Mental Health Body dysmorphia megathread

Hey everyone,
I'm sure there are quite a number of people on this website who suffer from body dysmorphia and/or eating disorders and I was thinking it might be good for us to have a megathread where we can talk about it, whether it be to just express our thoughts and feelings or to give and receive advice as well.

Personally my body image issues began when I was 14 and became severely anorexic, weighing as low as 42kg (about 90lbs) for 1m70 (5'5). This lasted a year or so and eventually turned into binge-eating/compulsive over-eating when I was around 16-17-18 and got up to 85kg. I eventually lost a lot of weight due to drug addiction and am now at a healthy 50-ish kgs (110lbs) and even though my eating habits are healthy for the most part, I'm still unable to see myself normally and I spend half my life obsessing over the fact that I don't look thin enough. It's really starting to get to me because I simply can't accurately judge my appearance and I'm worried about slipping back into anorexia.

Anyway, if anyone's been through anything similar, or if anyone is going through anything similar, it's always nice to hear from people who can relate - or even if you can't relate at all but have had other body image issues please feel free to share

This 'disorder' is entirely manmade by our consumerist society that markets products by promoting self-doubt while promising to make you in to something you're not for 3 easy payments of $19.95.

Stop watching television, cancel your magazine subscriptions and accept who you are. That's the only advice I have.


EDIT: Sorry, benzo's got the best of my thoughts on this post.

I appreciate the advice but that's really, really not all there is to it. In fact in my case I know it's got absolutely nothing to do with that and a lot more to do with the fact that I grew up in Paris, where not being borderline anorexic is considered fat.

No offense but the condescending view that this is nothing more than a little issue stemming from reading too many magasines is a little ridiculous and pretty unhelpful

You look perfect pagey x sexy, absolute babe

ive had body dysmorphia before, years ago, was bulky muscley but ended up 9stone skinny cos i thought my face looked stupidly fat... became delusional from meph comedowns, think the anxiety and depression triggered it, became obsessed with weighing myself, the fact of how fat i looked, ended up half starving myself and weird stuff. then eventually snapped out of it and sorted myself out. now i couldnt give much of a shit about any of it, being overly obsessed about weight and looks is bollocks

^How d'you get yourself out of it Dan? I've tried so many different ways but it keeps coming back every time, I've never been able to go a few weeks without finding myself fat ever since I was anorexic, to the point where I'm starting to feel like no matter my weight I'll always find something to criticise.

pinpoint said:

This 'disorder' is entirely manmade by our consumerist society that markets products by promoting self-doubt while promising to make you in to something you're not for 3 easy payments of $19.95.

Stop watching television, cancel your magazine subscriptions and accept who you are. That's the only advice I have.

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The words of someone who doesn't know a whole lot about eating disorders.

I spent a number of years being anorexic when I was younger, I've never wanted to be thinner than I am though.

Maybe that's how it is in Paris, but people where I'm from would consider you quite curvy in a good way. Never understood why women feel the need to starve themselves. Did you check your BMI? So long as you're within the healthy range you should be fine. Guess I don't have much to add.

Good Luck. Hope you're doing well otherwise.

Curvey is sexy... sod all that skinny boney-ness

Celebrating curves is great, but shitting on skinny people in a thread about body image issues?
I'm glad nobody else thinks this problem is as simple as commercials being the main contribution.

I guess I have disordered eating; I have always been an excessive and emotional eater but as of this year I decided to stop being so fat.
I have been doing intermittent fasting as a means to control my appetite and intake, but often when I start eating I will binge and then (at least attempt to) fast for longer as a consequence.
I can do the extremes but I have trouble with the middle ground.

I'm not really sure when eating is classified as disordered, but I don't think it's unhealthy to be dissatisfied with your body and strive for improvement,
the issue lies with unhealthy means and unhealthy goals.

I'm not convinced having a very low nor very high BF% means bad health -
and I don't think malnutrition is exactly a result of disordered eating/body dysmorphia.

