What it’s like living with body dysmorphia.

The first time I’d heard of body dysmorphia was in a particularly difficult session with my therapist. It was 2013, maybe 2014, and I was staring out of the window. The view wasn’t particularly interesting – it faced a brick wall about 6ft away from the window ledge, which made me wonder why they’d bothered putting in a window in the first place – but it was that, or awkwardly staring my therapist in the eye. First rule of therapy; do not stare at your therapist. It is unnerving for them, but it’s very off-putting when you’re trying to explain intricate details about your life and look for signs of validation or response from the other person. They are trained experts and I can tell you, they would be very VERY good at poker.

I’d frittered away about two months of therapy dealing with my own challenges around therapy; trying to avoid topics, leading my therapist on a merry goose-chase around unrelated – but equally traumatic – things that would buy time, and avoid me having to talk about the truly painful things that I kept buried. Weirdly enough, this attitude didn’t really help me get past the root causes of my depressive state, and did nothing but let me talk about the things I was already comfortable talking about.

I was crying. Finally, we’d hit on something that I was struggling to verbalise, something that I was mentally butting up against. What was I finding so hard to talk about? Well – I literally couldn’t stand the sight of myself. And not in the sense that I had low self-esteem – in the sense that I was physically repulsed by the very sight of myself.

I don’t remember exactly what I said then, but it could have been something like this.

My sworn enemy are those lifts with mirrors in. I do one of two things. I begin to breathe fast and close my eyes and stare very hard at the panel of buttons until the door releases me again, or I stand there are examine my reflection to inspect my moon face for every fault. Not angular enough. Small eyes. Tiny mouth. Terrible teeth. Big chin. A round circle of chub with miniature features pressed into it. And it doesn’t stop there. I fantasise about removing parts of my body. I pinch the skin, I hold my hand against my face and imagine if I didn’t have cheeks. I hide my chin with my hand as I leave the lift, as if hiding it from the world outside in case anyone else could see it in the way that I do.

I can’t walk through past any reflective surface without obsessively checking myself. Something deep inside reminds me constantly that I am disgusting. I suck my cheeks in so tightly there are sores on the inside of my mouth. Someone walks past and I angle my head in a direction that I believe will be more flattering. A neighbour says hello, and I cover my neck and mouth with my hand as we make small talk. I don’t know what I’m saying; I’m completely preoccupied with an internal panic. I am controlling how I’m standing, conscious of every single small movement of my body. I feel awkward, gangling, and uncomfortable. They leave, and I relax again, but my hand remains in front of my face, attending to a loose piece of hair or an imagined itch on my cheek.

I cover the mirrors at home, or avoid them. All angles are horrific – I look ugly and somehow wrong, like Frankenstein’s monster. A night out with friends could be ruined by one unflattering light and a full-length mirror. I can find myself in tears, or leaving the venue to calm the escalating feelings of anxiety.

I truly hate my body more than anything else in the world. And if it were just me affected by it, then it would almost be okay. It would be something I could hide away and quietly handle on my own; remove mirrors. Pinch and pull the skin until it hurts, cover it up. The problem is that it doesn’t just impact me; there is a knock-on effect on my intimate relationships. Here is a sad truth – I have never let anyone see me naked with the lights on. I can’t even look at myself naked with the lights on. I just can’t do it. The last time that someone in low light pulled back a sheet and revealed a part of my naked stomach, I had a full-blown anxiety attack. The second that I become aware of my body, my sexual appetite just evaporates.

I have had coping mechanisms over the years. Avoid close contact. Keep things casual. Avoid taking your clothes off at all costs. Turn off the lights. Keep the sheet pinned around your hips. Take control and guide those strange hands that want to hold you in all those soft places you hate but they love.

Partners have tried helping me with it, with differing outcomes. One partner tried giving me a deadline – they would see my naked body by a certain date. It was delivered like an ultimatum; they would get all of me if they stayed with me. There’s a small chance that there may have been some good intent there, but however it was meant to be interpreted – it had the opposite effect. I became anxious, avoidant, worrying about that date coming round. It was cemented in my mind. One day, that date did come round – and I wasn’t able to do it. I couldn’t reveal my naked body to them. Instead I had a nervous breakdown and they were so bitter and upset they decided on top of that to gaslight me about my friends and family. All in all, I’d say that was a guide on what to absolutely not do when someone hates their body.

