“The first feeling I ever had about my appearance was panic.”
A recent article published on Refinery29 by recovery blogger Lindsey Hall opens with the sentence above, introducing readers to an engaging personal story from Lindsey that explains struggles and challenges she’s faced related to body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Read more of Lindsey’s story below, and be sure to click the link at the bottom for the full article as it appeared on the site.
My legs defined my purpose and masked my grief. I started to starve myself in order to obtain the “perfect figure” that I knew I could have if I just worked hard enough. I lost weight, but I was convinced my thighs only got bigger as the rest of me shrank. I didn’t feel better. Defeated, I binge-ate on the floor of my kitchen, hating myself for my ears, my arm hair, my thighs.
When I began treatment for BDD, I was shocked to learn that my obsessive childhood rituals weren’t a standard way of life. Like the boy who cried wolf, I lied to myself for so long that I no longer understood what was real about my body and what was not. In one exercise, a counselor had me take a ball of yarn and guess how big my thighs were with the string. After mulling it over for several minutes, I cut the yarn. Much to my horror, my string wrapped twice around my thighs. I carry those strings in my purse now to remind myself that my perception versus reality is often skewed.
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