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Body Dysmorphia: Let’s Talk About It
A personal examination
Show me a person who doesn’t have some semblance of body dysmorphia and I’ll show you a liar. The way we view ourselves is through the weirdest, sometimes most jaded, oftentimes hyper-critical lens that rarely skews towards the positive. I’m not here to talk about body positivity (though, I’m in full support) but rather body dysmorphia.
In terms of a mental health disorder, body dysmorphia is where you can’t stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance which are often times incredibly minor and not even noticed by anyone else. Maybe you think you’re nose is too large or your hips too small, something like that. It can severely impact your social life from the volume of anxiety you experience about it.
I can’t say I know a single person, male or female, who hasn’t fixated (past or present) on a body part and thought it was “weird” or “too much/too little” of something.
For me, and this is where I will only speak from my personal experience from here on out, it’s been my entire body. I have disordered eating — which is just a way of saying I don’t have a full-fledged eating disorder but instead a bunch of smaller, abnormal behaviors that aren’t positive in nature. I weigh/measure all of my food, I log everything into a nutrition app, I…
