book of its kind. Even better that it comes from a famous family.
Brian was bullied in school, he developed an eating disorder then went on to abuse drugs and anabolic steroids. He started to work out and run compulsively. I am 65% through the book and it feels good to know I am not alone.
I never abused steroids, drugs or alcohol (I smoked cigarettes for a year in college), I took up light body building and running but unlike Brian it never became an obsession. I feel blessed in this sense. I have hated on myself, I have let BDD control the way I act and react to the world around me. I have let it affect my social life, it has placed me on the edge of suicide. But I have never used other means or substances. According to the statistics many BDD sufferers do.
I have wondered often if this trip was a form of escapism, I mean who the hell quits their job and takes off for a year at the age of 37 and drags their wife and 2 kids with them?
I considered it a brave and bold move, in fact, it has been something I have been dreaming of since I was in college. But was I running scared or running free?
Today tramping through the Malaysian Rainforest I felt free! We hiked as a family for the first 3K and I hiked alone back up the mountain. The river was to my side, the rain was gentle through the trees.
If I think back to where I was 261 days ago I could hardly leave my house without fear, today much of my fear and anxiety is gone. I occasionally face the mirror, it is still hard on me. But that is because I am hard on myself.
I am a family practitioner, my patients have never caught on, I am figuring out what this is going to look like when I get back. Where to go now?
I will write more when I finish Shattered Image, I am curious to see how Brian makes it through the rainforest of his abuse and addiction. I will keep you updated as I make it through mine.