BDD SUCKS

Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder - My Story of Living With BDD

"It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see."
~ Henry David Thoreau

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This is the Story of My Life Living With Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Daily Gratitude – NOT!

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Today I am having a hard time finding anything to be grateful for. It was a hard day. 

I received the biopsy results from the curious lesion growing on my nose yesterday, and they were negative. For this I suppose I should be grateful… and I am. But now I have to figure out how I am going to deal with this unsightly dime size red scar on the front of my nose. 

I am wearing a band-aid this week to cover it up, one of my patients (not their fault she is only 7) pointed at my nose and started laughing. I couldn’t help but think about what they will say when I take the band-aid off. 

So with that image I am going to go to bed tonight. The image of a small child pointing at my face and laughing. It has shame written all over it, and it is inescapable it seems. 

I have wondered why after having to have last years scar this has happened to me. I always try to find a positive side to these types of things but this is beyond me, it makes me sick to my stomach. But hey it’s not cancer right… no big deal. 

Don’t know what I am going to do next week. Maybe some kind of manly cover up? I don’t even know if they make that kind of stuff. I want to punch the PA in the face who decided to take such a big cut out of my nose in the first place. And I blame myself believe it or not for letting him do it, I blame myself for going to the dermatologist to have them check it out. 

Back to the shame thing again, back to just hating all over myself, so sick and disgusted with myself. Fuck!

It’s like a roller coaster, one day I am fine and the next day I want to crawl in a big hole. 

Today I am thankful I don’t have cancer. 

I am also thankful for…. Fuck it I will try this again tomorrow…. Gratitude is useless when I feel like this. 

Well, let me take that back if anyone out there is reading this I am grateful for you! I truly mean that, I love you and I hope you know that you are worthy of love and goodness in your life and that you are perfect the way you are and if you have BDD, I am so sorry but we can get through this I know it. There has to be a better way. 

There, that’s a better way to end this. 

The One Word That Describes Body Dysmorphic Diosrder

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SHAME

Shame is basically the fear of being unlovable – It’s the total opposite of accepting our bodies and feeling worthy.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

Shame keeps worthiness away by convincing us that self acceptance will lead to people thinking less of us.

Shame is all about fear.

We are afraid that people won’t like us if they know the truth about who we are or our “imperfections”.

Shame is something we all experience. it is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. The only people who don’t experience shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection.

While it feels that shame hides in our darkest corners, it actually tends to lurk in all of the familiar places… even those that go far behind the body image concerns that those of us with BDD suffer.

Shame can include family, parenting, money, work, health, addiction, sex, aging and religion.

To feel shame is to be human.

Our struggles with our body image concerns are difficult to own, and if we’ve worked hard to make sure everything looks “just right” on the outside, the stakes are high when it comes to truth-telling.

It’s so easy to just keep quiet.

Worthy Now

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First gratitude:

  1. I am grateful for this quiet early morning, the kids are still asleep and there is silence, pure motionless silence and that is blissful.
  2. I am grateful for children: Their smiles and their laughter, their joy and when they are little at least, their innate ability to love. It is a breath of fresh air, it is a reminder of what makes us human.
  3. I am grateful for me, for my life and this very moment.
  4. I am grateful for healing, in all its forms, whether this is physical or emotional. It can happen and that gives me hope.
  5. I am grateful for my sister, who has had to overcome her own body issues, she is a constant source of love and inspiration.

Worthy Now

When we can let go of what other people think and own our story, we gain access to our worthiness – the feeling that we are enough just as we are and that we are worthy of love and belonging.
When we spend a lifetime trying to distance ourselves from the parts of our lives that don’t fit with who we think we’ere supposed to be, we stand outside of our story and hustle for our worthiness by constantly performing, perfecting, trying to please and proving.
Our sense of worthiness – that critically important piece that gives us access to love and belonging lives inside of our story.
The greatest challenge for most of us with BDD is believing that we are worthy now, right this very minute.

