How Body Dysmorphia Affects Your Daily Life

“I don’t think you’d ever let yourself get fat, Carmalita.”

“Oh, I’ve been fat before.” I assured. I then proceed to text a picture of a side-by-side photo of myself with a 40lb weight difference to a college friend I reconnected with after almost a decade. “See, I told you.”

“Ew, Carmalita,” he responds.

“I know,” I say in agreement.

“You look disgusting.”

“I know,” I say, staring at the photo of myself in which I weighed more. I felt security in someone verbalizing aloud the negative inner thoughts I had about my body. “I told you.”

“This picture makes me worry about you, Carmalita. You look sick.”

The sound of genuine concern in his voice jerked my eyes away from the photo I hated to the thinner, more desirable version of myself. My disorder was staring me in the face and even then, I could only see a glimpse of its unhealthiness.

Every person has something that they do not like about their bodies, whether it’s their hair, body shape, acne, height or muscle mass. People living with body dysmorphia have an obsession with whatever it is on their bodies they are unhappy with. I am almost 30 and I have spent more than half my life preoccupied with obsessive thoughts about my physical appearance. Living with BD is seeing a completely different person staring back at you in a mirror every day. The person that stares back at you is unchanging, despite what the scale or photos may say. The person staring back at you is relentless and unmoving regardless of the hours of manipulation that goes into changing them. The person staring back at you does not actually exist outside of your mind but try telling them that.

If you find that you are spending large amounts of time in your day consumed by thoughts and activities geared toward altering or modifying your body, you too may suffer from body dysmorphia. Here’s how body dysmorphia can affect your daily life:

• Walking past your reflection is a constant reminder of what your body isn’t and what you think it should be.
• Shopping is oftentimes a game of emotional Russian Roulette in which every item tried on in front of the dressing room mirror is a click on the trigger.
• Exercising is rarely about benefiting your health, but rather manipulating your body and pushing it past its physical limits to exhaustion.
• Well-intended compliments can be triggering.
• Social events that include meeting new people become a cause for anxiety.
• Eating meals is never as simple as getting nourishment for your body.

There was a time my life revolved around appearance. I wore mostly loose-fitting or baggy clothes so as not to accentuate what I believed to be an overweight body. I did body checks every time I looked in the mirror and weighed myself before and after using the bathroom or eating. I weighed myself before and after leaving the gym or going on a run. The entire time I believed that I the number on the scale was significant and how I viewed my body depended on it.

How do you combat the thoughts in your mind with reality? The weight I am now is a solid 40 pounds heavier than what it was when I was in the height of my eating disorder. Now, I am soft in my mid-section, my hip-bones do not protrude, there is no sharp line under my jaw bone, and my collar bones do not stick out. I just look normal. I never thought I would be comfortable with normal. To me, normal meant fat. I considered anything above my coveted 136 on my body to be fat.

I am glad that social media did not exist during the formation and culmination of my eating disorder and BD. Body dysmorphia is definitely a breeding ground for online comparison and self-hate. When I was growing up, there were “pro-ana/mia” websites strictly dedicated to forums and threads of conversation geared toward positive anorexia and bulimia communication. In these forums, people with eating disorders and body dysmorphia could rally together and share tips, information and seek support from one another but negatively. I am happy to know that Instagram offers a warning when typing “pro-ana” in the hashtag explore page. There is a pop up that says, “Can we help? Posts with words or tags you’re searching for often encourage behavior that can cause harm and even lead to death. If you’re going through something difficult, we’d like to help.” Following it is two options, Get Support and See Posts Anyway. When clicking the Get Support tab, you are directed to three options for support with a helpline, friend or healthy tips. I think that is an amazing alternative. Sometimes people just need to know they are not alone and that they are supported. What Instagram is doing is giving people a positive direction to exert their energy.

It is harder today to be a person suffering from body dysmorphia with the vast amounts of apps that are used to alter our physical appearances. There are applications in which you can literally change the frame of your nose and plump up your lips. There are apps in which you can smooth out cellulite and enhance your breasts or hind parts. Without having to physically contort your body, with an app you can look exactly the way you want it to. That can be dangerous if living with BD.

Body dysmorphia is a mental health issue and to get through it, it’s necessary to find the root of the illness. Oftentimes that is not something can be done alone. With support and help, professionally or otherwise –disordered thinking does not have to affect your daily life. Know that there is always a way to get help and BD does not have to be something that controls you.

Carmalita Wilson