Finally the pieces of the puzzle that explain BDD and OCD are able to be put together. That is really exciting for the future recovery of those who continue to suffer.
Emotions are the key to the unlocking. We just have never known what they were trying to tell us. We have miscued there significance for most if not all our lives. Emotions are there to help us know whether the current thought is suitable to think or not. If the current thought does not harmonize well within our body, we get a negative sensation. That tells us our thinking is going out of focus with our own well being. We just never knew that.
So what BDD and OCD looks like is someone who has a really bad thought and gets a really hard notification from emotion but doesn't delete the thought. What happens next sets up the illness. The person miscues the notification from emotions to imply there is wrongness with them and not with the thought itself. This wrongness in the case of BDD focuses on the body but wrongness can just as easily be focused on something you were supposed to do as in the case of OCDs. The person has a strong awareness usually that there is doubt about all this but they seldom pick that it is the thought itself that is what is wrong. Self blame and doubting have become standard diagnostics.
To consolidate the erroneous bogus thinking the person usually hyper analyses and draws on past experiences of those who did them wrong. They need to convince themselves that their own thinking is truth. But the truth never needs proving or convincing because it feels different in the body because we have received it is 'known'. That is without doubt.
And how do we know this for sure. Emotion is created by the current made as the thought is processed by the body. No one creates your emotion but you as you think a thought. The thought fits in harmony with your body or it doesn't.
So in the past you have gone to bed to manage the strong emotions that attack you all day as a result of your thinking. But now you know it is the thought alone that is wrong and must be wrong for you to feel this bad.. What can you do?
Well most of you, will continue to argue that your thinking is not the cause of your anxiety. The defending, arguing for, pushing against and claims of visual evidence are not up to fighting your own emotions. Your emotions don't lie even when you do.
So maybe you can remember back when you first got that twingy feeling that something was wrong. It was the thought you were currently thinking. The thought was not feeling acceptable to your body. You always have emotional guidance streaming to you. Link in with it and you can turn this around the moment you do. You can't trust what you think but you can trust how the thought feels. Be guided by that to think better.

Wish you better sooner. Marg

I think I see BDD now as a wake up call to understanding about who we are and why we have come.
This illness, like all OCDs, shines a light on the connection between our own restless thinking self and our own feeling inner being. It is as though there has been two of us that need to now be linked up. The illness forces one to focus on the powerful emotions. You can't escape. Our emotions have been greatly underestimated. In fact we have often been taught to hide emotions. We certainly have never been taught to use them as a sophisticated guidance system.
But we do have loads of sensing guidance already. We like to know not to put our hand on the hot stove. We like to know when the sun is too strong. We like to know the food is off. In the same way we just might like to know when our thinking is off.
What happens when we have a thought that feels off but we just stay on it. That was the argument we had yesterday. What about that convo we had that felt off but we didn't say, " better go..see ya". How did that end? Did we feel good after listening to a half hour download of criticism? When it doesn't feel good that is our cue to get off that train.
We do know this stuff. That is why we no longer en mass listen to the news or read newspapers. We don't want more stuff to focus on that does not feel good. We want to shout to newsmakers to tell us something we would like to hear.
Well that is what your inner being is telling you emphatically too. " Tell me something I would like to hear" Although it is very difficult for you to believe, your thoughts just are not aligned with what your inner being thinks. So you feel the discord in a strong way. The thought you think sets up a vibration in your body that you register as distress.
Your emotions are your guidance to let you know early whether you are going off road with your thoughts.They are like the bumper strip on the side of the road. They help you harness your thinking so you stay on the path of contentment. Contented is really where you wanted to be most of the time. That is that good feeling place where you can anticipate all good things coming your way.
So when you feel strong emotion that is your call to shift focus to something that feels better or get off that subject altogether. Of course you can stay on this off topic but you know you will end up feeling bad. No good outcome from a bad feeling journey.
So it never was your appearance but the thought you had about your appearance that was off. Your inner being just would never join you in those thoughts you chose to think. There was never going to be a happy party held around those thoughts. God was trying to tell you to link into the wisdom coming through to you in the form of your own emotions. Your own emotions are always giving you feedback. God's emotions are working in you every minute telling you there is a better thought to think. When you really know this as your truth then you set yourself free from rogue unworthy thoughts for good. And that really will be good. That was the purpose of your BDD. Awakening you to all that you are.
It took us all a long time to know. But we have arrived at a sound destination where it is possible to know and possible to have a great life. Just listen to the power in your emotions. It is like a radio dial that needs setting up so you stop living in the static. You find that station called contentment and cherish its resonance. Appreciate whatever you can and the journey of knowing that got you there. In that moment of knowing you will see the world differently.
Now this emotional guidance is a skill to learn. It will take time. But there is no going back to not knowing once you do know. Emotions are your bumper strip, your white cane. Not every thought is worthy of being thought. You can always ask your inner being for a better thought to think. That better thought will pop into your mind in an instant.
It all works out in the end. Have faith. It does help....

