To me, BDD is an incomprehensible condition and that makes me equal parts frustrated and sad. Sad because it ruins perfectly good lives for seemingly no reason, and frustrated because it seems so, so difficult to treat with either empathy or logic. Like people with eating disorders who understand that beauty or human value doesn't actually come from being deathly thin yet continue to starve themselves anyways, people with BDD know logically that even if they were truly ugly, the vast majority of people are not beautiful and ugly people around the world have wonderful and full lives. And emotionally, many people with EDs and BDD have loving happy families who never focused on their appearance. But the compulsion to reject reality and continue isolating and self-loathing is just so much stronger than any logic or emotional support the person receives.
I wonder what the approach is at this specialized treatment programme. I run into reality-rejecting folks on occasion and have a few family members affected by thought patterns that seem to have no basis in reality but I have no idea how to support them when neither reason nor emotional support seems to help.
Today is the first-ever Body Dysmorphic Disorder Awareness Day.
Sarah Farmer reveals the devastation and pain of watching her son struggle with the much-misunderstood disorder, but sheds light on her son's recent acceptance into a specialised treatment programme that has instilled some hope in her that one day her child can be free and at peace.
I truly don't know if I'm hallucinating my own body or if my wife is lying to me (I assume the latter though). I have hated my appearance for longer than I can remember. I try to imagine liking the way you look sometimes, but I just can't.
I have it with my weight. My BMI is 26, but I still see myself at my heaviest weight, nearly 100 lbs more.
The needle on the scale moved, the clothes changed, people notice, but my brain just isn't updating. I hate it, it's been like this since as long as I can remember.
I completely relate! I’ve lost 100lbs in the past year and I just keep wearing clothes that are way too big on me because my brain can’t accept that I’m skinny now.
The only issue I ran into was my doctors not adjusting my medication doses to match my current weight, so I experienced all the side effects of every medication.
Every time I go to put on a shirt or pants it always looks like it will not fit. I wear compression shirts all the time, it makes me feel slim. Over 100 down also.
Same here. I have lost over 90lbs but I still look down and see the same thick thighs. And is the stuff on my stomach skin and fat or just skin. Grandma always said if you can pinch more than an inch, and i swear that echoes in my head.
I’ve been wondering if this is happening to me. I’ve finally lost 60 of the 85 pounds that 3 years of steroid use caused and I literally see no difference in the mirror. My old clothes are way too big, the scale number is different and people have told me. All I see if the bigger me, especially in my face. I don’t know how to change it.
You don’t. And I don’t mean that in a mean, dismissive kind of way. What I mean is, you don’t look in the mirror and try to force yourself to see something you don’t. The more you focus in on something, the more distorted your perception of it becomes. Consider it like seeing a big old spider- your brain tells you it’s huge and threatening and dangerous, but if you look at photos from a safe place, you can suddenly see that it’s only and inch or two across- tiny! Your brain attaches a lot of emotion to your appearance, which can make it genuinely difficult to tell what you really look like. There’s a lot of good advice in this thread, but my personal method is to focus on what my body does for me, rather than what it looks like. The endorphins it gives me from a good workout, the feeling I get from a cup of coffee on a cool morning, that kind of thing.
That sounds like a really great way to think about it. I wish it would work for me, but my body betrayed me when I was 20 (which is what led to me becoming overweight). My body is failing and falling apart. I try to appreciate the pieces that aren't having problems, but it's getting harder - and they're getting fewer.
yes, unsure if this is similar to your experience, but i’ve struggled a lot to maintain body neutrality or gratitude about what my body does for me since it decided to suddenly become disabled & crazy unwell. my entire life & consequently who i am as a person has irrevocably changed since i got sick, i imagine it’s incredibly difficult for the resentment i have about my body’s capacities to not impact the way i perceive my appearance.
getting sick also objectively just changed my appearance lol. i was never confident in my appearance (but like you, could even be positive about it at times), but i look back & can recognise i was conventionally attractive as a teenager. i got sick at 18-19 though, meaning i never really got to have my ‘original body’ (reductive way of looking at it but it’s hard not to feel this way when disability is so isolating), so it adds more gasoline to this resentment fire i seem to have going on about my body lmao.
i’m sorry this is something you have similar struggles with! it sucks.
