What are things to do to help with Body dysmorphia and self confidence ? I find myself being hateful to others because of the way I feel about myself. I obsess over pictures and ask my boyfriend constantly about my body. I stress over going to events and taking pictures. Lately it’s been harder to lose weight too, so some clothes haven’t been fitting which does NOT help. I feel so depressed over it. I’ll never be happy with myself.
I recommend reading the book “The Power Of Now”. It talks about focusing on what really matters and being in the now. Image, ego, money, food, all of these are external factors, what really matters is the inside. Love doesn’t start from how you look, it starts way deeper than that. You are perfect no matter what, you just have to show your mind that.
When you have intrusive thoughts about your body, about not being good enough, try to resist the compulsion for reassurance, don’t look at photos, don’t ask your boyfriend, sit with the discomfort of maybe you are what you think, maybe you’re not! You cannot be free of OCD unless we are uncertain, even if this is more a body image issue, the thought patterns of seeking reassurance for insecurity is the same. You CAN get through this!
I relate to this a lot. I gave up years of my life to body image struggles. Shortly after college, I came down with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which started off moderately distressing and progressed to extremely severe. What I perceived as my appearance, which suddenly had gone from fine to disgusting, disastrous, and appalling, became my whole life. My looks suddenly became all I could think about. I won't go into the details too deeply in this post but, in short, as the disorder progressed, I wound up not being able to work for about 4 years. I wound up being severely depressed, housebound, unable to function, suicidal, and even stopped speaking for a period of time. At my worst, I laid in the dark on a old mattress in our (finished) basement, sleeping most of the day, and in immense emotional pain. I’m not trying to scare you, but I want you to know that BDD is merciless. When I thought mine couldn’t get worse, it showed me that I had no idea how wrong I was. That period of my life is a dark one, and I had no idea how long the period of feeling worthless, hideous, depressed, and unmotivated would last and if there even was a coming out of it. I feared recovering wasn't possible and that the state I was in was permanent If the struggles you’ve described in your post are just developing for you, I urge you to look up the diagnostic criteria for BDD online right now. If you think it’s a fit, starting treatment before doing anything else is paramount. Like OCD, BDD is extremely unlikely to improve on its own or through traditional talk therapy. I discovered that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was the best possible treatment and thankfully, there was a BDD clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, which was close to where I lived at the time. It took a lot of work and time, but BDD can be overcome with a good CBT therapist. ERP is part of treatment, but not the whole treatment module. If you can’t find a good CBT therapist, I’d encourage you to get some CBT workbooks and guidebooks. Let me know if you’d like the titles of the ones I have. CBT for BDD books can provide pretty close to what you learn and do in session with a CBT therapist. The best thing you can do in your daily life is to realize that when you seek reassurance, you’re reinforcing the disorder. This allows it to progress and get stronger. Reassurance needs to come from within. I hope this is helping you and not scaring you; everybody with BDD has a different experience. If you’d like to ask more questions, get more tips, get book recommendations, or hear more of my story, let me know. =]
I hate feeling constantly conflicted no matter what. I have noticed with food intake, I find myself going back and forth between obsessing over eating too much and fear of gaining any weight to obsessing over eating too little and fear of losing an unhealthy amount of weight and the negative consequences of such. I am getting married this year and continuously think about how I need to be mindful and not eat too much since I need to fit into my dress and feel confident on my wedding day, as I don’t want to look back at pics and be unhappy with how I look. But I also think about how if I don’t eat enough, I will look too thin and will not be confident in myself, and will look back and be unhappy. Idk. It is so hard because I am always trying to figure out what is “right” but it feels like there is no “right.” And I have a really hard time recognizing what my body ACTUALLY looks like physically, not really knowing how I appear to others
In lack of better wording, Sometimes I really just feel like I don’t understand myself and I want to. So I can fix it. I’m looking in the mirror and I’m body dysmorphic, I want to see myself when I was younger and physically healthier but cant. I used to be on birthcontrol, and it made me gain 70lbs and I haven’t been able to feel the same about my body ever since then. Somehow since allowing my ex to semi control everything about our sexual relationship, I have developed a complexity of desired intimacy with myself constantly alone. Because I feel like I want to be in more control with how my sexual feelings affect me. I can’t get sexual gratification from my self sometimes even though, and then I turn to peopke. And then it turns to; I can’t be satisfied by anyone, and I haven’t had sex within a loving relationship for a long time. Because well I have been going through a lot recently. And most of the encounters sexually were in fact not in relationships, but I didn’t feel the satisfaction I was looking for and it just didn’t make sense. I have to have all the right emotions or else the moment gets ruined. If I don’t feel love for them, if I don’t think they are attractive, if I don’t like how they react to seeing my body, if I don’t like how they interact with me during the sexual encounters. And since this is so difficult I All together just don’t desire to have sex with anyone most times I feel mentally aroused. Speaking of just mentally aroused, it confuses me that my body will be physically aroused all the time and beg for satisfaction and it’s a cold burning sensation pleading for constant attention. I hate it. I can’t help but wonder why that exists when I haven’t been mentally aroused. But when it happens I can’t seem to satisfy it and neither can other people. And that somewhat altogether made a plethora of issues in my last relationship because my ex dealt with feelings of guilt and or resentment towards themselves for not being able to satisfy me.. and I would be crying from days on end recently in fact from trying MYSELF to release that feeling, but I’d try to the point my body grew sore. .. I hate it. Genuinely I feel disgusted and want to get help on how to stop this. It’s going to ruin the much healthier relationship I have now just gotten into down the line and I don’t think I can handle that. Not again.
hi everyone 👋🏻 This is less of an ROCD post but I urgently need advice because i feel like i can't think straight. My bf and I are together for almost 3 years. Ive gained over 10kg over the last six months which led to him kind of commenting on my relationship with food. I always struggled with my weight and he knows. I also know that I eat very unhealthy and a lot but I have been having difficulties with my eating disorder in the last couple of months and its just not easy to snap out of it. Yesterday I showed him pants that I would like to buy myself and he said that my bum would be a little too much in those pants. It hurt me a lot and I immediately told him why he would say something like that and he just said that he didn't try to be mean and it just came out like that and he knows that it was wrong, so he apologised. But i couldn't let go of it because we've had another discussion like this over 2 months ago and he promised me to stop commenting on my body and my eating disorder. It just makes me feel like he generally prefers skinny women. So i asked him, i asked him if he prefers skinny women and he said that he would prefer if i would lose a few pounds. My heart shattered in that moment and I don't know what to do and how to deal with it. We've talked about it last night and he understands that he's in the wrong but i don't know how to cope and what to do. Please give me some advice
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