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Well a few years have past by now. We did have some set backs that almost propelled life over the cliff but we did learn a lot in that process.
My son did recover from his BDD. He still has some residual concerns but they don't bother him as much as they do me.
His life did fall over though. The girl of his dreams turned out not to be. In fact she had vastly more problems than he. With a child in the mix he had to head for the law courts. No sane person should ever go there. What takes place there would kill off the most sane of us given enough exposure. The experience of the legal system brought us to our knees. Medications were increased to help him cope but ultimately no one could cope. We had to turn back and let the child go. The mother could accomplish her desired international child abduction with the robust approval of the judiciary.
This situation is not a light load to have to carry.
I had learnt the importance of emotional guidance by this stage. So I was practicing changing thoughts to others more wanted and writing them on the white board I had placed on the fridge. When he was crying, I asked him what the thought was, he was just now thinking. He would tell me and together we would try and create a make peace thought to counter it. He had to come to the place where he was free to start over with improved understanding of how he needed to be actively managing his thinking.
I can't say he has reached that place. Learning to bring awareness to thought and how it feels is a new skill most of us have never learnt. We never understood the need. The rollercoaster of emotions that is typically the lot of all BDDers is still present. I just have to try and sell him the message that he does have full control over them. It takes recognizing that he does have thought choice and can direct his thinking to what truly feels best to think. Guidance is always coming in the form of emotion. You just have to care more about how you feel. If you feel bad stop..it is that thought now that has to be tweeked. Find relief by tuning into your own wisdom. Hopefully we can get off this bus at this stop. We can learn this skill of letting emotions guide our thinking. If it doesn't feel good it isn't good. Wish you well. Marg

It is about 9 months since starting this blog. A lot has changed over these months. My son has gone from a bedridden psychotic to a competent young man. He is now employed, living with his girlfriend and is only required to see his psychiatrist once a month. The crisis has been resolved.
By his own account he is 95% recovered and is in the best head-space he can ever remember. So why do I think this occurred?

What I now realize is that my son was ready for a cure. His ego was in fragments. He had no energy invested to fight for his own beliefs. He wanted to find someone to give him hope. BDD thinking didn’t work and he wanted to think differently. So he being in such a bad way inadvertently worked in his favour. He had no defences that wanted to dismiss help. He was no longer ego invested to prove he was right to anyone.

We meet the best professor in the field we could have ever hoped for. He had done research work with Katherine Phillips. He had many patients he had treated. He could appreciate my son’s fears and was warm and compassionate. My son knew that the professor knew and in that exchange a bond was formed. The professor’s beliefs were firmly based in reality. My son was able to hear and incorporate the views of the professor without a fight. This had never happened with any other therapist. My son was able to understand reality through his connection to someone he admired and trusted. It is as though he actually got for the first time that the professor was invested in telling him the truth. We all had been but he never understood that.

The medication altered my son’s brain chemistry. Prozac was increased over a month until a therapeutic result was obtained. 60mg worked at around 9 to 10 weeks. The dose was later pulled back to 40mg after a big improvement was already well underway. Had there been no improvement a dose of up to 100mg might have been required. Initially Lyrica was used as an adjunct to manage an intolerable level of anxiety. We moved from 150mg to 300 mg as needed. Some sexual issues and insomnia are side effects needing medication still but they are manageable.