I had an eating disorder for a long time. A big part of healing for me was learning not to think about what I looked like at all. Neutrality and decentering my looks helped a lot more than trying to brute force negative thoughts into positive ones. I know it’s different for everyone and it’s so connected to our individual world views though.
A really weird thing that I found is that the mirror shows me one thing, but I can take a photo and then I'm able to evaluate an outfit or whatever and I see it closer to what others probably see.
I spent years with pretty debilitating anorexia, bulimia and body dysmorphia, and had so many days where I just couldn't go out because I just could not bear to get dressed.
Now I just have thousands of photos of my random outfits over the last 15 years, haha. I'm not suggesting this will work for anyone else, not at all, more just agreeing that brains are weird.
I’ve never liked my appearance, either, but nothing as extreme as the article describes. I just think I’m garden variety ugly. I manage to tell myself that my value as a human is independent of my appearance.
Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder. Many studies have shown that what people find attractive is largely based on what they are exposed to and what ‘stories’ are told about beauty in their culture. Consuming media from different time periods and different parts of the world makes a person more appreciative of different bodies and differences in appearance.
Anecdotally, I have dated people who were very conventionally beautiful and some very much not, but I found them all attractive in different ways. In my experience, frequent contact with someone “regular” looking makes them more attractive to me over time and I discover new things I like about how they look. By contrast, frequent exposure to someone conventionally beautiful makes them seem less attractive over time. Perfection is not especially compelling in the long term.
I'm sorry that is your reality. That sounds truly unsettling. Hopefully we can find a solution to alleviate the distress you and others experience.
If you want unsolicited anecdotal advice; I started taking an ssri for anxiety and found that I don't have a negative emotional reaction when I look in the mirror anymore. I'm far from qualified from giving medical advice but maybe the glimmer of possibility will give you hope.
I had this for a long time but realizing I looked like someone moderately famous and that every girl I'd ever dated like me because I looked like that guy helped a lot since it's no longer about me.
Plus my wife being "that's my husband you're talking about!" is such a killer awesome line
I guess that's the problem, I can rationally evaluate my body and see what kinds of people I look like, and they are not thought of as attractive people. I have pretty much come to terms with it though. 🤷♀️
I think we can delude ourselves more easily and readily when compared to how readily our trusted and loving significant others will lie to us.
Imo our subjectivity makes it nearly impossible to make a clean read on ourselves especially when it hits insecurities that we've lived with for so long.
I think we tend to hold onto these narratives more strongly than their actual relation to the real world because they reinforce the world truth weve conceived in our minds.
For things like this where the opinion and viewpoint of my partner clashes with my own insecurities and their viewpoint can make my life better, I'm choosing to just trust them and call myself delusional and out more stock in their viewpoint. I trust them to have my interests at heart.
I’m in absolutely phenomenal shape. Abs, vascularity, dark fake tan most of the time. I’m objectively an attractive human. I feel like I’m atrocious. That’ll never go away. I’ve tried every look. It seems like I just don’t like being human.
Our 22 year old has this. It’s pretty awful. Besides ADHD and anxiety and depression, he got a late autism diagnosis at age 20 (level 1 ASD, no cognitive or verbal impacts) which comes with its own complications.
CBT and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy don’t work with autistic people, generally. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy works a little better.
He was the kid that had a million friends and everybody wanted to be his friend, until about 6th grade, and then the landscape of how you make friends shifted- he felt like there was a seminar on how to make friends beyond elementary school, and he missed it.
He’s in a residential treatment program now and is in a 6 week streak of meeting the obligations of the program, and just signed up for a class at a community college, so, there’s hope.
