- Hey everyone, today's video topic is BDD,
or Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
What is it and what do we do if we have it?
So stay tuned.
(calming music)
So like I said, today's video topic
is BDD, or Body Dysmorphic Disorder,
which I'll call BDD from now on,
cause it's like (babbling),
it's too much to say, right?
Many of you checked out my live broadcast
with Brian Cuban and he talked a lot about BDD.
So if you haven't had a chance
to take a look at that, I would hop online
on my YouTube channel and look that up.
You can probably just search for Brian Cuban's name,
under my channel and you'll see our hangout.
And he talks about BDD in his new book, as well,
"Shattered Image", so if you haven't picked that up,
it's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
So another great resource.
So what is Body Dysmorphic Disorder and how do we know
if we have it?
So BDD is really, I'm going to read from the DSM
because I don't want to mis, I don't know, mis-quote
it or say it in the wrong way, because I want
to be very clear about this.
BDD is a preoccupation with a defect in appearance.
The defect is either imagined, or if a slight
physical anomaly is present, the individual's concern
is markedly excessive.
So in regular terms what does that mean?
It means that we have an obsession about one part
of our appearance and we believe that this one part
is not good, doesn't look good, we don't feel good about it.
We obsess over it.
We may avoid mirrors and shiny surfaces all together.
We may spent a lot of time in front of the mirror
getting ready for a while and then avoid them.
We may not go out because of this.
The most common that I know of are acne, scars, hair,
wrinkles, one of them that they say is vascular ness
is like veins and seeing veins under your skin,
and also like paleness or redness of the skin,
puffiness of a certain area,
thinness of a certain area.
Brian talked about his hair and how
the, his like frizziness and how he had thinning hair
on top of his head made him very self conscious
and was part of his BDD.
Now I want to make sure that you're not confusing BDD
with any of the eating disorders.
Any of them, because they're not the same at all.
Anorexia, if you watch in my old video,
I talk about how one of the diagnostic criteria
for anorexia is when we won't see what we really look like.
Like we'll look in the mirror and even if
we're severely underweight, we'll think we're overweight
and we're not happy with the way that our body looks.
That is not BDD, that is anorexia.
And one of the diagnostic criteria of BDD is that
it can't be better accounted for through another diagnosis.
So whatever's going on, we can't say it's something else
because there isn't anything else.
It's just BDD.
So, that is, I wanna make that very clear,
because a lot of people will make the two like
they're the same and they are very much not.
So along with having a complaint and feeling
like they have a defect in their appearance,
the preoccupation with this will significantly
impair their daily life,
so if it's school, let's say they're obsessed about
their hair, they will be late to school
because they're doing their hair for like four hours
to get it just right, because one hair
may be out of whack.
It might be like sticking up, you know,
who knows what it is.
Or if it, if you're a guy and you're worried about
the thinness of your hair, and all of your,
you don't have a hat that works or matches what
you're gonna, I don't know, but you won't leave the house
until you have something where you feel better about it.
And the interesting thing about BDD is that a lot of times
we'll obsess about it and we spend so much time
working on that area and focusing on that area
because that makes us feel better in the moment
to attend a party or go to school
or just leave the house to go anywhere,
we'll spend all this time worrying about it
because it makes us able to do that,
but it also perpetuates the disorder.
So by spending all that time, we're almost like,
it's almost like an eating disorder when
we're feeding the negative voice and
we need to actually feed our healthy self instead, right?
And that's kind of what we're doing.
We're feeding the Body Dysmorphic voice
instead of the healthy voice.
And so what do we do if we have this diagnosis
and we have BDD?
The first thing that we do is we want to see a therapist,
and a CBT therapist.
I know I've talked about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
in a lot of my other videos, and I will do a video
on CBT therapy in the future,
but there are books and workbooks available.
You can Google it if you're curious about what it's like,
but any therapist worth their salt
knows how to do CBT and can do it very effectively.
And a lot of the CBT that they will do with you
if you have BDD, this is a lot of acronyms, blah,
but what they'll do with you is almost kind of
I don't know, it's like if you have a fear of something
and they'll slowly bring you closer to it.
They'll do that with your Body Dysmorphia.
And don't get scared, it's not like,
oh my gosh, you're so afraid of your hair
getting out of place that we're gonna put you on a boat
and we're gonna drive that boat on a lake, no.
They're not gonna do that.
It's more, more like okay, you've had the time to prepare,
you've gotten everything ready, now we're out of the house
and we're gonna stay out a little bit longer than you'd
want to, and I want you to rate your anxiety on a scale
of one to ten, ten being like I'm going to run
screaming and crying home; one being I'm calm
as a cucumber, I can go to sleep now.
And then we'll slowly increase the amount of anxiety
you feel, and we'll use tools to calm you back down,
to bring you back down to like a three, right?
So that's sort of what they will do.
It's part of the CBT therapy that works best for people
with Body Dysmorphia.
And the second thing that we can do for ourselves
and they find to be very effective
is getting on an anti-depressant or an SSRI,
or an SNRI, just to add a few more acronyms
in there for you, but if you see your general
practitioner or your psychiatrist,
and they are aware of your diagnosis, they will
often times try these medications first
because SSRI's and SNRI's tend to really help
with anxiety and anxiety's a huge component of BDD.
And so they will also put that on board to see
if that can help.
So know that you're not alone.
Know that there are things that we can do
that we can help ourselves, that we don't have to
keep being preoccupied with this thought
and keep worrying and worrying and feeling like
we'll never get out of it because you can,
and people do, and we will.
And also, know that BDD is not associated with
eating disorders, those are completely separate things.
Okay?
I hope you found this video helpful.
If any of you suffer from BDD and you've had that
diagnosis, please share your comments below.
Share what's worked for you.
Share your tips that you learned from therapy
so that we can each help one another, right?
Cause we're working together towards a healthy mind
and a healthy body.
(upbeat music)