Life After Treatment For BDD

How did your BDD treatment program change your life?

How my life has changed since I got treatment from BDD is a complete 180 degree success story, and sometimes I don't even believe it's mine. You kind of live outside of yourself. I was at a point where I wanted to kill myself. I hated life. I only focused on my appearance, I only focused on my skin, and every other thing that was wrong with me. I never in a million years would even joke about calling myself normal, or even attractive. I had no hobbies, no goals, no life. Now I'm finally being able to do the things I want to do. I was able to go back to college and graduate and get a college degree. I was able to go to martial arts, which I loved which I hadn't done since I was a little kid because of the way it affected me. I'm able to date, I have friends, and I'm able to leave the house when I want. I'm able to get out of the house quicker, interact with my family, get a job, go for my goals and my career.

How is your daily routine different now that you've overcome BDD?

My daily routine is so different. First of all, I'm not doing any of the cleanliness things. I wash my sheets once a month like the normal human. I wash my towels once a week. I wash my clothes, do laundry when it piles up. So, first of all I have all this free time. Hours I've shut off - four, five, six, seven, sometimes ten hours I would spend with the cleaning things. Now, with actual BDD thoughts and stuff, the thoughts have either completely gone away, especially of certain body parts and certain places. And then, where it was a little bit harder to completely go away, like my skin, which has always been my main thing, they've been quieted so much that sometimes I don't even hear them or pay attention. Now that I have all this free time, and then the free time that I have is not spent on these BDD thoughts, it's like, "Wow! I can start doing things." Days feel longer, because I'm not spending it, the whole morning getting ready, living for an hour, and then spending the whole night getting ready.

Do you think treatment rewired your brain?

The biggest part of treatment is rewiring your brain completely rethinking all these irrational thoughts and stuff. They were there. The treatment was about breaking them down, proving to yourself. It is all in your head. All the things you are doing are constantly rewiring your brain patterns, what you are thinking, what is going on in your head. So it really is taking this life that you had with BDD, throwing it down, destroying it, flushing it down. But normalcy and normal life does not just poop up in your head. You have to relearn it. You have to learn that there is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing that spending forty hours in the mirror a day is going to do. All those things you had and were doing and thinking, you have to rewire and be like I am not giving it the attention it wants anymore. And I am going to go out and I am going to do my goals and I am going to love life. It is like starting over.

Can you give us an example of how far you come since treatment?

Back in the worst times, I wouldn't be caught dead with a camera on me. I didn't take pictures of myself basically from age 14 until about age 24. For ten years I didn't have pictures of myself. So big success was, getting pictures taken last Christmas and giving them to my family - the last picture they had was ten years ago. It was really just like wow, this is ten years in the making. And it was kind of my stamp like, "I'm getting better and I'm going to keep getting better", and you finally have a picture op.

What did you see in the mirror before treatment?

Before treatment, it was, I don't know how to explain it to someone but it was almost like not being human. The best way I can describe it is when you look and you see someone who has gone through a horrible accident and lost half of their body but are still breathing and in a wheelchair and stuff or a burn victim who was completely burned with 95% of their face or someone born without, Siamese twins, those kind of deformities. That's how I saw myself. I really saw myself as someone who was not even normal. People had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a normal-shaped face. I mean I didn't see that. I saw things in the wrong place. I saw things bigger than other. I saw these scars as deformities. So I would look in the mirror and I couldn't get myself normal. I thought it was almost like I must have contracted this weird skin disease that nobody else has ever heard of and it put me in a category of someone who is really deformed. Deformed is the best way that I can describe it to someone.

When did you start to feel normal?

Towards the ending of treatment was the first time that I saw myself as normal. I felt as like a person of society. I still hadn't, at that point, gotten to the point of finding my self attractive or finding myself cute or anything, but I'd finally gotten treatment normal, where I'd look in the mirror and I'd go, "You know what? I'm not deformed. I'm not abnormal. People aren't whispering about me." All the paranoia kind of dropped, and it started getting to a point where I felt like I could go out and there wasn't this big spotlight on me, like, "Ha ha! Look at him!"

What do you see when you look in the mirror now?

I'm happy who I am. I wouldn't change. I would have sold my soul to look different in the past, now it's like, "I wouldn't change who I am." I like who I am, I like how I look. Yes, just like everybody else, there's certain things that I would love to do to make myself feel better appearance-wise, but I'm happy. I'm good, I'm really happy with who I am.

Did you ever wonder what happened to your 'deformities' when you looked in the mirror?

Still to this day it's almost a mystery, because I really saw those things. I really saw, when I looked in the mirror, scars and acne and stuff. A lot of it to me, I would tell myself, "Oh, it's because you found the right product or stuff." But when I really think about it and I really get in the mindset that it's a disease, it's almost like I started seeing the light; like I almost knocked down the barriers of BBD and I can start seeing myself in an objective, normal manner. So I can start saying, like, you know all those things I used to see was so in my head, and it wasn't really there.

Do you feel like you're continually progressing?

Everyday there is little milestones of things that I'm doing. I never thought I'd be able to be on camera, take pictures, I never thought I'd be able to travel. I went to New York a couple weeks ago and that was the first time I really traveled. Because with all that goes into getting ready, in being in a different mirror, being in a different place, being on different sheets. Not having the comfort of my own home, and if I feel gross or ugly, I can always run home. Youdon't have all those comforts so you know traveling is a milestone. Dating is a milestone, Going to school, getting a degree, getting an income being self sufficient. It's just every single day, it's like these milestones that other people might laugh and be like oh wow you were able to get out of the house in less than two minutes. Big deal so can I, but for me it's like this huge step, and you just get thistaste in your mouth of success and you wont go back.