I’m on the autism spectrum, and I feel the same way about the transition to teenagerdom that he does! I think I’ve described it in similar terms, even. It’s good to find that I’m not the only one who thinks that.
I always said it was like everyone else got a really nice hardback handbound manual of how to interact in society written in the plainest English so that even a toddler could have understood it, and I got the charred scraps of a manual written in old Frisian. Sure, I can somewhat understand some of it, but its gibberish for the most part.
Very common feeling for autistic people. That's about the stage when social demands increase, because socially allistic peers are beginning to develop and form their own identities.
It’s so interesting that we’re finally talking more openly about these issues now that young men are struggling with them…
When I was 15 I had a friend who thought she was so ugly that she fantasized about dousing a cloth in gasoline, putting it on her face, and lighting it on fire. And that was just considered normal for a teenage girl to feel at the time and adults waved her off as an insecure teen girl (which… she was, but like come on).
lol I know, I was surprised to open my inbox and see so much… discourse (??) under my comment. Amazing what people can extract from one small comment! Either way, I ain’t reading all that.
Really suggest you think about the meaning of your words before criticizing others for their reaction. It's easier to keep your comments to yourself if you don't want any reaction.
It's easy to handwaive away the comments and a lot harder to actually reflect on what you've said and why people would disagree with it. You have said something bigoted, it's up to you whether you learn from that or continue on as you are.
Women's mental health both recieves more support and is taken more seriously than male mental health. To look at this situation as yet another example of men being privileged is bigoted. It ignores the realities of how mental health is handled in order to push an ignorant narrative.
I'll be continuing on as I am and I have it on good authority (two degrees covering these topics and a nearly 20 year career covering topics surrounding these issues) that I did not say anything bigoted.
Quite the opposite babes!! Patriarchy and misogyny hurt both men and women, but I fear most of you are on a fan fiction journey from my OG comment. All I did was notice an interesting tend surrounding this topic now that young boys are experiencing more body image issues and presenting disordered eating characteristics.
Literacy crisis is in full effect in the comment section, this is my last reply because I’ve already broken my own rules for responding to people who show signs of using Reddit to cope with depression and anger instead of therapy and SSRI’s 🫶
With light and love, have a great day and consider not responding further.
The mask slipped on that comment a little. It's off-putting seeing someone who works in the mental health field passive aggressively use mental health as an insult. Don't further insult the intelligence of the people reading your comment and deny it. Something else to reflect on.
Dude I don’t work in mental health lmfao Im a writer and my background includes two degrees that required learning about topics such as feminism and misogyny
I warned you to consider not replying!! Smdh egg on your face again, it’s feeling a bit unfair on my end you keep lobbing these easy ones at me and I can’t resist lol.
Lol, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. But fine, two degrees and 20 years experience covering these topics but the reality is you are not a health professional, you don't work in the mental health field and you have no real authority on the matter. You were intentionally vague because you are talking out of your ass.
I mean, it makes sense though. Her assumption was that the issue is getting attention because men are now starting to struggle with mental health issues and, whereas women's issues are ignored, men's aren't, and the conversations are finally happening.
But that's a fundamentally misandrist and narcissistic mischaracterization of societal dynamics. The more likely truth is that men have always suffered from these disorders, but we're finally encouraging men to seek help and not be afraid to be vulnerable.
So worse than failing to admit that society has been failing men in their mental health struggles, the commenter tried to present the root cause as an example of how men get better healthcare than women.
Edit: my real belief is that generally we've been failing both men and women, and continue to do so. I also believe women and men are and have been subjected to people trying to discipline their struggles out of them through shame. But regarding user's specific comment, I believe user is misandrist.
Psst OP already knows this because it’s her entire educational background and career - patriarchy and misogyny hurts boys girls men and women alike, but what’s happened here is I made one mostly innocuous comment that has triggered people into writing fan fiction about me instead of moving on or showing curiosity.
