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Evidence for a brain disorder.

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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby Bilbo Baggins » Thu Oct 30, 2014 11:44 am

I'm the same as you Mr John. On my good days I am fully behind the idea that our brains are totally misfiring and processing visual information wrong, I only have to look at how I saw myself before I had BDD and how obsessive I am now.

Unfortunately though when the bad days hit this all goes out the window and not a single person can reassure me that this is all in my mind.

It's almost like bi-polar reasoning.
The worst thing about BDD is, that after 25 years on this planet, i still have no idea who i am. Is it wrong to believe you are cursed?
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby margharris » Thu Oct 30, 2014 8:58 pm

I think when you are in BDD mode, that centre of your brain is on fire. So everything gets filtered through the thick haze of doubt. You doubt everything but the intrusive thoughts that doubt your look.
I see it as an internalizing of the doubt you might have experienced in your early life. Then your doubt attached to the things you did. The light you switched on or did you? The tap you turned off tight or did you? The crack you should have stepped on or did you? Better do it again to be sure.
As you got older you internalized the doubt as it attached to your biggest concern at the time. How you looked. How you rated yourself. When you dont know for sure where you sit, it is easy to turn to others for confirmation. You start to notice if others notice your look or how others look for a comparison scale. You start to draw conclusions and create stories to explain for yourself the analysis you have made about what constitutes good looks.
And so it all started with a doubt. And it all started and continues because of the doubts that keep you hooked into not accepting yourself because you cant when you dont know for sure what you are accepting??????? You have to doubt the accepting dont you? or should you accept the doubting?
Living with doubt might be like living with alzheimers. Maybe you have got to trust those who dont have the disorder to tell you the truth because you can never know for sure. Marg
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby Nothinglasts » Fri Oct 31, 2014 3:06 am

I find the idea that BDD can be boiled down to resulting from a dysfunctional brain to be #######4. It's far more complex than that. I have a strong bias for aesthetics and I care immensely about the ways things look - everything. Surgery has helped me achieve what I consider a more acceptable look, I'd be dead without it; yet the BDD treatment orthodoxy is that surgery doesn't work. Well, it can and has for me - partially.
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby margharris » Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:28 am

But science has to nail things down to the bricks and mortar of what must be identifiably different in a person with BDD. They have found abnormally active circuits. That is the facts. A person with BDD generally doesn't have any abnormality in looks. Of course there is probably strong genetics behind this phenomena.
So
I have a strong bias for aesthetics and I care immensely about the ways things look
,
is the reason your doubting fired up to create BDD. If you hadn't cared then you would have been able to accept the doubt. But surgery hasn't removed the doubt even though you have a more acceptable look. The doubt will always connect to something you might fear or care about the most.
Accepting that you doubt your looks doesn't mean you accept that you are ugly. You don't have to give the doubt any meaning other than it is a thought coming from your anxious brain. Turning doubt into a negative fear is the follow on that you try to avoid but most likely will feel intensely.

Better understanding of how you create the feelings of danger from the doubting is a rational step to take. It is the story that is missing in the jigsaw. Marg
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby L12345aura » Fri Oct 31, 2014 12:15 pm

i really think bdd may be just part of obsessive compulsive personality disorder...also my father had bdd when he was in his 20s (about his hair like ur son, marg)
i am also obsessed with the health and safety of my family, and from ages 8-around 12 i had cleaning OCD as well
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby margharris » Fri Oct 31, 2014 9:40 pm

Yes BDD is an internalized OCD. When you are younger your OCDs attach to the doing and caring about what you see as important. Cleaning was important for you, so your OCD attached to that. You might have experienced some form of dread feeling if you didn't do it thoroughly. You would have experienced a doubt that was felt as a danger.
But as you got older, appearance started to matter so the doubt attached to that. The checking, touching, worrying that something was wrong created the BDD. The stories all of you tell try and remove the doubt with certainty. You try and confirm there really is something wrong. You become terrified by your own conclusions. You see your theory confirmed in every comparison and encounter you make.
I think at this stage you lose sight of the original doubt that was the source of the BDD and get caught up in the retell of stories. They become your truth so you can dismiss every other viewpoint. I suppose you have cured the doubt by claiming you are ugly for certain. Then you have to cure the ugly with surgery as that seems at least tangible.
But it really cant work out in the long term. Once you find your appearance acceptable for a short time. The doubt is likely to start to claim you again. This must happen because you really haven't managed the doubt in the first place. just the legacy of the doubt.
And yes, I agree there is genetics. It is not bad parenting or how you look. It is all about what your brain is telling you or doesn't know that cause the worry. Marg
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby margharris » Fri Oct 31, 2014 10:32 pm

I think being able to tell yourself you will always have a doubt about your look but that is OK because it is only a symptom of how your brain works, is so important to your recovery long term.
You will not be able to stop the thoughts that cause the obsessing. The thoughts will keep coming to send you worries about your look. The trick is to be able to attribute the obsessive thinking to your OCD brain. You have the doubting thoughts again but that is just your brain being anxious.
You don't need to check or ask because you never will be certain. You manage the doubting by attributing it to how your brain works. You accept your doubting will come in each day.

Hope some of you are getting some help out of this. Marg
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby appledown » Fri Oct 31, 2014 11:13 pm

I'm grateful to you for taking the time to post these thoughts Marg. The thought of living forever with this doubt is horrible though, i miss the time when looking in the mirror was more simple - i feel like it has become a battle zone now and that I will never feel whole again. The times when I look and look okay feel treacherous, the times when I look and look awful feel like the terrible truth.

I have been watching other people and how they look different all the time also, in one light or another, turned this way or that. I understand that what I see in my bathroom mirror standing still in one light in one moment is completely artificial and unreliable. On the one hand I can see that it's ridiculous to base my mood that day on such a fickle thing, on the other, what else do I have to know how I seem to others? without even that I feel almost like I have no face at all.
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby appledown » Fri Oct 31, 2014 11:43 pm

...It occurs to me that the way I really look might be some kind of average of all the ways I look in the mirror?
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Re: Evidence for a brain disorder.

Postby margharris » Sat Nov 01, 2014 6:24 am

I understand how living with doubt might seem unpalatable but in my experience it is the search for certainty that causes the most problem. Accepting you have doubts is merely the acceptance of your brain being prone to doubt due to its OCD make up. The fact that you doubt your appearance only means appearance is important to you. It doesn't mean there is something wrong or that you are ugly or need something fixed. When you know what your doubt means then I hope it will not carry that burst of fear that it does now for you.
So when you head to the mirror you will not be sure of how you look. No battle just acceptance of not knowing. There is no risk in telling yourself you look OK. Your life will improve when you do.

I know when I am anxious over heights, (vertigo) my eyesight goes first. I see things swimming in front of me. I know they are not swimming really. It is just the anxiety translating the fear.
For you, your anxiety over not knowing how you look can also translate into you morphing or exaggerating a flaw wen actually people without BDD cant see anything at all. When you know that is how your anxiety works it should help. Marg
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