Body Dysmorphic Disorder

#BodyDysmorphicDisorder

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

CBT is a form of talking therapy that aims to show connections between your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It can also help you develop practical skills to manage them.

Sometimes this involves using self-help materials such as books or computer programs.

The treatment you're offered may depend on the severity of your symptoms, but ideally you should be given CBT before you're prescribed any medication. It can be delivered via telephone, video, or face to face with a therapist. Either one-to-one or in a group.

The aim of CBT for BDD is to help you feel less anxious about your body by:

-Helping you change your attitude to body image and physical appearance

-Exploring your worries about your perceived physical flaw(s)

-Reducing your need to carry out compulsive behaviors

Medication

You may be prescribed antidepressants, either on their own or in combination with CBT, if:

-CBT isn't successful in treating your BDD

-Your BDD is moderately to severely affecting how you live your day-to-day life

The type of antidepressant your GP provides will usually be a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). These can help reduce obsessive thoughts and behaviors.

SSRIs can cause unpleasant side effects for some people, so it's a good idea to discuss this with your GP before starting. You can also take a look at our information on what you should do before starting medication.

If a first course of SSRIs and more intensive CBT isn't effective, the next step is usually to try a different SSRI or another antidepressant called clomipramine.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/dealing-with-body-dysmorphia

#BodyDysmorphicDisorder

Muscle dysmorphia is a subtype of the obsessive mental disorder body dysmorphic disorder, but is often also grouped with eating disorders. In muscle dysmorphia, which is sometimes called "bigorexia", "megarexia", or "reverse anorexia", the delusional or exaggerated belief is that one's own body is too small, too skinny, insufficiently muscular, or insufficiently lean, although in most cases, the individual's build is normal or even exceptionally large and muscular already.

Muscle dysmorphia affects mostly men, particularly those involved in sports where body size or weight are competitive factors, becoming rationales to gain muscle or become leaner. The quest to seemingly fix one's body consumes inordinate time, attention, and resources, as on exercise routines, dietary regimens, and nutritional supplementation, while use of anabolic steroids is also common. Other body-dysmorphic preoccupations that are not muscle-dysmorphic are usually present as well.

The distress and distraction of muscle dysmorphia may provoke absences from school, work, and social settings. Compared to other body dysmorphic disorders, rates of suicide attempts are especially high with muscle dysmorphia. Researchers believe that muscle dysmorphia's incidence is rising, partly due to the recent cultural emphasis on muscular male bodies.

Signs and symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder include:

-Being extremely preoccupied with a perceived flaw in appearance that to others can't be seen or appears minor

-Strong belief that you have a defect in your appearance that makes you ugly or deformed

-Belief that others take special notice of your appearance in a negative way or mock you

-Engaging in behaviors aimed at fixing or hiding the perceived flaw that are difficult to resist or control, such as frequently checking the mirror, grooming or skin picking

-Attempting to hide perceived flaws with styling, makeup or clothes

-Constantly comparing your appearance with others

-Frequently seeking reassurance about your appearance from others

-Having perfectionist tendencies

-Seeking cosmetic procedures with little satisfaction

-Avoiding social situations

-Preoccupation with your appearance and excessive thoughts and repetitive behaviors can be unwanted, difficult to control and so time-consuming that they can cause major distress or problems in your social life, work, school or other areas of functioning.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/dealing-with-body-dysmorphia

#BodyDysmorphicDisorder

1: Refocus your attention

Aside from seeking professional help, remember that self-help can be a powerful tool. Compulsive thoughts and behaviors do not need to control your life.

Refocusing your attention on the present moment takes time to learn, but has huge benefits for your mental and physical health. There are two strategies that may help: mundane task focusing and a more formal meditation practice. These two coping mechanisms complement each other and can become part of your daily routine.