I feel a little famous to be honest… didn’t know I could cause such a stir!
People develop convenient and flawed worldviews to protect themselves from difficult truths and their own traumas, it's one part of the toxic cycle. Mother to son, father to daughter, and every combination, we share our faults with the people we love. It wouldn't surprise me if OP also has had toxic men in her life, maybe a father who had a similarly negative view of women as she has for men. Or maybe not, maybe it's something else. But ultimately, we're all part of the same cycles- and our failure to develop solutions, which would require clear perspective, is a detriment to us and the people we love.
It wasn't about that, it was about the hostile opening that many people already explained and op chooses to gleefully pretend to be ignorant of. It is also very very stupid to think that there haven't been men to struggle with it before just because they hadn't seen an article about it
It happens seemingly in anything related to womens problems too. When it comes to big groups, there's bound to be someone who makes it about their own demographics in general. It's a bit of a shame for sure.
Body dysmorphia disorder isn’t solely a male issue. It just happens to be an issue that is being talked about because society is more open to males having difficulty with their appearance and body.
According to the view of the 80s and 90s anorexia was a form of BDD yes. But now there is growing awareness that it often is a symptom of underlying autism, and autism in women was more or less unknown at that time. If you don't understand social situations the world feels frightening. Your weight is at least something you can control.
It's not really fair to divorce yourself from the implications of your statement and then act like you're being unfairly attacked. . The clear impression you left everyone with is that the subject wasn't taken seriously until it became a problem for men.
I'm just asking a question... I'm just sharing an anecdote... I'm just making an observation... These are the weapons of social provocateurs.
Called shallow then and called shallow now. At least in the corporate world. As a woman you’re often judged by your appearance but don’t try too hard or you’re accused of calling attention to yourself.
We are speaking past each other. I have not and will not comment on the merits of u/glitchinthemeowtrix's (OP's) anecdote or opinion, or your anecdote.
My contention is with the fact that OP implied the issue of body dysmorphia was not taken seriously until it affected men. OP then tried to run away from that implication in OP's reply to u/livingdeadgrrll. I think it would be more productive for OP to either own the implication or refrain from making provocative comments.
OP said, "It’s so interesting that we’re finally talking more openly about these issues now that young men are struggling with them…"
A commenter replied with a comment critical of OP, feeling OP's comment only served to stoke "gender wars."
OP replied with, "All I said is that it was interesting, I didn’t pull out a gun or anything."
I thought that response was absurd, given what I see as obvious framing by OP in OP's initial comment. I replied, criticizing OP for playing coy.
I'm curious as to how I did comment on OP's opinion. I think you may be conflating OP's opinion with OP's rhetoric. In short, I am criticizing OP's rhetoric.
You also asked, "And do you disagree with the implication or do you just not think it’s productive even if it could be true?"
I prefer not to feed into this aspect of the discussion at all. I think it is unproductive.
Well the term “gender wars” would imply a bit more violence than someone pointing out that they’ve observed more attention on an issue now that it’s more commonly presenting in men, don’t ya think? Since we’re talking about implications after all.
And yea, ok so you think it’s unproductive. Personally, I think the term “gender wars” is unproductive, because it’s most often used to deflect away from addressing the gender issue. I have body dysmorphia, I know how painful it is to experience, and I think it’s actually very closely tied into our gender most of the time. Whether or not we look “feminine” enough or “masculine” enough. And how people react to us expressing that. I think in order to address the issue of body dysmorphia, we also have to address gender issues.
“How dare you point out gender inequality? That’s an attack on my manhood!!!”
People are so oblivious. The inequality is everywhere. I read an article that women are more likely to be injured and die in car crashes because the test dummies are built based on male proportions.
The fight about gender equality always seems so violent. When so many of the inequalities weren’t even borne out of malice. Like do I think some woman-hater made an executive decision about the test dummies? No, it’s just one thing that had been overlooked and has had a profound impact on our lives so we’re trying to point it out because we don’t wanna die.