For example, I have a friend who struggled with anorexia, and although she gets enough calories most of the time (afaik) her macros are unbalanced and it's not exactly quality food.
I'm not sure whether she still counts her calories (i would assume so) but she has progressed a lot, and when I compare where she's at now to her previous eating habits I would say her eating habits are healthy - despite the diet not being perfect.. I guess it's hard to eat well as a vegan. I mean she's maintaining weight, and that's great.

Im not shitting on it at all. i meant sod societys obsession with skinny-ness, its almost brainwashed/obsessed with everybody being stupidly thin, which gives people a fucked up self image and whatnot

Didn't mean to offend you; I was put off by the first post and I was just thinking about people who struggle with undereating/low BF.

Definitely sod that!

great thread

Some good conversation can be found here: http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/494873-Body-Dysmorphic-Disorder(BDD)

Thank you Pagey for bringing this little-known yet surprisingly common disorder into the light of day. BDD has been wreaking havoc on my life for the past year now and its reached a point where it's done too much damage for me to avoid professional treatment any longer. Allow me to elaborate a bit:

Due to a variety of reasons/triggers not entirely relevant to this thread, my BDD surfaced in June of 2013. I had never been happy with the way that I looked, but priory to last June it never affected my daily quality of life the way that it has for the last year. It progressively got worse as I moved into the fall semester of my sophomore year of college (I'm a 20 year old computer science/engineering student) and despite my initial attempts to seek treatment through my university's health services I eventually reached a point where I rarely left my apartment unless absolutely necessary. This meant that I rarely even attended lecture as a result of what was essentially agoraphobia.

Needless to say, the ensuing depression and anxiety caused me to fall behind on school work. It was also around this time that several of my friends started using illicitly acquired Adderall, Vyvanse, and other study drugs to aid with school work. Desperate (and a little curious to be quite honest), I too decided to give it a go and was amazed by how effective Adderall was at temporarily alleviating so many things that had been ailing me while simultaneously giving me a window of opportunity to get back on track with my life. To my surprise, Adderall not only granted me hyper-productivity and mental clarity, but it also suspended almost all of my obsessions about my looks (which were entirely to do with my face), gave me transient self confidence, and gave me the energy to get out of bed if even just for a few hours. It was a godsend, or so it seemed.

In the months that followed, I procured 60 mg Vyvanse pills from a friend who was prescribed every now and then. It became a weekly/biweekly ritual of mine to pick a day to stay home, pop a Vyvanse/Adderall XR/whatever was available, and spend the day on chores, homework, studying, etc. Illicit? Yes. Benign? At least it felt like it.

As months went on, however, I eventually decided that I wanted a more reliable Adderall supply of my own that I could take every day if I so desired. The antidepressants that university's psychiatry department had tried me on did little good, and eventually they told me I needed to look elsewhere for assistance anyway. So, rather than going and "responsibly" getting my own prescription, I just bought someone else's.

At first, I did an alright job of managing the dosages myself. I never dosed more than 15 mg at a time, and set a daily limit of 60 mg. This seemed reasonable based on reports I had read of other people with prescriptions who were around my height and weight. Shamefully, it didn't take long for me to start exceeding these limits -- at first just by a 10 mg here and there, but then by substantially more. I made several attempts to regain control over my usage (even stashing it at a friend's so that I didn't have free reign to dose as I pleased) but I still found ways around it. Eventually, when it was available to me, I started going on binges where I would consume upwards of 180 mg of Adderall in less than 24 hours.

It's important to note that all this time Adderall still alleviated a lot of the symptoms associated with my BDD, and it still does to this day. In fact, despite my massive tolerance, even a more sane dose of Adderall seems to make a significant difference. My problem now is that once I get started, I can't seem to stop myself from taking more until I've reached regrettably high doses.

