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Perception accuracy in BDD.

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Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby margharris » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:20 am

This latest theory on the forum revolves around the assumption that personal experiences are accurate. The perception is 100% accurate in its reporting to the brain. It is at this point that I would hesitate to go any further with the theory. I am very certain that this notion of infallible personal perception and judgement cannot stand critical scrutiny.

Under the influence of powerful stress hormones or fear chemicals the perception is always hijacked. An anorexic fearing fat will not see themselves as painfully thin even when confronted by the evidence that is plainly seen by everyone else.
A person in the grips of height vertigo will often report the sensation that the room is spinning, although they clearly know that it isn’t.
These examples of other fear based disorders prove without doubt the ability of the perception to be fundamentally flawed and unreliable.

So for someone to believe they have accurate perception while feeling the fear of BDD cant be considered a reliable fact. We have enough personal accounts to know that the perception of ugliness is felt, but never to my knowledge, validated by anyone else. This is the nature of all BDDers and is part of the cluster of symptoms that make up the disorder. This is why the word perceived is in the definition. Perception is not reality and is not accurate often. You can check countless examples of youtube feeds of people with BDD to see dodgy perception.

So what does this theory offer and why would it be proposed given the weak assumption it is based on. Well, the trajectory of the thinking provides the clue. If your perception is accurate then you must reach a conclusion you are ugly. The conscious brain reaches this conclusion as a solve for the doubt and uncertainty that is felt. That doubt and uncertainty about how one looks is constantly being generated as worry in the BDDer’s brain. Making a judgement that confirms ugliness is a way to give certainty and beat the fear of nagging doubt.

But you can’t wrestle a fear to the ground to kill it. You can’t root it out at the core. You can only tame it with softening your realisation. So although the conscious brain can come up with this answer for doubt, the subconscious will not accept it. It is not what the subconscious knows to be true about you. So solving the dilemma of doubt in the negative space is likely to end in a roadblock. You will have to double back to where the first mistake in logic was made. Otherwise your solution will not be acceptable to what the larger part of you knows to be true. Your subconscious will not allow you to swallow a lie.

Your own emotions are a better guide to whether what you are telling yourself is true or not. Your perception is not good at telling you truth. If it doesn’t feel good the thought is the wrong thought to think. So listen to your own inner guidance. If it doesn’t feel good stop yourself thinking it. Don’t talk up something you fear. It will never feel good.

You are all wonderfully made and worthy of love and respect. It feels good to remind yourself of that. You suffer a lot with BDD not knowing this as your reality. It is really helpful to know your perception is the problem and not the way you look. You have your own lie detector that you can listen to all the time. Try to listen to what your emotions tell you. You can't lie to yourself without your emotions letting you know strongly.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby Toon Link » Thu Apr 28, 2016 8:46 am

BDD forums are essentially useless in my opinion because nobody knows what anybody looks like therefore every time someone comes on and says they are the uglies person alive and their defects are 100% real, you try to offer some solution and you get back "you don't know what I look like, I'm really ugly, How dare you make light of my turmoil."

It just ends up being a massive circle jerk of self pity.

When you see actual people with BDD and can actually corroborate their personal experiences/opinion of themselves and match that with what they really look like it becomes a massive eye opener. If you're reading and you suspect you may have BDD then you need to get help as soon as possible because sitting on forums doing nothing and reinforcing the belief that you are everything you think you are will absolutely ruin you in the long run. Listen to the people who care about you and want you to get better. They aren't lying to 'protect you' and they are hurting too.

Something certainly isn't right with us. We don't have enough answers and I'm not smart enough to be the one to make the breakthrough but I hope somebody does soon because the amount of people who's lives are needlessly ruined because of this horrendous disorder is unreal.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby margharris » Thu Apr 28, 2016 10:50 pm

Once you know perception is a two way street and a lot of what you perceive is coming from how your brain is informing you then you can let go of the idea that your perception is accurate.
It can't be accurate when you have an active emotion guiding how you fix your gaze. That in turn influences what your self talk becomes. It all has to fit together.

The anorexic has an active fear of fat. She fixates on something that reminds her of fat. Then the self talk has the same context. " I look hideous, look at that roll of fat, I should be banned from eating ever.." But she is standing in front of a mirror gaunt, waif thin.

So the hypothesis is that the ability of the brain to need to confirm its feelings and make sense of them dominates the brain. So the vision fixates or hones in on any detail with the intent to confirm the feelings. The brain needs context. Fixating gives context.

Language then interprets in a steady flow of thought. But what is being interpreted is the context for the emotion. The whole picture is not being seen.

So if someone who was heavily enveloped with fear, say social anxiety, was to walk outside, he would be able to generate a fear story to satisfy his brain. He would be able to point out people looking at him and talking about him. He would be able to talk continuously about all in front of him he was fearing. That is how this top down informing of what we see occurs.