The gender war is a turn of phrase. I’ve never in my life seen it used literally outside of satirical fiction. It’s ridiculous to imply that it’s a reference to actual violence. I think people on this thread are being deliberately obtuse.
They should have started talking more about men with this issue a long time ago if so many men are this hysterical and bitchy about it. Maybe it would have been taken more seriously sooner with so many unhinged tantrums like in this thread.
Are you fr fr ?
We have been talking about this since at least 15 years ago. Did you really see one article mentioning men also deal with it and go “Oh so now that it’s men you care 🙄”
You're original comment implies that society is only addressing body dismorphia now that males are affected by it, and the you use an ellipsis to invite the reader to infer your meaning/complete the thought you are expressing.
You then use an example of a female friend from the past to demonstrate the nobody blinked an eye when a girl suffered from body dismorphia. Which reinforces the complementary side to your original statement.
I don't really see any other way to interpret your words, unless they are entirely meaningless. And you apparently can't even stand by your own words. At which point why say anything at all? Otherwise take this opportunity to acknowledge and examine your own bias as you would of others.
People suffer from these disorders regardless of gender. Griping about gender when talking about progress on these issues serves no purpose but to perpetuate division, and hurts progress for everybody. It's good that people are getting help for this, their identity is irrelevant to the value of it.
Well I didn’t gather any of that from the comment, so maybe you should look inward to why you had such an averse reaction instead of tearing into a total stranger for giving a random example of BD inside a message of hope
If you consider examining a person's choice of words and punctuation in a public forum "tearing into" them, then I don't know how you expect to engage in discourse.
I have "such an averse reaction" because that kind of rhetoric/bad faith statement encourages division over unity and progress. This person did not take the opportunity to clarify their statement as a "message of hope" they deny the criticism and dismiss the critic. Now nobody is obligated to refute every critic, but if you're going to engage anyways, shouldn't you at least be able to defend your statements? Or at the very least correct somebody who misinterpreted them.
Engaging in good faith argument is a critical aspect of discourse. I did not mean to "tear into" anybody, just to confront the rhetorical devices the original commenter used to make a argument for gendered conflict when the article title and body only address gender with regards to the individual at the center of this account. Body dismorphia is otherwise addressed from a gender neutral perspective. It was the original commenter who made gender a topic of discussion on an article discussing a personal experience with body dismorphia.
-"now that young men are struggling" presupposes that attention has only been given to the issue because boys became affected by it, and that girl's struggle with it previously recieved little to no attention. That is just empirically false as the eating disorder awareness campaigns and media coverage have been overwhelmingly female-focused for decades. They don't have to provide evidence for their presuppostion because "now" frames their statement as settled background.
-"It's so interesting..." is an insinuation device. By presenting their conclusion as a mere observation they get their accustion on the record while maintaining deniability. The subject of body dismorphia isn't gendered in the article, but the commenter makes that link based on the sex of the child in the artcle.
-They then appeal to anecdotal evidence as generalization using an vivid, emotionally powerful single case followed by a leap to the conclusion that because she was a girl her suffering was universally dismissed. And when combined with the original pressuposition: girls suffered invisibly until boys started suffering, therefore this attention is unfair/late/hypocritical.
-And then they close it out with self-aware hedging that appears to perform fairness without conceding anything. They acknowledge that the counterargument exist in miniature, but immediately dismissed it which serves to innoculate themselves against the charge of oversimplification.
They are using a single anecdote to support a hasty generalization. Relying on the horror of the anecdote to bypass scrutiny.
And when confronted they offered a defensive non-apology and dismissal. They retreat behind their insinuation ("I only said it was interesting") as a means of refusing to defend their actual statement.
I understand that this wall of text probably conveys the image that I am furiously and passionately typing. And to some degree I am, but it is not meant as an attack on the person, but rather the argument they are making and it's implications.