Worthiness doesn’t have a prerequisite yet I know I have created a long list of them:

  1. I will be worthy when this scar isn’t so prominent on my face.
  2. I will be worthy when I have perfect skin.
  3. I will be worthy when my body is in better shape.
  4. I will be worthy when I make money online selling my art.
  5. I will be worthy when I can never make a mistake.
  6. I will be worthy when my nose heals and it isn’t so red and disfigured looking.
  7. I will be worthy when no one calls me out or puts me down, or challenges my way of thinking.
  8. I will be worthy at a party when I am the center of attention and everyone wants to talk to me.
Here is the secret to overcoming BDD:

Worthy Now, Not if, Not when.

We are all worthy of love and belonging right now, right this minute. As is.

Owning Your Story

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medium_2881778314Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.

Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy— These are the experiences that make us the most vulnerable and they are also the experiences that make us most alive.

Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

And only then can we be truly free from our BDD

Positivity – The Triple Threat to Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder

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“Positivity” – Use Gratitude, Mindfulness and Meditation to Overcome BDD

According to the book Positivity, The ideal positivity ratio is 3:1

Positive emotions are more subtle than negative ones and we, therefore, need more of them to balance out our emotion ratio.

The ideal ratio is 3:1 – three positive emotions for every negative one, and most of us can achieve this by practicing methods like mindfulness, meditation and writing a gratitude diary.

This ratio has been shown to help us acquire a positive attitude towards life, which makes us more resilient to negative emotions, more tolerant of others and more open to new experiences.

Actionable advice:

Keep a gratitude diary.

Research has shown that by just writing down five experiences that you are grateful for every day, you can easily increase your happiness. An experience you’re grateful for can be anything from a hot shower to an amazing party. When you write your experiences down, think about the emotions those experiences generated to create a deep emotional link.

Meditate for at least five minutes a day.

It can never be said enough: meditation is an amazing technique to increase our mindfulness and reduce stress, pain and anxiety. Try meditating for at least five minutes a day, either when you wake up or just before you go to bed – and if you keep up the habit, you can literally rewire your brain to make yourself feel more positive.

Be Mindful

Mindfulness lets you change your everyday feelingsMindfulness is the new buzzword we read about everywhere – with claims that if you cultivate

Mindfulness is the new buzzword we read about everywhere – with claims that if you cultivate it’s a powerful way to change your habits and intensify positive emotions in your everyday life.

But what exactly does mindfulness mean?

Mindfulness means consciously perceiving and enjoying every moment of your life by willfully focusing on the positive aspects of everything you experience.  For instance, on your way to work, you can let your mind wander to your troubles, or you can focus on and savor the singing birds, the spring flowers or the children playing in the park. Or during a meal that you would usually mindlessly gulp down, you could focus on its many different tastes and textures.

But being mindful doesn’t only apply to positive emotions. It also means being aware of all the negative feelings you experience, so you can rationally examine and question them.

For example, I have just had this cancerous lesion removed from my nose. I can be grateful that we caught it early and it was removed without problems or I can stare at the deep scar and ruminate and hate on myself.ive

Being aware of the negative emotions and having the willful power to push them down and away is the key to obtaining mindfulness when you have BDD.

These reality checks help dissipate most negative emotions, especially our exaggerated reactions to unimportant things, like pimples, the way our nose looks, or various body image concerns that really don’t matter a whole lot in the scheme of things.

When you consider something like that calmly, it’s easy to laugh it off and refocus on the positive.

If this doesn’t work, there’s another way to break out of negative emotions:

Distract yourself.

Say a negative experience just won’t let you be, like some harsh words from a colleague about something you take very personally, maybe it is even something that triggers your BDD. For me, it would be my scars.

This is very hard but don’t keep thinking it over – instead, spend the time redirecting your attention into something useful, like reading through your unanswered emails.

Or sit down and write on your gratitude journal.

Another strategy is to re-evaluate the negative, and try to find something good about it: maybe your boss’ rude remarks or this cancerous scar is an interesting challenge for you to overcome? Maybe there is a lesson in this, maybe it is a reminder of just how precious and fleeting life can be.

Instead of feeling bad, what can you learn from this situation?

Gratitude, Mindfulness, and Meditation… These seem like a collection of very possible to accomplish actions steps, maybe it is time to get to work.