2: Practice self-compassion

Along with meditation, self-compassion is another form of mindfulness. Studies indicate that individuals with higher levels of self-compassion have fewer body dysmorphic symptoms. Focus on ways this can be applied to your daily life to help ease your stress and anxiety. Learning to accept your imperfections, especially during challenging times, is part of embracing self-compassion.

Most of us treat others with more kindness than we do ourselves. Negative self-talk only leads to more scrutiny about our appearance and distorted self-image. This inner dialogue may become so familiar to us, that we don’t even notice this harmful ritual. Think about how you would speak to a friend or loved one and apply the same caring tone and empathy to yourself. Expressing love and acceptance to ourselves, despite our flaws, is a significant step in the healing process.

People who have experienced abuse and neglect are more likely to engage in self-criticism. When you practice self-compassion, you are still aware of hurtful thoughts and emotions, but you don't blow them out of proportion. Once you begin to notice the negative self-talk, you can make a concerted effort to say positive affirmations instead.

3: Start a journaling habit

Writing your thoughts, feelings, and emotions down in a journal or diary is a great way to express yourself. It doesn’t need to be a long, formal entry and it’s not about correct spelling or grammar. This exercise can be as simple as jotting down a few words. Set aside a few minutes each day and just let it flow naturally. It may be helpful to have a designated time to do this and utilize the same journal or app.

Writing down your thoughts and emotions can assist with identifying and working through distressing days. You may be surprised about much this tool reduces your anxiety and lifts your mood. Journaling can also be a way to prioritize the problems you’re facing. By keeping track of your BDD symptoms, you can pinpoint the triggers and focus on controlling them more effectively with mindfulness and meditation.

4: Reduce negative predictions

Once you become more skilled at managing your thoughts, you can use these coping strategies to talk yourself down before you face a triggering situation. This could be anywhere that you feel self-conscious about your appearance, such as a birthday party or a work conference with a room full of strangers.

If you have BDD, you may find yourself defaulting to negative predictions about how a particular event will go. You may start to imagine the worst: that everyone will make fun of you, for example, or that you’ll find yourself sitting alone because nobody wants to associate with you because of your perceived “flaw”. In truth, though, reality is much less distressing.

5: Seek social support

Support is available to you from many different sources, so remember to keep the lines of communication open. Make sure that you don’t isolate yourself from others. Your close network of family and friends cares deeply about your health and well-being.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/dealing-with-body-dysmorphia

#BodyDysmorphicDisorder

Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health condition in which you can't stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance — a flaw that appears minor or can't be seen by others. But you may feel so embarrassed, ashamed and anxious that you may avoid many social situations.

When you have body dysmorphic disorder, you intensely focus on your appearance and body image, repeatedly checking the mirror, grooming or seeking reassurance, sometimes for many hours each day. Your perceived flaw and the repetitive behaviors cause you significant distress and impact your ability to function in your daily life.

You may seek out numerous cosmetic procedures to try to "fix" your perceived flaw. Afterward, you may feel temporary satisfaction or a reduction in your distress, but often the anxiety returns and you may resume searching for other ways to fix your perceived flaw.

After a medical evaluation to help rule out other medical conditions, your health care provider may make a referral to a mental health professional for further evaluation.

Diagnosis of body dysmorphic disorder is typically based on:

-A psychological evaluation that assesses risk factors and thoughts, feelings, and behaviors -related to negative self-image

-Personal, social, family and medical history

-Signs and symptoms

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/dealing-with-body-dysmorphia

#BodyDysmorphicDisorder

The model of BDD shown in focuses on the experience of patients when they are alone (rather than in social situations, when their behavior is likely to follow a model similar to that of social phobia; Clark & Wells, 1995). The model begins with the trigger of an external representation of the individual's body image, typically in front of a mirror. Alternative triggers include looking at a photograph taken when the patient was younger.

The process of selective attention begins by focusing on specific aspects of the external representation (e.g. the reflection in the mirror), which leads to a heightened awareness and relative exaggeration of certain features. As a result of this process, the person with BDD constructs a distorted mental representation of his or her body image.