I do not believe that identity should have anything to do with access to assistance for BD or any other disorders. Identity does, however help inform the best approach for individual treatment and understanding how we interact with these disorders. I think it is wonderful that children and parents have more awareness and access to resources surrounding this issue than previously, and i hope the trend continues regardless of the identity of individuals suffering from BDD.
So rather than read and refute my analysis of an argument and defense of my original statement, you just dismiss it as ChatGPT? That's some really high level argumentation /s
I'd apologize that I wasn't witty enough in breaking down the rhetorical devices in their argument, but that would be inane.
everyone in your comments yapping about anorexia, as if anorexia is reliant on or revolves around body dysmorphia. guys, it really isn’t i fear, it’s just one symptom anorexia nervosa can possibly manifest & if anything, it highlights how we normalise mental illness / ‘girl insecurities’ — that a unisex mental illness often associated with trauma is whittled down to “girls are just insecure about their looks & can’t see themselves properly, we’ve been talking about this for decades”.
Yes exactly it’s just as someone who’s had both anorexia and body dysmorphia, and who’s friends mostly have as well, we were really just told it was a part of life we had to adapt to. Sometimes it’s just interesting to see how that changes when a different population suffers with something.
I even understand all the frustrated men in here writing fan fiction about me in the comments, but they don’t understand I’m on their side too ultimately.
Basically, if women were taken more seriously when we raised the red flag about these issues (and when girls started dying from these diseases in record numbers decades ago) we could have spared more young men from having to suffer through the same agony we did, but no one would listen to us. And I’m fully aware men have always struggled with these issues, it’s getting them to understand that really seems to be the issue. For instance, men’s disordered eating gets rebranded as like keto and intermittent fasting.
Every woman either was or knows a girl who got so sick she couldn’t leave her house for some reason or another, girls who quietly disappeared to rehabs, missed semesters of school. But society is so designed to dismiss us that it is taking kids like Clavicular, or this poor kid in the article, for people to understand the true impact these issues have on young people. That’s dangerous for boys and girls alike, I don’t want young men or boys feeling the way I did at 14 either, and it genuinely freaks me out to see how many boys are suffering exactly the same way I did 20 years ago, but no amount of saying that changes anything especially when they’re so reactive. Men fail each other by not being able to listen and being so conditioned to lecture ( also my goodness they can be so emotional!)
it’s genuinely concerning to me how much people equate anorexia with BDD or some sort of vanity. not to get too revealing on my main account lol, but i’m still very presently affected by disordered eating (though mine is absolutely impacted by dysmorphia & not anorexia) & am in a few support spaces; it’s staggering how many people’s eating disorders have no reliance on vanity, looking good to others ect. so often it’s trauma-related, wanting to take up as little space as possible in people’s lives, seeking control, wanting to look grotesque to avoid objectification, wanting to feel like or try to resemble a child, wanting to be cared for, so on. it’s very depressing to me that such a complex disorder is kind of just seen as “girls are insecure disorder”, especially when you see so many non-binary people & men struggling in these spaces.
i’m sorry that these struggles have affected you & so many other women you know, & i would agree with you that it’s exceptionally common & accepted that girls / women will just feel like this rather than figuring out how to alleviate these issues (which as you say, could have equipped us with how to avoid this commonly occurring in young boys too). like, it’s totally normal to be genuinely distressed & repulsed by our appearance — not ideal, but seen as common & almost inevitable. we need to put more thought into actually trying to prevent this from happening (to all genders) & how to treat such a complex mental health issue, instead of throwing up our hands & thinking this is just a universal experience all girls go through.