So in a sense, what I thought was a (temporary) solution to my problem turned out to just lead me towards an addiction. I've now been actively trying to quit Adderall on my own with some success -- the binges don't reach quite as high of dosages and occur far less frequently now. However, I'm not declaring success until I'm completely clean.

My question is this: Of the bluelighter's out there reading this thread who also suffer from BDD (or any other body image disorder/distress), how has it affected your relationship with substance use/abuse? There are mixed reports on the topic, but the majority of the information I've seen floating out on the web indicates that individuals who suffer from BDD often develop co-morbid substance use disorders in an attempt to cope with their distress.

Thanks again Pagey for starting the thread!

I've had close friends who had eating disorders. They generally stayed away from drugs, but I'm sure mental illness in general predisposes one to more likely self medicate and abuse drugs. Of course, then another problem arises. In this case one is better than two!

I have pretty severe dysmorphia, not an eating disorder, but issues with the body I was given at birth. I have never felt like I have fit and have gone through the necessary psych evaluations to have the surgery required to have the body I want (I will not get into it on the public forums, so please don't ask). No amount of therapy/evaluations/medications has had any effect on my thought patterns regarding this and I've come to accept it's something I have to live with unless I can afford to change it.

omgitsaliv55 said:

My question is this: Of the bluelighter's out there reading this thread who also suffer from BDD (or any other body image disorder/distress), how has it affected your relationship with substance use/abuse? There are mixed reports on the topic, but the majority of the information I've seen floating out on the web indicates that individuals who suffer from BDD often develop co-morbid substance use disorders in an attempt to cope with their distress.

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When I was going through my evaluations I was so depressed and self loathing/self destructive that I was consuming large amounts of any drug I could get my hands on. Since coming to terms with my dysmorphia I have regained control of my use, cutting right down and only using sparingly.

? Huh?

pinpoint said:

This 'disorder' is entirely manmade by our consumerist society that markets products by promoting self-doubt while promising to make you in to something you're not for 3 easy payments of $19.95.

Stop watching television, cancel your magazine subscriptions and accept who you are. That's the only advice I have.


EDIT: Sorry, benzo's got the best of my thoughts on this post.

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Totally disagree pin, I'm a guy and I have issues with this. Though not for cosmetic issues. I'm afraid to eat, it causes huge pain cause the food goes thru the pancreas . I'm at 105lbs 5"7 . I have the opposite issue where as I can gain weight, shakes all that.nothing. I was 180 before getting sick but even then I felt very thin, I know I wasn't but I still tried to gain and gain. I have super high metabolism as well so that didn't help. Ironic that now in actually thin as shit but can't eat. Just wanted to throw in my 2c, I guess it is cosmetic my fault, just the other way, not big enough.

I would agree, mental illness is a problem I've always had sice before I can remember (3yrs old). I can def relate to the agoraphobia, I still have that and I'm 35 now. I just feel idk umm geez I've really never dwelled on it hmm out if place, like an alien if that makes any sense. I think it's a bit diff for guys but idk. And I think were predisposed to addiction. I'm a bit more comfortable with people / going to store when I'm on opiates/adderall(only had Addie's a few times but they were miricle drugs for me) . It all becomes less overwhelming I guess...

Cliffy78 said:

And I think were predisposed to addiction. I'm a bit more comfortable with people / going to store when I'm on opiates/adderall(only had Addie's a few times but they were miricle drugs for me) . It all becomes less overwhelming I guess...

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Always seems to feel like there's something about my brain that needs chronic adjustment/fixing. Maybe I'm just overly controlling, but *certain* drugs seem to provide transient relief from that feeling. It has been there probably since I was 12 or so -- right around puberty.

I hear u there omg, is it like a not fitting in with people feeling u get? If not what's your best description of feeling you get in your brain that goes away when on certain drugs/meds? I'm just really curious, I've felt alone with my problem for a long long time but I always wondered if others were just better at pretending to fit in than I was. Are we all pretending? Even the "normal" people? Sry to get philosophical...