Body Dysmorphic disorder (BDD) can deeply affect your self-perception, but recognising the signs early can help you take the first steps towards healing and support.
Start your journey to recovery with YMM and discover our tailored BDD treatments, designed to help you regain control of your life.
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a common anxiety disorder that causes you to become particularly self-conscious and believe you have a problem with the appearance of a specific feature of your body. You may become preoccupied with this perceived issue and struggle to think about anything else on a daily basis. Obsessive worries and compulsive behaviours are at the core of the mental health condition.
These obsessions and behaviours can cause significant emotional distress, and impact on your ability to function and focus on other tasks either at home or at work. BDD is closely related to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in its link between intrusive thoughts and behaviours.
If you believe you may have BDD or have recently been diagnosed, YMM has the network of hospital and wellbeing centre, which allows for flexible outpatient treatment programmes for BDD. We use a combination of talking therapies and medication, depending on the severity of your condition, which can help you reduce your symptoms and work towards freeing your mind of obsessions.
The common signs of someone with BDD include:
- Asking for constant reassurance about your image
- Repeatedly checking your appearance in front of mirrors
- Picking at your skin to make it smooth
- Cutting or styling your hair or adjusting make-up until it’s perfect
- Weighing yourself frequently
- Making constant comparisons with other people or models in magazines
- Exercising excessively to try and change the problem area
Many of these symptoms are dependent on the area of the body that you perceive to have a flaw. While the face and skin are the most common areas leading to obsessive thoughts about bodily imperfections in BDD, you may have a fixation on weight, muscle mass definition or the size and shape of certain body parts.
What is body shaming?
Body shaming is defined as the act of making inappropriate and negative comments about another person’s weight or size. Frequently, this is something that overweight people are subjected to but there’s an increasing trend in criticising those who look ‘too skinny’.
Body shaming is ubiquitous. It’s in magazines, newspapers, television shows, movies, conversations between friends, on the internet and social media sites. Comments can be nasty and sometimes used in poor-taste comedy.
Nobody should have to live in a world where they’re made to feel bad about their bodies by other people, especially considering people are often critical enough of their own appearance.
The consequences of body shaming are severe, whether you’re chastising yourself or someone else, and can contribute to mental health problems.