okay but this article implies that the psychiatrist who was willing to treat her child made the condition worse without offering any evidence of that whatsoever. The author goes on to say "We stopped those sessions soon after, but sometimes I still want to scream at myself: how bad would it be now if I had never put him in front of that guy?" This woman wanted a provider to treat an extremely complex condition in an anxious teen in a couple of sessions and then blamed the provider when her son wasn't magically cured? As a therapist this is a massive red flag, and if I consulted with this mom, I would not treat her child. I would be concerned that she would blame me or her child if the treatment doesn't work quickly. The truth is that most mental health conditions take some time to see improvement. And a provider has to first establish rapport which can take quite a while with an anxious teen boy. Further, when treatment is effective, sometimes symptoms actually get worse before they get better. This is very common in treatment and most competent providers spell this out clearly in their informed consent. There are enough tells in this article for me to say that I believe the mom needs to take an honest look at her own biases and lack of understanding of this condition, rather than writing an article disparaging the providers who tried to help. I'm glad to hear the kid is getting specialized treatment, but I worry what might happen if his mental health ebbs again, as it often does, because mental health is a continuum, it is not black and white, sane or "insane".
I also want to add that while I fully support her decision to raise awareness of this condition and share her story as a mom, she probably should have done so anonymously. All these pictures of her child are really uncalled for because if he is that dysmorphic, there is a very high chance having his personal story with his face and mom's full name plastered across the internet is just about the worst thing for him right now. He needs his parent to be patient and understanding of his progress, to find small positives about his 18th birthday rather than making a list of all the ways it was ruined FOR HER, and maybe to consider her actual child in all this rather than herself.
as a therapist I wholeheartedly agree. This whole article screams out at me that the mom needs to get some treatment of her own. It also says she is a "leadership coach". That leads me to believe she is "coaching" other parents in this position which she is not qualified to do in any way.
I don’t know why the mom agreed to show pictures of her family or if her son agreed to it as well although it is doubtful. However, her son is no longer a child. While there may be a moral reason why his picture should not have been shown in general there is no legal reason not to publish it.
People like to dismiss anyone who says this as an anti vaxxer. I’m not. Covid was not killing children or the majority of working age healthy adults. The lockdown response was severely over blown and now there is a generation of young people who are socially and academically screwed. Small businesses were decimated. The response to COVID was a disaster.
> Covid was not killing children or the majority of working age healthy adults.
That… wasn’t the point. The purpose of the lockdown was to prevent the mass spread of COVID. Kids go to school, interact with hundreds of other kids, pass the virus back and forth, etc. Then some of those kids go home to their grandparents or immunosuppressed relatives or just go out into the world spreading the virus, which eventually makes its way back to those people.
Lockdowns were about protecting the most vulnerable from the rest of us. And also to prevent the entire collapse of the healthcare system, like certain places who were initially hit hard experienced… corpses being stored in trailers, hospitals running out of body bags, no PPE for healthcare workers, staffing shortages, and on and on. That’s not sustainable, and they needed to staunch the flow.
Most healthy people caught COVID and recovered at home, but some percentage didn’t and the system wasn’t prepared for that on a massive scale. Still isn’t.
Grandma and grandpa and that family should have taken extra precaution (isolate grandparents to one room, extra care with hand washing for the entire family, etc). Fucking up an entire generation of young people by insisting EVERYONE must take extreme precaution was a huge mistake.
A year? Most of the country was out and about after a month or so but that doesn't fit the narrative that everyone was forcibly locked inside their houses for months on end by the government
Yeah. Like, I locked down for a while but that was because I was getting my degree and so I just spent all my time indoors studying - would have been doing that anyway. My parents are old and are lifetime smokers, and I was living with them at the time, and I wanted to make sure they didn't get sick.
Thankfully, they didn't, and I've still got some time left with them.
Again, while the hardest hit were the elderly and immunocompromised, some people who required intensive medical care or hospitalization or who died were young and otherwise healthy. When you have an illness like that, and it’s spreading massively throughout the general population, you’re going to overload your health systems. Not to mention the fact that your healthcare staff is getting sick from the constant exposure. Now you don’t have enough beds, doctors, nurses, PPE, ambulances, general medical supplies, etc. That results in lack of care or delays for everyone, covid patient or not. That is a societal problem.
