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

Contact | About | Resources Archives

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

Gratitude Journal – Day 1

By

I have decided to start a gratitude journal, and to make sure I do this I figured I would do it here on this site.

They recommend 5 gratitudes, but today I have a few more.

I just had to have a cancerous lesion removed from my nose. So I have been sulking. After last years, facial laceration I could hardly cope. Now having this deep dime like scar on my nose has been devastating.

But I am reading a short “blink” on a service I love called “blinkist”.

This blink is about positivity. And one of the first recommendations was a gratitude journal, so here goes, this is day 1.

What I am grateful for:

  1. I am grateful for my children and my wife, their health, their vitality their spirit of love and generosity.
  2. I am grateful for long runs in the woods, that are alone and quite and full of fresh air and good smelling tress.
  3. I am grateful that we have found a renter for our house for our next years adventure.
  4. I am grateful for readers who read my work, and share it with others.
  5. I am grateful to have the functions I do have. Like the ability to walk and talk. I am not in a wheelchair. Yes I have some facial scars but not everyone has deserted me.
  6. I am grateful for my sister and my mom and my dad, who love me so much.
  7. I am grateful for hot coffee in the mornings.
  8. I am grateful for sexy kisses from my wife in the morning who is still with me despite my facial flaws.
  9. I am grateful to have financial success and a great job.
  10. I am grateful to be able to wake up and have the possibility to make the world a better place.
  11. I am grateful to be on my to finishing a book that will hopefully help support us throughout next year.

Into The Ether

By

I sit here, in the either, too late to be writing but it is too early to go to bed.

Around and around in an infinite loop goes my mind.

I do not know what this year will bring, all I know is that it has to be better.

Leaving my job, leaving our friends and family behind to travel the world.

Is this an escape from my BDD?

Does it really matter what I am running from.

I am 36 and I feel the world like a breeze in my hair, here for one glorious moment and gone the next.

I could rationalize that any activity I do today is no better or worse than any other in the long scheme of things, and this is true.

But some activities require courage, they demand breaking apart from the norm.

All of which may not even matter, but then if that is the case nothing matters, and if that is the case stop reading and move on.

When Creativity Stalls

I can’t stop creating, it is a revolving door, and once one creation has hit the wall it is time for me to move on.

My creation at my current job has run it’s course. There is nowhere else for it to go.

My patients are a beautiful picture in my canvas. Their lives will move on with or without me, they will find a path to better health, and I will also. It may be away from healthcare for now. Away from it all.

I need to heal, and my family has agreed to go along for the ride.

We all need to heal. And grow and prosper and move on.

What a glorious adventure indeed!

Should I Tell My Kids I Have Body Dysmorphic Disorder?

By

medium_3222146311

We all wish for our kids to be strong, confident men and women.

We would tell them that they should respect and care about their bodies.

We would tell them to listen to their hearts, to be who they are, to not let the world dictate their decisions, or make them into something they aren’t.

Yet those of us with BDD are just the opposite.

We let the world dictate our day, we let the feelings of the thoughts of others make us who we are.

If we believe the world thinks we are monsters, then that is what we are, monsters.

We want our kids to live a different life.

My kids don’t know I have BDD, and it is my goal to make sure they never do.

It is not because I don’t want to tell them, because I do.

It is not because I want to protect them, because I know they can handle any truth.

It is because I want them to grow up respecting themselves.

I don’t want them to live in fear like their dad.

I want them to stand in front of the mirror and be proud of who they are.

I want them to know that they can be anything they see (or can imagine) in the world.

I want them to stand confident and proud.

I want them to be who I know I could be if I didn’t have BDD.

A man lost inside his mind, letting the world dictate who he is, afraid of his shadow, walking a fine line between sane and insane.

What would I do if my kids had BDD?

I would tell them they should love themselves as they are… perfect creations of God. Beautiful in every sense of the word.

So, no I am not going to tell my kids I have BDD.

I am instead going to overcome it, and in doing so I am going to tell (show) them a truth that all of us with BDD know deep in side but just can’t accept:

That we are “good enough”, we are just what we need to be, perfection is a lousy lot, we are beautiful, strong and capable human beings. Filled with love and compassion, here to have an experience of life.

Life if so fleeting, so impermanent, so precious.  Let us not waste it on self pity and shame.

To send a different message to my kids would be to steel their time.

Don’t tell your kids you have BDD, instead tell them you love them and then show them the way you want them to be.

Shadow Boxer

By

I sit here, wondering where the year has gone. Wondering how 2012 turned into 2014.

And very little has changed. Still deep in my thoughts, the more alone I become the more lost I feel… deep into this abyss.

A tunnel of fear is where I exist. Fear of my shadow now, even it is a disgrace. Dark and distorted, it reveals a truth. A heartless, soulless impression of my body, without light.

I fear this is all that is left. At 36 can this be it? Is this me?

Destined to live out my days in fear of a reflection I cannot bear to accept. How sad, what a waste of a good life!

To This Day

By

Instructions for a bad day Ted Radio Hour Overcoming

We weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell

Beware of Dog - To This Day

but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong

why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on a highway
and if in some way we are
don’t worry
we only got out to walk and get gas
we are graduating members from the class of
fuck off we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did

but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty.

http://tothisdayproject.com

http://www.shanekoyczan.com/