BDD is extremely rough and I feel sickened by how I look and I can't take it anymore. I can't look at myself without bursting in tears. No one who doesn't have BDD can understand me because they will think I'm being over dramatic when I mention that I feel physically nauseated from seeing myself. Can anyone in this group who will understand my situation please talk with me I can't take it anymore
I'm having an extremely rough time with BDD and it's gotten to the point where it makes me physically sick to look at myself because I get so fed up and sick of the horrendous flaws I have and even thinking of them makes my stomach turn. Can anyone else who also has BDD and understands the struggle of it and won't make me feel ridiculous for how I feel please listen to me I can't take it anymore
I haven't seen anyone else talk about this exact specific insecurity. For anyone confused, imagine you have a square, and this square is photoshopped to be much narrower and longer than it truly is, it's gonna turn into a long and narrow rectangle. I feel like I have this effect on my body constantly
I used to feel too skinny but now I realized the issue is that I feel too narrow and too elongated. I feel as if someone horizontally compressed me and made me very "narrow". I constantly measure myself horizontally and compare my measurements to databases of various measurements. I genuinely feel so compressed and narrow and it gets worse for my legs which genuinely feel disfigured because of how " narrow" they look.
This delusion started spreading to my movements as well because I started walking with my legs farther apart so they feel less narrow. I don't feel exactly narrow for my upper body but for my lower body it's really bad I genuinely feel like im missing parts of my body that should be there
Does anyone else relate and how can I go about fixing this. It feels so horrible I just feel narrow and like I'm missing something that should be on my body constantly and I break down anytime I see myself in a mirror and how narrow I look
As the flair suggests, I am seeking out advice on fixing BDD-related intrusive thoughts. I would class them as intrusive because they are very extreme but they're definitely not something that represents a fear like with regular intrusive thoughts (e.g thinking "what if I accidentally drop the baby im holding". )
I regularly have thoughts about doing very bad or harmful things to myself due to my appearance or other people harming me in very violent ways due to it, and permanently removing or covering my flaws, and they are ESPECIALLY common after seeing my sight in a reflection or mirror
It's difficult to avoid them because as I stated, the thoughts don't represent something I fear, they rather represent an extreme version of hate toward my flaws so it's hard to definitively place them into the "negative" category
I started getting another violent thought about how I would get rid of a flaw I have right before making this post and I started to feel so hateful toward the flaw that it made me (physically) nauseous to keep thinking of it
I am trying to recover but the extreme thoughts tempt me back into the cycle. All advice is appreciated!!
To give more context on my situation, I have been/am trying to cure my BDD but almost anytime I see my body I start to horribly spiral and go into a panic attack which manifests as physical symptoms like bad heart palpitations, shortness of breath, etc. And being unable to think clearly due to how panicked I become.
It is incredibly hard to accept my appearance and confront my own sight. I spiral so badly that I start to get urges of burning myself and even try physically ruining the parts I hyperfixate on so I won't have to see them anymore or imagining being harmed by someone else
I genuinely just feel pure disgust toward my appearance and I feel like it regresses all of my progress whenever see myself. I can avoid seeing myself for a few days and then I will accidentally catch a glimpse of myself and immediately spiral again. It came to the point where I started researching various medical deformities in the past to get an idea of what is wrong with me, my eyes cannot recognize my body anymore and what it has turned into
I am actively working on changing my body as well to treat the core problem. I have gained/lost weight (intentionally), work out, and I am saving up for plastic surgery currently. I just don't know how to get out of this mindset if seeing my body sends me into such an instinctive negative physical and emotional reaction that regresses my progress
All advice will be appreciated!
(And please do not harass me in my DMS if you are a creep and think it will be fun to make me feel worse, it is just cruel and I am self aware enough of how bad I look)