Body Dysmorphia: Let’s Talk About It
By: Beth Nintzel
Tags: Health, Body Dysmorphia, Lifestyle, Mental Illness, Body Image

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 pick at my body when I feel “bigger”, I admonish myself if I gain weight, I’m hyper-critical of how I look but would never in a million years hold anyone to those same standards because I’m aware of how absurd and cruel they are. I push my body to extremes when I work out, often not giving myself a day off to rest until my body feels so swollen like I’ve gained 10 pounds of pure water weight or I’m so physically exhausted I can barely move or my body is in such physical pain (I have a spine disease) that I can’t push through it anymore.

Body dysmorphia has turned me into a Type A body perfectionist who admonishes herself for eating extra gluten-free, dairy-free ice cream (I have food allergies).

What’s even wilder to me is how I can break down the “why” of my behavior. I know what I’m doing is wrong and unhealthy and incredibly harmful to my body and my mind, but I can’t stop. This isn’t a cry for help, either, like some people may see it as. While I’m aware of all of these things, this is where I’m going to stay for the foreseeable future. It’s almost as if I’ve completely brainwashed myself into accepting my behaviors as unchangeable in a world that is more than ready to accept me “as is” as opposed to the version I’ve curated, not for anyone else, but for me.

I’m guessing the exponential growth of my particular brand of body dysmorphia is in large part due to the pandemic and having very little control over most things in my life right now. When the world is spinning out of control, what can we cling to and force inside of a box in our own worlds?

My body is that thing. So is continually cleaning my immediate environment much to the chagrin of my two male roommates.

I wonder, though, when I’ll reach a breaking point within myself. I feel like I’m standing on that precipice lately, internal Ego temper tantrums abound and I’m afraid that if I give into those tantrums that that’ll be the domino effect it’s craving and all of my hard work will unravel like a spoon of yarn down a hill.

I get that I don’t have full-on body dysmorphia. That mine is on the lighter end of that spectrum, that it’s more a distorted and disordered pattern of control over my own body and what it looks like, but it still affects my daily functioning.

So, what would my life look like if I gave in and gave myself a day off from criticizing how I look and feel in my own skin? How would my mental health benefit from allowing the same love and grace I advocate in others to be applied to my own demons?

It would be heaven. But alas, I’m in hell.