You begin to think about it, and notice that maybe you have a serious problem when one of your friends comes to you, and says they are genuinely concerned and worried about your health. Or they even tell you that you need to go to therapy and get help for the way you view yourself. There’s no worse feeling in the world than when someone straight up says that to your face.
Needless to say, ever since I was told this about myself, it eats me alive every single day.
Although I have overcome so much in my life in terms of my weight already, struggling with the way I look still is a part of my daily life. The way I feel about myself made me start to think maybe I never will overcome this horrendous disease constantly taking over my head: body dysmorphic disorder, a disease involving body image and obsessing over not liking the way one looks and feels on an everyday basis.
This is something that I cannot control and has been a part of my life. I didn't begin to realize my own mindset until being called out once, then twice, to being called out every single day for it.
For me, personally, as hard as this is to admit, I constantly lift my shirt up in a mirror to look at my stomach. I obsess over the fact of feeling like I am overweight. I do this so often it isn't even a thought in my mind. I’m at the point where I am entirely unaware that I do it, until being constantly told to stop by my friends. I do this even out in public, repeatedly lifting my shirt up in any mirror or at any chance I get just to get a glance at my stomach. Why do I do this? To be completely honest, I don’t know.
Body dysmorphic disorder is all in the head. It constantly makes you think and obsess. It's not liking your physical view of yourself. It makes you feel as if you're obese, when in reality, you're far from it. I feel like if I even skip going to the gym for a single day, I may LITERALLY gain 50 pounds because I didn’t burn off all of the food I ate that day.
With this disorder, you physically see yourself being heavier than the way others view you. What you see in a mirror is entirely different from what they see and what you actually are. Although being told this about myself made me feel like the absolute worst, I also think it was a wake-up call, considering that I never did truly notice this imperfection about myself.
So to those that told me, thank you. Not for the way you brought up this topic to me, which I would like to think could have been in a nicer way, but for making me aware of something that I now have acknowledged, and can prevent from becoming something worse than it already is.
