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

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What Are Your Thoughts and Beliefs about Your Appearance?

November 2, 2012 By Stephen

If you have severe appearance concerns, you might think others notice your flaw and are repelled by it.

I worry that anyone I talk to will look at my defect, and then I feel ashamed of it. I’m extremely suspicious of compliments, maybe that is why I hardly ever get them.

I tend to think others are talking and laughing about my flaw.

The other day when I walked out of a store and noticed two individuals of the opposite sex looking in my direction and giggling. I immediately thought, “They must be laughing about my scar.” If I can’t stop thinking about my scar, I reasoned, how could anyone else?

Even though I had no evidence to support this assumption, I spent the rest of the afternoon  feeling sad and discouraged.

“I am on the inside as I am on the outside”

Many people also assume that the defect they’re sure they have is a visible manifestation of some character flaw.

Personal worth and physical appearance become commingled and confused.

When I look at my scar in the mirror I tend to think  I look “really ugly and mean.” How I am on the inside, that’s how I look on the outside: bad and repulsive.

If you hold similar beliefs about the relationship of appearance and self-worth, you’re really in trouble when you think your appearance is imperfect.

As a result, you might feel sad or anxious and start to avoid social activities. Or you might engage in all kinds of activities to fix whatever you consider the appearance problem to be.

That’s where I am: locked inside my mind, stuck behind me scar, unavailable to the world, to my children, and to my wife.  Afraid of the “ugly man I see”… too afraid to look in the mirror… too afraid of what I’ll see.

Filed Under: Feeling Good About The Way You Look, Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder Tagged With: BDD, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Feeling Good About the Way You Look, Self Worth

Mirror Checking, Hiding and Body Dysmorphic Disorder

October 11, 2012 By Stephen

I can’t seem to stop myself, last night I woke up at 3 am and turned on the bathroom light.

This is an activity assured to bring great distress.

But I did it anyway even thought I knew deep down I shouldn’t have.

There it was, the scar. It looked horrible at this time of night. With the hard overhead light it further revealed all the details, and I picked up on each of them.

Yesterday at work a colleague (a surgeon) couldn’t help himself from commenting on my new scar.

I don’t blame him. I think doctors are just this way, especially surgeons.

Many of us in the health care field are perfectionists.

And when my colleagues comment on my scar it is not because they want to hurt me, but their super-analysis always does.

Last night was no different. I was doing fine before his comments and analysis. Afterwards all I could do was eye the cars in the other lane on my drive home.  With a blank stare, I felt rather hopeless.

The Power of Talk

Thank God I have my wife, who was there to listen to me debrief upon returning home.

I can’t imagine not having her there, and if I didn’t have somebody to talk to about this I don’t know where I would be.

But expressing my concerns to her makes me feel like a million bucks (OK not a million but at least better).

Even after last nights 3 am mirror check and that sinking feeling of hopelessness that followed, this morning when I awoke, I felt much more positive.

When You Can’t Hide

All I really want to do is hide for a couple weeks and see if my scar will get better, lose some color and I can devise a plan to deal with it. In reality I just want laser surgery, which may or may not be a good idea, but I have to wait at least a year. For me and my BDD this seems an eternity.  I am trying to devise a plan to make it through this year.

I have to be a good dad and husband, and I have to be there for my patient’s.

To top it off I am headed out tomorrow on a trip to Haiti to provide free health care.

Hard to believe this is what I am thinking about as I near my trip, the way people will look at my face.  Meeting the team and a good friend I have not seen for 7 years, with this scar and my face petrifies me.

But I can’t hide, I just can’t although really this is what I want the most.

Filed Under: Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder Tagged With: BDD, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Mirror Checking

Anxiety and Fear – Overcoming Agoraphobia and Body Dysmorphic Disorder

October 6, 2012 By Stephen

It has been a while since I have been out with a group of people that I did not know well.

This has been out of fear mostly, my belief that my facial deformity would be too distracting for others to accept has kept me home-bound.

Most of this is because of a scar to my face, a recent injury that I sustained while surfing. It ended in 8 stitches and a pretty significant scar on my left cheek. At least it was significant to me.

As I have mentioned before I have had BDD since I was probably 15 or 16. I had learned to control it, but this incident sent me overboard.

All my facial concerns landed on me like a ton of bricks. And until today this is where I sat, buried under the weight of it all, short of breath, wishing for my life back.

JUMPING IN

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Until today I had worn a band-aid over the scar. People at work I could tell were wondering why I still wore this band-aid after several weeks. I told them it was still healing, of course they didn’t know it was my mind I was really talking about.

This made things only worse and over the last week more and more people started to ask me about scar and if they could see it.

I hid behind this band-aid, but unlike other scars or wounds people seemed to feel they had a right to ask me to remove my cover.

Strange I thought, I surely wouldn’t ask this of another person. But then again nobody knows what goes on in my mind.

DISROBING

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So today I took it off. My family told me not too, even my wife felt I may not be ready, but I did it anyway. It caused me such anxiety that I found myself in a cold sweat.

But I knew that as long as I hid behind the band-aid I made it worse. I drew more attention to the imperfection.

The problem is that when it was covered I could deal. When I looked in the mirror and did my checks there was one more step to see the blemish. Just the action of having to remove the band-aid stopped my compulsion to look.  So in this sense it was a protection.

But, it also prevented me from overcoming my worst fear.  And that was the fear of people having to see me with this scar. Watching their eyes draw to it. Knowing that it existed was enough, knowing that others knew it existed was more than I could bear.

