My Ongoing BDD Recovery Story

Fear to Courage Guest Blog Post by BDD Australia

How My Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) Started

My body dysmorphia started from a very young age, since I started thinking about my appearance. I would do things that were always a bit off compared to my peers, especially other young boys.

My hair was already short, but I would get a haircut and cry in front of the mirror, trying to gel it up for half an hour, an hour, two hours, because it wasn’t working how I wanted. There were already signs of abnormal behaviour toward my image. I had friends — young boys — who couldn’t care less about that stuff.

I was very overly sensitive to comments about my self-image. Uncles and grandparents would say things like, “Kid, you’re not a bad-looking bloke, but your nose doesn’t stop growing — what’s going on there?” It was said for a laugh, jovially. But for me, those comments grew legs.

A lot of the comments I received regarding my self-image were made lightly, in jest, as a joke — nothing serious. But once every two years I’d receive a comment about my nose. That was my primary body dysmorphia struggle. I would hang on to those comments, ruminate over them, and lose sleep over them. This has been my journey from a very young age up until very recently, when I started focusing on my recovery.

I thought my symptoms were normal. I thought that if you had my nose, it would capture 90% of your day too. About 90% of my thoughts were around the way I looked in my daily dealings with everyone.

I googled my symptoms about two years ago, and everything that came up. I was ticking every box. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t recognised what I had as body dysmorphia. I just thought I had some defects, that God hadn’t made me the way He should have. If you gave me a pen and paper to draw how I wanted my nose to look, it would have been very different.

After that, I discovered a lot of online support groups, including the BDD Recovery Group with Dr. Eva. That planted a seed in me. I was hearing other people struggling with the same thing, and I would look at them and think, “Why do you struggle with this? You look normal.” I’d look at everyone and think, they shouldn’t be there but I should, because I was the one with the defects. On a bad day, I still believe that.

My Ongoing Recovery Battle

My recovery today is contingent on many things — my sleep, my caffeine intake, where I’m at with my recovery work, my support groups, my therapist, my headspace. My body dysmorphia is the first thing to flare up when I’m a little anxious, a little off, a little tired, or facing something I don’t want to deal with. It’s like it says, “He’s down — let’s kick him while he’s down.”

For me, body dysmorphia was a very silent battle, because where I’m from, people don’t talk about how they feel — and men especially don’t talk about how they feel about their self-image. I struggled a lot. It took me to very dark places. When you’re at a point where you think your loved ones would be better off without you, that’s a pretty horrible place to be. I lost jobs through addiction battles. I’ve been through the wringer, and a lot of it had to do with my body dysmorphia.

I’m so grateful that today I can see a way out. I thought I was going to die with this thing and just learn to live with it. But with a lot of effort, a lot of discomfort, and a lot of inconvenient actions — guided by key figures like Dr. Eva — things have changed. BDD and my image are no longer at the forefront of my mind 24/7.

I have concerns about the way I look at times, some days more than others, but it’s much more manageable. I can live with the way I look on most days. Instead of being the number one thing on my mind, my appearance is maybe the fifth or sixth most important thing in my life.

It used to govern everything — where I was standing when talking to someone, how I laughed, my facial expressions. Every walk of life was governed by it, because of all the comments — good, bad, or indifferent — that had grown a monster inside of me.

Plastic Surgery Didn’t Help

About ten years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, I resorted to plastic surgery. I didn’t get the outcome I wanted. I came to understand that this had to be an inside job.

I love what Dr. Eva says: you can’t fix a mental problem with a physical solution. That was true for me. Trying to pay my way through it didn’t work — it took me to another level of pain, and it’s something I wish I could take back.

My body dysmorphia was also coupled with chronic low self-esteem. They went hand in hand, and I was unaware of that at the time. I just thought: if I could fix my nose and a couple of other things, I’d be fine. But it was so much more than that.

Effective BDD Treatment

I first approached general psychologists who weren’t BDD-specific. They were great for words of affirmation and pats on the back, but it didn’t really work for my body dysmorphia because they didn’t understand the specific recovery work involved; things like exposures and everything that comes with it.

So I sought out a key BDD therapist in Melbourne, Australia: Dr. Toni Pikoos. She had a long waitlist, but I was willing to wait. I’ve been seeing her for about a year and plan to continue for another year, though less frequently now, maybe every two to three months. That’s one thing I never drop the ball on, because she keeps me honest, calls me out when she needs to, and makes me question the thoughts going on in my head.

Sometimes I wish I had sought therapy earlier, but I guess that’s irrelevant now. I’m here today thanks to the hard work I’ve put into my BDD recovery journey, which has taken a lot of time, a lot of discomfort, and a lot of money. But I can’t put a price on the freedom I have in my head today.

I often tell my therapist: if I can recover from body dysmorphia or show signs of recovering, then truly anybody can, even the most hopeless cases. My case wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t a phase of my teenage years. It was with me for a very long time.

BDD doesn’t go away by wishing it away, praying it away, or meditating it away. None of that works. The only thing that works is hard, consistent effort — doing all the things I don’t want to do, so I can grow on my path of recovery.

How Recovery Has Changed My Life

Recovery has taught me that my progress isn’t always a straight upward trajectory. Some days it goes up, some days it dips, but the overall projection is that I’m on the incline. I no longer feel like I am better or worse than everyone else on some social scale. My recovery from body dysmorphia has taught me that.

It’s allowed me to be human. I can now look in the mirror and think, “I wish my hairline were lower, or my ears were different.” But I can still leave the house with that ruining my day. I have a fleeting thought, and I move on. That’s a much more normal relationship with self-image than what body dysmorphia was.

My recovery hasn’t been me looking in the mirror saying, “Oh, I love myself, I’m so beautiful.” That’s not my experience. Mine has been slow, hard, and for me a bit more real and raw. Some days, doing my mirror checks and body scans as my therapist assigns, I still feel humbled because I don’t have the nose I want. But I don’t have to let that ruin my day today, and that’s thanks to a lot of hard work in therapy.

If you would like to learn more about my ongoing recovery from BDD, please contact me at bddaustralia@hotmail.com.