u/Ordinary_Team2849

Hi all,

So I used to have severe body dysmorphia, like i hated myself and my appearance. Knew all about the law but wasn't really applying it. I would have these BDD episodes where I would see myself in a mirror or photo and spiral completely, even to the point of feeling suicidal.

After a bad breakup with my ex (and several successes and failures on manifesting them back), I finally turned my focus to self-love, but I knew I couldn't continue on that way. Did Ayahausca which opened up a lot and dissolved a lot of the self hate etc. etc.

I started to feel better about myself. Eventually I ended up getting some cosmetic work done (something I'd actually been trying to manifest for years) - and I felt 1000x better about the way I looked. That combined with the self concept work and, even though I'd still feel insecure or appearence focused sometimes, I completely stopped having BDD episodes. Mostly I felt good, mostly I felt very beautiful. I would feel good about the fact I was 'cured' of BDD.

Recently, I moved back home. I'd had a rough couple of months for things unrelated to my appearence and I decided to really focus in on affirmations. I would do breathwork 2-3x a day, followed by a meditation, followed by 10 minutes of positive affirmations. The affirmations covered everything but there were ones related to being so beautiful like 'I am beautiful/I love the way I look/I am always getting more beautiful' etc.! And I was seeing really great results in several areas in my life, including people saying I looked great. I wanted to feel so confident and secure in myself.

But a few weeks into this and I suddenly started noticing things about myself I didn't like. Things about my appearence. It would become an obsession, but then I would affirm away and forget about it for a while.

Then one time I caught eye of something on my face I hadn't noticed before and I basically fell completely into a full fledged BDD episode - keeping in mind i haven't had one in over a year. Since then it's been one thing after another, a new obsession, a new thing about myself to panic over, seeing myself as ugly or deeply flawed in the mirror. I'm very, very tired.

I try to affirm to oppose the thing I'm freaking out about and I end up feeling worse - I can only go back to affirming once the episode calms down. I remind myself that it's all an illusion, I look however I want to look. I even know on a logical level, the BDD is showing me something that is not there. Sometimes I can see it in front of my eyes where the obsession changes to something else, and the last flaw becomes less noticable to me.

I just... I don't understand why this only happened when I got into a proper routine for affirming and manifesting and I was feeling SO good, it was working so well, then this old monster just crept up outta nowhere. I also notice anxiety rising in my life in general. If I manage to release the beauty obsessions for awhile, the anxiety moves to something to do with my social life.

Is it an old self clinging on for dear life? Is it because I shouldn't be affirming for beauty?

You can tell me to ignore the 3D, but trust me, I know what should be done. It's more a curiosity about why this has even come back now, of all times, just as I am starting to affirm regularly. Has anyone else experienced this?

I just finished Lonesome Dove last night, and I have to say it's probably my favorite book I've ever read. I've never enjoyed reading as much as I did with LD, and the characters were on another level I haven't yet seen in fiction.

One thing I noticed in the story—but haven't quite worked out what it might mean—has been rolling around in my head today. It's probably been discussed before, but I wanted to hear what other people think of it.

I noticed that almost all of the male characters have a woman (or women) who are central, or at least very important, to their character, usually as a point of obsession or lost love. And almost all of the female characters are wanting to escape a man or men, while latching onto one specific male presence.

For example, Gus has Clara, Call has Maggie, Pea Eye has the Widow, Dish has Lorena—even smaller characters like Bol and his daughters, or Allen O'Brien and the wife he left in Ireland. Most of them are a lost love, or someone far away whom they don't have or can't have. Even at the very end Xavier has burnt everything down at the loss of a woman. There are very few—such as Deets—who don't seem to have a woman important in their story, their dialogue, or their past. Jake might be a bit different: while he does have Lorena during the story, he doesn't seem to care much about her, and he doesn't have a woman from his past who holds sway over him. I think that represents Jake's selfishness.

Then we have the female characters. Clara seems to want to get away from Bob—for him to die—and in the past she left Gus. Lorena, the most obvious case, wants to get away from men in many senses: from all the men who only want her for one thing, from Blue Duck and his gang, from Dish etc. Elmira is trying to get away from July. Even Janey was trying to get away from Old Sam.

And most of these women also have a male presence they deeply latch onto—Clara desperately wants a son, Lorena becomes deeply attached to Gus, Elmira is searching for Dee Boot.

Maybe I'm just grasping at straws here, but it's something I noticed, and I wondered whether it was an intentional theme: the men and their lost loves/the women they crave, versus the women who are trying to get away from men (but seem to have a male figure they attach themselves to).