Other partners have been understanding, taking time with me, allowing us to advantage of moments of confidence but knowing that it wouldn’t last. Drink lowers my inhibitions and helps me feel less anxious – at the time, at least. Making the room pitch black, blocking out all the light and having sex in complete darkness, that’s helped too. Helped me hide myself.

“Have you heard of body dysmorphic disorder?”

My therapist asked this as I was staring very intensely at the brick wall through the window. I hadn’t. She explained a little bit about it, how it sounded as though this fixation, this obsession, this fear, was all part of something called BDD. She printed off some information for me to take away, but I shoved it into my bag without reading any, and about 5 minutes’ walk from my therapist’s office I found a bench in a small public park, and I cried silently for about an hour. Whether it was the relief at unloading how I felt, or whether it was how scared I felt talking about it, or whether it was the sense that there was a name, a label for it, I really don’t know.

A complication for me is that my relationship with food is messed up. I’ve experienced binge eating disorder and anorexia, and I feel constantly caught between the two. The latter is a response to my hatred of my body, and allows my obsession of it to take over. The first is my response to stress, and when I’m depressed my relationship with food goes out of the window. I gorge on calories and self-hatred, eating myself into a body I can hate even more than I did before. The body I feel I deserve. I can never find a balance. My body is constantly changing, fluctuating, and I feel I have to reinvent myself along with it just to survive the new body I find myself in. And whichever body it is, it is never good enough. Controlling my eating, overeating, neither of those help me come to terms with the fact that I find flaws within my face that literally nobody else sees. That control is just a distraction from a core sense that there are parts of my body that feel…wrong.

I wish there was an ending for this story. I wish I could tell you that I’ve found a miracle cure, a strategy, something that has fixed it. The reality is that some days I can put on my foundation and some mascara and think – yes, you look okay today. Other days, I avoid the bathroom mirror, and if I catch site of myself, I pinch my face until I cry because of how much I hate my chin. I practise smiling but I fixate on the gap in my teeth, the fact that they are too small. I can spend hours picking fault with my body until I am filled with such self-hatred that I break down in the dark and cry, for hours.

Other days, I pull on clothes that fit me perfectly a couple of days ago but my delicate body swells with the hormones rushing around it, or maybe last nights’ dinner, and the clothes that were comfortable and safe only hours ago are now never to be worn again. They are discarded in the ever-increasing mountain of clothing that I’m too scared to put back on just in case it no longer fits in a way that makes me feel like I can successfully cover those hated sections of my body. My wardrobe is full to the brim, a clothes rail with colourful fashion piled high, drawers crammed with items that I am too afraid to wear. I am reduced to the same 5 items which I wear until they are ragged. 99% of my clothing lies dormant, waiting for that day where I am brave enough to try them on again. For 98% of those clothes, that day will never come. They will be donated to charity with a single wear.

I wish so wholeheartedly I wasn’t like this. I wish I could wake up tomorrow with an imperfect body that I could actually love. If you wake up in the morning unafraid of your clothing, if you don’t avoid brushing your teeth in case you catch sight of yourself, and if you can make love to your person without even thinking about your body, then take a moment to appreciate just how much I wish I could be just as brave as you.

Further reading

If you want to find out a bit more about BDD (body dysmorphia, or Body Dysmorphic Disorder), there is a great page all about it on Mind’s website: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/body-dysmorphic-disorder-bdd/about-bdd/

If you want to read a bit more about my mental health journey, here is a post all about my coping mechanisms: https://www.quirkandfolly.com/2019/01/i-used-to-have-a-woman-in-my-wardrobe-and-other-ways-to-cope-with-chronic-depression/

If you feel like you might have BDD, then don’t leave it and let things spiral – talk to your GP. There are also plenty of trained professionals out there if you’d like to talk privately – have a look for one here: https://www.bacp.co.uk/search/Therapists

Alternatively if you need support right now, stop what you’re doing and call 116 123 for free 24/7 help from the Samaritans.