B.D.D subject

B.D.D · Guest

I suffer fom BDD, it started when i was 11 and bullied at school for being ' so damn ugly'. That led to me not socialising then that in turn led to full blown socialphobia.
I did used to go out but now it's sort of like social phobia kicked in now./
Does anyone else here suffer with B.D.D which has affected your life in to social phobia.

ps: does being told your ugly or bullied make you a us a B.D.D suffer?

GettingThere · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 9:03 am Post subject:

Pardon my ignorance but what is BDD?

another GUEST · Guest

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a distressing and impairing preoccupation with an imagined or slight defect in appearance, is an "OCD-spectrum disorder" that appears to be relatively common. BDD often goes unrecognized and undiagnosed, however, due to patients' reluctance to divulge their symptoms because of secrecy and shame. Any body part can be the focus of concern (most often, the skin, hair, and nose), and most patients engage in compulsive behaviors, such as mirror checking, camouflaging, excessive grooming, and skin picking. Approximately half are delusional, and a majority experience ideas or delusions of reference. Nearly all patients suffer some impairment in functioning as a result of their symptoms, some to a debilitating degree. Psychiatric hospitalization, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts are relatively common. While treatment data are preliminary at this time, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) appear to often be effective for BDD, even if symptoms are delusional. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is another promising approach. While much remains to be learned about BDD, it is important that clinicians screen patients for this disorder and accurately diagnose it, as available treatments are very promising for those who suffer from this distressing and sometimes disabling disorder.

another GUEST · Guest

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a syndrome characterized by distress about imagined defects in one's appearance. Though categorized as a somatoform disorder, BDD is marked by many characteristics associated with social phobia (e.g., fear of negative evaluation) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (e.g., intrusive thoughts about one's ugliness, checking). In the present experiment, we tested whether BDD patients exhibit selective processing of threat in the emotional Stroop paradigm as do anxiety-disordered patients. Relative to healthy control participants, BDD patients exhibited greater Stroop interference for positive and negative words, regardless of disorder-relevance, than for neutral words. Further analyses suggested that interference tended to be greatest for positive words related to BDD. These data suggest that BDD patients are vulnerable to distraction by emotional cues in general, and by words related to their current concerns in particular. Results suggest that BDD may indeed be related to anxiety disorders such as social phobia.

another GUEST · Guest

if that makes any sense,

Remus · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 12:37 pm Post subject:

No worries

I know alot of SP people with this illness (though not myself), if no one minds I'll stickey this thread as its a pretty important topic for the support forum

_________________
I'm not a moderator anymore, please ignore that title Smile

Guest · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 12:49 pm Post subject:

yes i suffer from most of the symptoms u described. damn i didn't realise there was actually a word that descibed what i have. i always thought that just having social phobia was not exactly all there is. to me having negative thoughts about my looks is more embarassing than admiting that i have SA, cause i think now that it prob contributes much to my having this phobia, but not completely. for me, prob childhood isolation+being shy+BDD+genes=social phobia/anxiety.

Guest · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 12:50 pm Post subject:

yes i suffer from most of the symptoms u described. damn i didn't realise there was actually a word that descibed what i have. i always thought that just having social phobia was not exactly all there is. to me having negative thoughts about my looks is more embarassing than admiting that i have SA, cause i think now that it prob contributes much to my having this phobia, but not completely. for me, prob childhood isolation+being shy+BDD+genes=social phobia/anxiety.

GettingThere · Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:56 am Post subject:

Thanks for the in-depth replies, very informative.

I can relate to the problem myself. Growing up I was the fat child in my class. I shed that as an adolesent but then I was constantly teased about my nose (which was larger than most but broken as well). It was life-altering stuff of the worst kind. Children are such an enigma - innocent and loving, nasty and hurtful. When you know that every single day when you go to school that someone (usually more than one) will tease you about some feature of your looks, I would think that it would be almost impossible not to develop emotional issues.

I eventually had surgery to straighten my nose and it is no longer an issue. I have also grown a hell of a lot personally in good ways although I would have to say that there is still some scarring.

_________________
Two men look through the same bars, one sees mud the other sees stars.

black_mamba · Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 7:05 am Post subject:

Hmm. Not sure about this one. I seem to have most of the symptoms but wouldn't say I was delusional about the problem.

Like GettingThere, I've changed my appearance a little but am still left unsure of myself.

I was so obsessed about trying to figure out why I was unpopular at school, and often the blame lay on the shape of my nose...all the girls had cute little upturned ones and this, I assumed, was the key to social success.

...heh, maybe I was delusional. Confused