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you know when I look in the mirror I
look at everything about my body and I
think more so my legs right now even
this looking around this is very wide
that's wide but you know it's okay I
have to think it it's fine like
everyone's good
everyone's legs are wider when they sit
down and big and whatnot but yeah it's
me I focus on that on a bad dates you
know a bad week it'll be every day I use
but oh god Wow I look awful
I so try and keep it to myself I never
really showed anyone it because I'm so
ashamed of feeling this way it's really
hard like even just getting next to you
now it's like it's you look beautiful
and try me and then I feel like a little
elephant next to you that's how it makes
me feel yeah yeah yeah
I mean what's like what is the impact of
all of that on you Charlie really tiring
I sort of wish that I didn't have it
it's like I just live a normal life and
friends and just enjoy your life itself
sorry
something like this that consumes my
mind so much is so difficult it's just
constantly there like honestly I just
hate what I see like I just can't stand
it
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a number of researchers in Australia are
trying to understand the different
aspects of body image disorders
professor Susan Russell and her team at
Swinburne University are investigating
something called body dysmorphic
disorder where you obsess over a
physical floor that other people can't
see
imagine you have a pimple on your nose
okay and your teenager you have this
pimple on your nose and every time you
walk past a reflective surface that
pimple just seems to become bigger to
you and you can become more and more
focused on it and you might spend longer
and longer looking at there you wouldn't
normally look in the mirror that's what
it's like for people with BDD they've
just become over visually focused on
their part of their body so what we've
been using to to study this
scientifically is a technology referred
to as eye tracking technology and it's
basically a camera that just monitors
what your eyes are doing they're using
this technique to try and understand if
people with BDD look at faces and bodies
differently to the way that most of us
do an infrared camera tracks my eye
movements while I look at different
faces including my own
I'm supposed to be guessing their
emotions sad happy angry disgusted what
I could see today from urine in this
exercise is a really nice typical
healthy pattern of looking at people's
faces what healthy people tend to do is
firstly look across our eyes and then
down to our mouth and the reason we do
that is our eyes and the mouth are very
revealing in terms of the muscle
movements and in terms of expression
this is a BDD pattern so you can see
that this is very different from the
triangle pattern that our healthy people
show and it doesn't matter what kind of
image we bring up or what kind of
tracking it's always very random so why
are their eyes going all over the place
they don't like looking at the salient
features and it's almost they don't know
that we're looking at the salient
features and will enable them to give a
quick and reliable answer and they do
this with all the kinds of images that
they look at it's not just faces they
don't pick up on the important features
to actually give them information about
how to make a decision so why are people
with body dysmorphic disorder like that
we think they might be genetically
predisposed to have an overactive visual
system which then is triggered by
environmental reactions to things what
it means for them is they develop their
symptoms of BDD which include that their
symptom of disgust for a particular body
part and the other thing that seems to
happen with our people with BDD is
they've become very socially anxious
because they know that they do this when
they go out there in the environment
they find things very confusing a lot of
the people that we see become very
socially isolated because they don't
want to go out and they don't want to
experience this stressful environment
and they also then because of their
beliefs about their body don't want
people looking at them
daniela has never been formally
diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder
so she's agreed to come to professor
Russell's lab to be tested so for this
task you'll be shown a series of faces
different pictures of human bodies as
well as tracking the way Daniela's eyes
move as she looks at faces and bodies
including her own they measure the
levels of activity in her brain as she
tries to identify and match faces that
show the same emotion ok Daniella we're
all finished we're coming to get you out
this test is designed to reveal whether
Daniela has a distorted perception of
facial expressions a key sign that she
might have BDD and the results confirm
her suspicions what we're looking at
here is the side profile of your brain
compared to a healthy person you are
seeing a lot more activity here in the
back of the brain in the visual cortex
and then in the front of the brain or
the prefrontal cortex were seeing quite
a lot of over activity which we wouldn't
have seen in a healthy control when
they're when they're performing this
task so you would be shown a fairly
typical pattern to person with body
dysmorphia interesting what's it like
for you to see these patterns show up
yeah interesting honestly felt like
maybe I don't have it I don't like I
don't have BDD yeah I don't have this
I'm you know I'm a normal person I see
things normally in the mirror I mean
everyone must you know have a fixation
on something I can't be that not normal
but seeing this hard from it process but
I guess you get somewhere from this file
it's validating your experiences
like others with BDD Daniela's brain
goes into overdrive when she tries to
read facial expressions something that
most of us can do easily
and her eye tracking results are the
final confirmation she looks at faces
and bodies with a classic BDD pattern I
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feel like having these results now is
almost reconfirming the fact that I
don't exactly see what other people see
I guess the good news is that these guys
are developing some therapies that can
help with stuff like this that's really
exciting I everyone can get some help
and hopefully this therapy works and we
can all work together and you know
living a happier life
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you