So with active BDD the same thing occurs. Your perception gets hijacked by emotion. You don't see accurately. You have to see something that is a match for the emotion you feel. It has to make sense to you, so your brain selects what you see and creates a story to report to you. Your mind can be amazingly deceptive.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby margharris » Fri Apr 29, 2016 1:31 am

When you recognize your perception is faulty in BDD. Lets call that truthfully VERY FAULTY. You open up to a much better understanding of what BDD is. Think of it more like a glitch is how your brain works. You are a biological unit after all. So you have to work with your brain rather than your face to fix the problem.

:roll: This is bald me after tearing my hair out with how many of you still don't get this.
:shock:
Your emotions are the best guide to tell you how your brain is working. So questions to ask are directed at uncovering the links between thinking, feeling and behaving:

What am I letting myself think now?
What am I feeling?
What do I want?
How am I getting in my own way?
What can I do differently?

So using your emotions you get control over what you let yourself think. You deliberately create your thoughts with focus rather than react mindlessly. What you really want is to feel at ease. It is not about having the right looking nose. It is about feeling better with what you have got. So I think it is possible to talk yourself out of BDD. You have to learn deliberate focus. This should work to tame the fear.
I am very in favour of labeling the emotion so you really own it. Then the emotion doesn't have a chance to totally run away with your logic. If you are feeling terrified or lonely or scared just name that to yourself. Then you can explore the context of your thinking. You can then ratchet down the emotion by improving your thoughts.

It just feels so much better to tell yourself: " Maybe I don't look too bad after all. Maybe I am actually half decent. Maybe my brain just doesn't let me see that. " Now you don't feel so terrified. You are thinking more in harmony with what the larger part of you knows to be true. All of you is now working in better synthesis. You want to work towards feeling comfortable and at ease. That is where joy is found.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby abstracted » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:13 am

When you recognize your perception is faulty in BDD. Lets call that truthfully VERY FAULTY. You open up to a much better understanding of what BDD is. Think of it more like a glitch is how your brain works. You are a biological unit after all. So you have to work with your brain rather than your face to fix the problem.

There is a part of me that gets that, because logically people's faces don't just up and change from one day and one mirror to the other. it's just that in the moment it's like my brain shuts that part out completely and says "nope, you're ugly, nope nope nope, it's all lies." It becomes the centre focus and I can't concentrate on anything else.

The problem (for me) is mostly that when it's in the moment, I have a hard time remembering stuff I learn in therapy. I guess it's something I have to practice.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby margharris » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:39 am

Yes, that is what happens. Higher logic is shut down. Your brain creates a thought that is a vibrational match to how you are feeling. That is law of attraction at work. You feel alarm so the thought must match that. Your brain tells you," nope it lies." That feels so s##t but it is a match so you feel a resolve oddly. In that moment you have given your feelings context. You just don't realise your brain is generating this bad feeling all by itself without danger present. Your brain is firing to make you feel unsafe.Your perception is trying to make sense of what you feel by creating thoughts to think. Your perception is operating in a top down way so you get stuck fixating, looking for what is wrong. You think perception is being directed by what you see when it is really being directed by how you feel. You think perception is accurate when it isn't. It is only matching what you feel not what is real.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby margharris » Fri Apr 29, 2016 9:49 pm

Thanks for the reply abstracted. Can you tell me what the emotion is when you are telling yourself 'Nope its lies.' Are you feeling terrified or something else?
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby abstracted » Sat Apr 30, 2016 7:05 pm

margharris wrote:Thanks for the reply abstracted. Can you tell me what the emotion is when you are telling yourself 'Nope its lies.' Are you feeling terrified or something else?

Yeah, I guess when it's really bad it's like panic. It usually happens when I'm outside and it's windy (messing up my hair). I feel like I need to get inside and to a mirror to correct it immediately, or go home if it's too messed up.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby euro209 » Sat Apr 30, 2016 7:56 pm

abstracted wrote:
margharris wrote:Thanks for the reply abstracted. Can you tell me what the emotion is when you are telling yourself 'Nope its lies.' Are you feeling terrified or something else?

Yeah, I guess when it's really bad it's like panic. It usually happens when I'm outside and it's windy (messing up my hair). I feel like I need to get inside and to a mirror to correct it immediately, or go home if it's too messed up.



Abstracted, to me it seems absolutely obvious that you have a fear of being or being seen as ugly.
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Re: Perception accuracy in BDD.

Postby abstracted » Sat Apr 30, 2016 8:40 pm

euro209 wrote:
abstracted wrote:
margharris wrote:Thanks for the reply abstracted. Can you tell me what the emotion is when you are telling yourself 'Nope its lies.' Are you feeling terrified or something else?

Yeah, I guess when it's really bad it's like panic. It usually happens when I'm outside and it's windy (messing up my hair). I feel like I need to get inside and to a mirror to correct it immediately, or go home if it's too messed up.



Abstracted, to me it seems absolutely obvious that you have a fear of being or being seen as ugly.

Mostly being ugly. Often other people don't even come into the equation, I'm just incredibly disgusted and uncomfortable with the idea of being ugly.
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