Mirror-gazing activates idealised values about the importance of appearance and, in some patients, values about perfectionism or symmetry and thinking of the self as an aesthetic object. This leads to a negative aesthetic appraisal and comparisons of three different images - the external representation (usually in a mirror), the ideal body image and the distorted body image. Not surprisingly, these repeated comparisons leave the patient uncertain about his or her appearance, which encourages further mirror-gazing.

The patient's desire to see exactly how he or she looks is only rewarded by looking in the mirror. However, the longer the person looks, the worse he or she feels and the more the belief of ugliness and defect is reinforced. When not looking in a mirror, the individual may focus attention on his or her internal body image and ruminate on its ugliness. There is often a marked discrepancy between the actual and the ideal body image, and this inevitably leads to depressed mood and negative thoughts.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/dealing-with-body-dysmorphia

#BDD #BodyDysmorphicDisorder

In software engineering, behavior-driven development (BDD) is an agile software development process that encourages collaboration among developers, quality assurance experts, and customer representatives in a software project.

It encourages teams to use conversation and concrete examples to formalize a shared understanding of how the application should behave. It emerged from test-driven development (TDD).Behavior-driven development combines the general techniques and principles of TDD with ideas from domain-driven design and object-oriented analysis and design to provide software development and management teams with shared tools and a shared process to collaborate on software development.

Although BDD is principally an idea about how software development should be managed by both business interests and technical insight, the practice of BDD does assume the use of specialized software tools to support the development process. Although these tools are often developed specifically for use in BDD projects, they can be seen as specialized forms of the tooling that supports test-driven development. The tools serve to add automation to the ubiquitous language that is a central theme of BDD.

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/dealing-with-body-dysmorphia

This is my first time posting on something like this, so I’m kinda freaking out with anxiety.. I haven’t been social in a really long time. I have severe agoraphobia and I’m an introvert. It’s just my hubby, three kitty cats, one big pup and my love, Sora who’s a Yorkie. He never leaves my side. Anyway.. #Depression #Anxiety #BipolarDisorder #OCD #ADHD #PanicDisorder #EatingDisorders #ChronicPain #sciatica #Grief #BodyDysmorphicDisorder

#BodyDysmorphicDisorder

While we have already considered how the past can lead you to develop unhelpful appearance assumptions, more recent events can also trigger or exacerbate your underlying appearance concerns. These triggers can make you tune in to your negative body image, having it ‘flare up’ as a significant problem now. Often your triggers will be linked to your appearance assumptions in some way, that is, triggers will tend to be things that either support or threaten to support your appearance assumptions.

For example, lets say you assume “if I stand out in my appearance, others will ridicule me”, then a trigger that threatens to support that assumption could be an occasion where you will be the centre of attention (i.e., your own birthday party or wedding) – you haven’t stood out or been ridiculed yet, but the potential for it to happen looms. Whereas a trigger that actually supports the same assumption might be receiving a comment from someone (e.g., “you look terrible”) – as the concern that you will be ridiculed feels like it has actually happened.

Below are common examples of BDD triggers:

- Direct negative comments (e.g., “you’re ugly”, or “bad haircut”)

- Indirect comments (e.g., “you look different today”, or a dentist asking “would you like your teeth

whitened?”)

- Perceived or actual rejection by others (e.g., a relationship break up)

- Situations where your appearance may be evaluated by others (e.g., going on

a date, applying for a modelling job, meeting people for the first time)

- Situations where other’s attention may be on you (e.g., having to give a

speech, be in a photograph)

- Exposure to attractive people (e.g., in magazines, on television, or in person)

- Seeing an unflattering photograph or image of yourself in a reflective surface

- Noticing a slight change in your appearance (e.g., greying hair, loss of muscular tone with age)

You can refer to this:

resiliens.com/resilify/program/dealing-with-body-dysmorphia