Body Dysmorphsis?

[BeautifulSilence]

Firstly, sorry if the spelling is wrong, I'm not too sure on that.

Ok, I'm getting kinda worried now, I know that lots of people with all sorts of eating disorder have body dysmorphsis but I've always been very aware of my body shape and when it does or doesn't change.

For the past week or so, I've had at least 20 odd people (including people I never talk to) tell me that I look 'reallythin' or that I've 'lost loads of weight'... The thing is that for the past 2 weeks, at least, I've done nothing but binge every fucking day, which I'm not proud about. I pretty damn sure my body has expanded - if it's changed at all! All of my clothes fit exactly the same... I had to stop all records of my measurements (waist size, weight etc) ecause people were getting suspicious.

I'm not sure whether I might have body dysmorphsis or not... What do you guys think? I'm finally beginning to get scared about my various eating patterns, now.

[ShatteredWings]

hm, it's not in my spellcheck, sorry lol


I know exactly what your talking about. ppl say i'm rly skinny, but i just don't belive them.....

http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/body_image/body_image_problem.html
What Is Body Dysmorphic Disorder?

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a condition that involves obsessions, which are distressing thoughts that repeatedly intrude into a person's awareness. With BDD, the distressing thoughts are about perceived appearance flaws.

People with BDD might focus on what they think is a facial flaw, but they can also worry about other body parts, such as short legs, breast size, or body shape. Just as people with eating disorders obsess about their weight, people with BDD become obsessed over an aspect of their appearance. People with BDD may worry their hair is thin, their face is scarred, their eyes aren't exactly the same size, their nose is too big, or their lips are too thin.

BDD has been called "imagined ugliness" because the appearance issues the person is obsessing about usually are so small that others don't even notice them. Or, if others do notice them, they consider them minor. But for a person with BDD, the concerns feel very real, because the obsessive thoughts distort and magnify any tiny imperfection.

Because of the distorted body image caused by BDD, a person might believe that he or she is too horribly ugly or disfigured to be seen.

Besides obsessions, BDD also involves compulsions and avoidance behaviors.

A compulsion is something a person does to try to relieve the tension caused by the obsessive thoughts. For example, someone with obsessive thoughts that her nose is horribly ugly might check her appearance in the mirror, apply makeup, or ask someone many times a day whether her nose looks ugly. These types of checking, fixing, and asking are compulsions.

A person with obsessions usually feels a strong or irresistible urge to do compulsions because they can provide temporary relief from the terrible distress. To someone with obsessions, compulsions seem like the only way to escape bad feelings caused by bad thoughts. Compulsive actions often are repeated many times a day, taking up lots of a person's time and energy.

Avoidance behaviors are also a part of BDD. A person might stay home or cover up to avoid being seen by others. Avoidance behaviors also include things like not participating in class or socializing, or avoiding mirrors.

With BDD, a pattern of obsessive thoughts, compulsive actions, and avoidance sets in. Even though the checking, fixing, asking, and avoiding seem to relieve terrible feelings, the relief is just temporary. In reality, the more a person performs compulsions or avoids things, the stronger the pattern of obsessions, compulsions, and avoidance becomes.

After a while, it takes more and more compulsions to relieve the distress caused by the bad thoughts. A person with BDD doesn't want to be preoccupied with these thoughts and behaviors, but with BDD it can seem impossible to break the pattern.

hm, that sounds a heovalot like me...

[byee]

Laura, body 'dysphmorphos' sounds like a new one, one of those made up terms to make something sound more understandable and therefore maybe more OK than it is.

I think if other people are noticing a change in your appearance (regardless of what the scale or your waistline says), it means that something has changed. The issue then becomes if this is a good thing, probably not based on what you've said.

I like the idea of you being aware of what your ideal body weight should be, that means that you should ideally be in that range. If you're not, you should be eating properly to assure that you're within that range, even if it seems to you to be too 'fat'. What's going on here is that your perceptions and expectations of your self are innacurate, and that you need to get a more reasonable, accurate sense of what you should look like. Those sites that tell you where you should be based on height and age are pretty objective and accurate, so you should use them as a guide.

If you cannot do this for whatever reason, then you would need to talk with a therapist about it.

[BeautifulSilence]

Thanks for those replies...

[To Gwyn's post] That sounds A LOT like me too :( I'm always checking in the mirror or asking if I look fat in something... I'm also obsessed with sucking in my gut and taking pictures just to prove to myself that I can look thinner....

[To Sam] To be honest I'm far beyond caring about my weight... I just can't tell the difference anymore, like when I look at pictures from a few years ago, when I was overweight, and then look in the mirror, my body seems EXACTLY the same... Another example is when I lost like 10lbs in a week, othersnoticed the difference but I never see it.