No CBT has ever been offered. As BDD is primarily a thought disorder, originating in the brain chemistry, it was consistent that treating the biochemistry would resolve the thinking. Any residual behaviours would be challenged as thoughts became realistic. That is exactly what happened. He can now tell me no one cares because he doesn’t any more. So almost all his compulsions fell away as his thinking became real.

ACT therapy was the type of approach the case worker who came to the house used. Acting according to what you valued, meant that my son was to keep very busy doing stuff that mattered. He took up cooking with a passion that filled the whole day. He reconnected to all his friends and made regular meetups with them. His enthusiasm for life reignited. So a super effort in time management was required to beat the addiction to intrusive thought attacks.

I can’t underestimate my own contribution as well. I wrote the blogs as we went and he read them. He knew he had to resist compulsions. He still does. Over time it got easier.

So that is our recipe for recovery. Not easy but doable. Keep trying to find your personal recipe. A word of caution. Surgery is not an option to consider, that is the truth.

Hope we have been able to help. Marg

It is a little over 4 months since starting with the professor. The professor’s approach is to medicate the biology that underpins the disorder. The amygdala in the brain has been hijacked by anxiety. The amygdala usually has two functional circuits to create alarm. A fast circuit tells us that alarm exists and we should run. The second circuit goes to higher areas of the brain and is aimed to provide feedback about what is actually wrong. This second circuit allows the alarm system to subside once the danger passes. These circuits are not functioning correctly in BDD. Medication attempts to reset this alarm system.

My son has been on a cocktail of meds to manage a very severe, stage 4, bed rescue of his BDD. After being house bound and psychotic for most of the year, the health professionals thought he would never recover. There had been talk of him going to community housing as few people thought I could manage him long term. That was before we met the professor. That was also before we realised the psychosis had been brought on by the use of Seroquel. The off label use of antipsychotics for BDD now seems questionable. Any exacerbation of symptoms on such meds needs to prompt an immediate review. In our case the more psychotic he became the more antipsychotics he was prescribed. I doggedly approached a higher echelon of medicos after exhausting the lower ranks. Ultimately, I reached the research professor who lives and breathes this. He could live in his rooms. He is that dedicated. He even returns emails about meds on Sunday. After 4 months my son’s life has returned.

I asked my son how much he has improved and he answered 90%. Now that isn’t a miracle but it seems near enough for us to state that meds work. My son’s regime is now: Lyrica 75mg twice daily for GAD. Prozac 50mg in the morning. Minipress 1mg for sleep ( used in PTSD). The doc has been quite adamant that he is not to reduce the dose as he might bring on a return of symptoms.

At the same time, an outreach worker has come to the house. Her approach is to help him reconnect to life. This treats the behaviours of BDD as an addiction. My son must remain active throughout the day. He now cooks most days. This gives him something to do in the house. Reading the recipes and getting ingredients helps keep him in active focus. He has to plan concerts and do catch up with friends. He now has a novel he is reading and a new membership of the local library. An old pinball obsession has also been revived. He has had a new girlfriend for about 4 months who is keen to have him move in full time.

It was only last session with the professor that hair was really mentioned. The BDD seems to be falling away without doing anything directed towards it. His self care of hair remains atrocious as he still has ideas that hair is like candy floss. He doesn’t wash but cuts it to barely pinchable length. I don’t know when he does this but he knows he shouldn’t be doing it in response to stress. If one does start talking about anything BDD, he does start to become noticeably more anxious as he defends it still. So I can see that at this stage CBT might be counterproductive. The professor talked about him being in the consolidation stage of his recovery. He is to have medical clearance from work for another three months.

So there is no touching, checking, online browsing, talking it up and comparing going on. Most of the behaviours from his compulsion list have gone. But there is still the ideas. My son now recalls times past when someone mentioned hair and a celeb losing his looks and he would feel that pang of anxiety. He felt the anxiety even when it related to someone else. The notion of genetics made him connect his future to his own father and he then pronounced by prediction a future calamity. He was doomed by his own mind. These ideas that he values have formed circuitry around the amygdala in his brain. Whether he can be ever free of these ideas, I am not sure. We all age an...

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