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sweetcarolinekisses · 5 years

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Do you have any tips or tricks for getting over severe body dysmorphia? As much as I want to feel comfortable in my own skin, I can’t get over how much I don’t like the way I look. I want to explore my sexuality, but I’m scared that once someone sees me completely nude, they aren’t going to be attracted to me no matter how close we’ve gotten :(

Body dysmorphia is a terrible thing. Although I wouldn’t call it severe I still struggle with it constantly. My strong feeling is if you feel you’ve got a severe case that you speak with a psychologist who’s had training and experience for helping in that specific area. I suggest this not to brush you off but because for all the negative stereotypes about (especially) academic psychology they’re often able to help when the issue is targeted and specific. And unless it’s associated with something deeper like eating disorders then dysmorphia can be fairly specific. The good thing about advice is one should never expect it shouhld be taken. But I at least recommend trying the idea out enough to see if there’s someone in easy travelling distance who seems confident they can help.

With that heartfelt disclaimer out of the way I can at least say a few of the things that I’ve used to cope and that others I’ve spoken to have said helped them.

#1: In opinion polls we get only one vote: The first is big and difficult: while we have and should have 100% immutable authority and autonomy over what is done to our bodies, such that if 100 people vote for us to jump off a cliff and we vote no then the motion fails by 1/100. We have absolute veto over what’s done.

So it might be surprising that we have exactly one vote over whether or not we’re attractive. And so if 100 people vote that we’re attractive and we say nope, then instead of winning 1 to 100 we lose 100 to 1! Conversely (though far less commonly) if we vote that we’re “the healthiest, sexiest, fittest ever” and 65 million vote that ahahah, no, you’re a carrot-top, out-of-shape troll... well 🤷‍♂️ So here’s a tricky thing though. If 99 people vote that we’re attractive and one single asshole says you’re not the... we have a hellish tendency to disrespect everyone else’s opinion because we agree with the one asshole.

We may not be able to do anything about our own self-image, but we have to take responsibility for rigging those votes when others say we’re actually ok.

#2: Familiarity breeds contempt:

You ever done that party trick where you pick some perfectly ordinary word -- “agree” for instance” or “scissors” -- and you say it over and over and over again? And you know how after just a minute or two the word stops having meaning and stops sounding familiar and just starts sounding weird and alien and even repulsive?

Guess who’s been looking at you every day since you were born?

Guess what can happen when you see the same thing every day, year after year after year?

After a while you stop seeing the person and start seeing only the flaws.

After a while you only see the flaws!

You ever seen someone else post a selfie and they’re ridiculously attractive to you but they have a weird caption like “sorry the specks on the carpet” or “please ignore the creases from my jeans?” Or, what’s even tougher, something like “don’t mind my uneven eyebrows” or “my hair’s a mess?” And they’re posing there in all their radiant glory and you’re going “wait, what, there’s carpet behind them?”

That’s because they (just like you) have filtered out their all their own fabulousness and all they see are the flaws.

So here’s a tip that’s extremely hard to relate to... until you put someone else in your shoes: bona fide eye-tracking research shows that when someone is presented with a photo their eyes immediately track to the most interesting (cough, attractive) parts of the person in the photo. Chances are you do exactly the same thing.

That’s because to every other human being on the planet you’re unique and new. And every one of them is scanning you for the features that will turn them on. Meanwhile every person on the planet sees themselves as a zit, a stretch mark, a flabby bicep, or some other thing that they’re sure everyone else will zero in on.

See, above: scan for reasons to be attracted to prospective partners, not to be repulsed.

The converse can be true -- I can’t remember the comedy but there was some character who was not only a slob but a jerk but they’d go on and on about how awesome their calves were. (Their calves were never visible, as part of the joke, but the point of the joke there was that they were fooling themselves looking at one possibly attractive feature instead of lifting a finger to bathe, dress, exercise, or, you know, be even marginally courteous.)

But the point here is sort of related to the first thing: when we’ve got body dysmorphia we’re the only ones who’ve got it!

In my case I think I have a really gross body because I expect it to look like Toby Maguire (the first Spiderman movie) or Daniel Ratcliff (Harry Potter.) Compact, muscular, round faces, big eyes -- just the classic mesopmorphic body type:

Instead I’m much more of a classic ectomorph -- tall, slender, lanky, and stretched.

Never mind, at all, that quite a few people think tall drinks of water are awesome. My mind’s eye says “stork” and I don’t think storks are attractive so I don’t think I’m attractive. My little walnut-sized brain wants to outvote you in the worst possible way ever.

The trick is learn to listen to others! You wouldn’t date you? Welcome to the club, I wouldn’t date me, even if we swing that way most of us would date ourselves!

Oh which raises another point: I’m straight and according to people who are attracted to men I have approximately zero taste in men. Which means, among other things, that if I did look the way I wanted to there’s a very real chance that nobody else would think I looked all that great.

And not to put to fine a point an extremely sensitive issue that can go beyond simply dysmorphia, but the body we want can be a big issue for folks who get intense about body modification, whether by jacking themselves into incredible-hulk imitators at the gym, or starving themselves to skeletons, or getting so many surgeries the tips of their noses begin to debride: often the shape we desire to be is less attractive to others. (Again, I’m talking about body image, not the very serious and extremely sensitive issues that drive people to body modification.

Ok, back to my main point: the trick is still to learn to listen to others. And that means most others. (Because there are toxic fetishists and codependents out there with Munchausen-by-Proxy fetishes who’ll get off on driving you to modify yourself literally to death.)

Ugh. Listen to others.

Take that leap of faith.

And one last thing: you know that old (heteronormative) line about how “for every jack there’s a jill?” Which, if you apply it extremely negatively, implies that “even the ugliest” person is going to be attractive to somebody. But turn that around because it’s just as true for the most fabulously desirable person on the planet Earth: no matter how many people are attracted to you pretty much all of us really only need one! (Pity the poor sex symbol who gets deluged with offers and only wants one person to love him or her or them.)

This morning I ended a piece saying if you want to find meaning in your life look for the two people who love you so much they’d give their life for you even though you don’t even know them. I’ll end this one the same way: whether or not you’re one of the people who thinks your attractive (and, really, for all the reasons listed above we’re probably not one of those) look for the people who love you. Period. Looks come and go. Love lasts longer.

Shorter version of my answer: If your dysmorphia gets in the way of you actually living your life do talk to someone who’s trained to help. And if not then learn to hear how others feel about you, not your own jaded, lying, sick-of-looking-at-me eyes.

Awesome question and I worry I haven’t answered at all. Thanks for asking though.

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Update: There’s a reason I tried to focus on internalizing the appreciation of others instead of the perfectly legitimate, reasonable point that one’s lover will see you as more than skin-deep beautiful. The problem being that your man or woman can be ass over teakettle for you, yes, and also your hot and sexy body, but! But dysmorphia means you think they're lying or "just being nice." So in a way it's *not* whether they love you "no matter how you look." If they say you're beautiful you gotta accept that you're beautiful even if you can't see it in yourself.

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