THE DELUSION

Immediately when I entered the room I expected people to gasp, but they didn’t. They hardly even noticed. I looked for their reaction all night, when the lights came on I actually went into where I knew it was the worst, I looked for their reaction, but it was non-existent.

Is my mind playing tricks on me or are these people just really to kind to say anything?   I sit with this question tonight.   And to be honest I am still not quite sure about the answer, or maybe I am too afraid to know the truth.

But at least I did it. I tested it and you know what I survived!


Some Tips

  • The mind will try to prove both the delusion as well as the reality. The only way to understand the difference is to test your theories of what is real. The problem with BDD is that it is hard to know what is real, to know if your thoughts are warranted or just a figment of your imagination.  For me this night taught me something: that it is possible the images I hold in my mind are not real.
  • You have to get out into the world. The fear at times is overwhelming for me.  But had I not gone out I would never have had this brief, yet important moment of healing. The delusions in my head would continue their loop.
  • Put yourself in fears way, it is the only way to heal, regardless of what you may think.

 

Filed Under: Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder Tagged With: Agoraphobia, Anxiety, BDD, Body, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Dysmporphic Disorder, Fear, Jumping In, Social Anxiety

How Family Can Help – Body Dysmorphic Disorder – A Letter From My Wife

October 5, 2012 By Stephen

Hug LetterI will wait for you. I love you. Right now you are on a journey that only you can traverse. I want to be your partner in this and try as I may.

I will always be doing the wrong thing most of the time. This doesn’t mean I’ll give up. It means I will do my best to let you go so you can come back, because you are worth waiting for. I look into your eyes and I hurt for you and want to find you. Somewhere you are still there  whether you believe it or not.

We will wait for you to come back from the depths and grips of the trench you are in. We will love all of you,  yes even your face and your scar. To me it’s just a mark showing the love of life you have, the love of the ocean, the love of peace surfing can bring you.

It hurts to know that something you loved so much, something that sometimes was the only solace in your life could scar you for life; inside and out.

Don’t let it do that to you. Sometimes best friends fight and it does leave a scar. We are always stronger once we come up for air from the depths of despair, for that is life. Your mental illness does not have to define you or chain you down.

I truly believe God loves you and is crying for you. You are my partner, lover, friend, father to my children and my other soul I need to enjoy the  rest of my life with.

Yes, I know sometimes you feel I’d be better off without you, and yes sometimes I have felt the same in my depths of depression. But believe me, I would not. A giant hole will be left there, unable to fill but only to put a band-aid over each day.

You hurt, I hurt, but I know you can be happy again.

I will wait for you. I love you and all of you.

Your loving wife and partner for eternity,

Wendy

Filed Under: What You Can do to Help a Loved One with Body Dysmorphic Disorder Tagged With: BDD, Body, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Family, How Family Can Help, Letter, Love, What To Do

Starting an SSRI (Lexapro) for My Body Dysmorphic Disorder

October 5, 2012 By Stephen

I am reading a wonderful book, if not the only real book on the successful treatment and management of BDD.

It is called Understanding Body Dysmorphic Disorder by Katharine A. Phillips.

It has been helpful. It has given me both clarity and confusion. Sometimes as a BDD sufferer the hardest thing to do is to differentiate what is real from what is a delusion.

This is where it is good to have a third party.

Treating BDD with an SSRI

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What the book definitely recommends is beginning treatment of your BDD with an SSRI.

There are many options and the studies she presents are from her own practice and are limited.

But she makes a convincing case for the use of antidepressants and reports significant benefits, in the realm of 85% response rate with the addition of an SSRI.

With that I decided it was time to give it a try.

Choosing the Right SSRI

Honestly, looking at her data they all seemed appropriate, most of her studies were based on a rather small sample size. But the choice seemed to come down to two.

  1. Lexapro
  2. Celexa

These are both generic and good inexpensive options.

With both medications, the point is to start low and then increase the dose based on the response. Usually, this can be done at two-week intervals and should be continued for 12 weeks regardless of the perceived benefit. As long as there are no really bad side effects. I will talk later about augmenting these SSRI’s or changing to a different SSRI. But for now I just want to talk about my experience.

Beginning Lexapro 10 mg daily for the treatment of Body Dysmorphic Disorder

So I started treatment of my BDD with Lexapro 10 mg taken first thing in the morning.

I started exactly 7 days ago.

I wish I could say I felt like a million bucks, but I really haven’t noticed much difference. The thing that makes the difference is sleep. Which to be honest during my recent “attack” has been hard to come by.

So, to overcome this I also started taking 10mg of Ambien (Zolpidem) at night. Last night was the first night I took the Ambien and I feel so much better. Simply relaxing my mind and finally getting some sleep did more for my mood than anything.

I don’t particularly want to take sleep medications, but if you are up at night worrying about your appearance I would highly recommend the addition of either a cheap generic sleep aid such as Ambien (Zolpidem) or if your anxiety is out of control maybe a benzodiazepine such as Diazepam at a dose of 5mg.

The anxiety is the hardest part for me to overcome. I am fine at home and while I sit here and write, but outside in the daylight when I am around people it is hard.

I haven’t talked much about what has made things so bad  recently, but it involves a recent accident I had, that caused a rather significant scar on my left cheek. This coupled with my underlying disorder has sent me over the edge. I will talk a bit more about this in the future.

If you have any questions feel free to drop a line in the comments section.

Filed Under: Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Treatment of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) Tagged With: Anxiety, BDD, Body, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Deprression, Medications, SSRI, Treatment of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)

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