And you can’t exactly just lock up the elderly. They often depend on other people for basic support, and there was no way to prevent their loved ones from catching the virus when everyone was just out and about living their lives as selfishly as possible. I was classed as an “essential worker” at the time, in a public facing job, and people just did not give a flying fuck about anyone else. Coming in coughing, sneezing, touching everything, arguing about wearing a mask for five minutes… Thirteen of us caught Covid in the same two-week period.
Was Covid handled the best way it possibly could have been? No, but its handling (or lack of) was a mess from the very start. Lockdowns happened because we weren’t prepared as a country, and people flatly refused to make simple daily sacrifices to keep it at bay. It was a last resort.
Im a sa pro vax as it gets. When the vaccines were released i lined up for hours at 6am to get one, and I still keep them up to date.
But a lot of the time, during lockdown, they pointed fingers at kids and declared locking the children up and isolating them with overworked parents trying to work full time and do full time childcare, was the main strategy for saving the elderly.
Now no one wants to talk about the real consequences of that choice.
And it isn’t about whether it was right if wrong to isolate them, but about a real crisis happening. But people react like when someone puts their dogs face close to a misplaced poo and says “look what you did”. They don’t want to look at it. They don’t want to feel like they are being shamed.
So we created a mental health crisis in an entire generation of people, and we do everything we can to ignore the cries for help because it makes us uncomfortable. We continue to fail them, years after covid ended, but this time we don’t have the disease as an excuse.
THAT is the part where we should feel ashamed. THAT is the part we should be rubbing their noses in.
Well said. The elderly and people with compromised health and comorbidities should have been encouraged to lock down and given the support and resources needed to do so, the rest of us needed to wash our hands more and go about our lives and to get the vaccine when it was available.
All you can control is yourself and your actions. I can wash my hands. I can choose to believe or not believe whatever I want. Obviously Covid was a real thing, but was it the black plague? No. Those people who died in a hospital beds likely were elderly or had serious underlying medical issues. Of those, denying you have covid on your death bed in a hospital is a big who the fuck cares. You fucked around and found out. Oh well. You’re dead regardless of what you believe.
Forgive me, but this is perhaps a somewhat myopic response to a seemingly defacto comment.
Sticking to a path defined by nuance, there may be some validity in what they said in terms of raw neuroplasticity. And I don’t believe they were implying some kind of inherent connection between dysmorphia, and the hallucinations often associated with psychedelics, though I could be wrong.
intro_to_IRL | 12 hours ago
To me, BDD is an incomprehensible condition and that makes me equal parts frustrated and sad. Sad because it ruins perfectly good lives for seemingly no reason, and frustrated because it seems so, so difficult to treat with either empathy or logic. Like people with eating disorders who understand that beauty or human value doesn't actually come from being deathly thin yet continue to starve themselves anyways, people with BDD know logically that even if they were truly ugly, the vast majority of people are not beautiful and ugly people around the world have wonderful and full lives. And emotionally, many people with EDs and BDD have loving happy families who never focused on their appearance. But the compulsion to reject reality and continue isolating and self-loathing is just so much stronger than any logic or emotional support the person receives.
I wonder what the approach is at this specialized treatment programme. I run into reality-rejecting folks on occasion and have a few family members affected by thought patterns that seem to have no basis in reality but I have no idea how to support them when neither reason nor emotional support seems to help.
[OP] theindependentonline | 13 hours ago
Today is the first-ever Body Dysmorphic Disorder Awareness Day.
Sarah Farmer reveals the devastation and pain of watching her son struggle with the much-misunderstood disorder, but sheds light on her son's recent acceptance into a specialised treatment programme that has instilled some hope in her that one day her child can be free and at peace.
AspieAsshole | 12 hours ago
I truly don't know if I'm hallucinating my own body or if my wife is lying to me (I assume the latter though). I have hated my appearance for longer than I can remember. I try to imagine liking the way you look sometimes, but I just can't.
fruitblender | 11 hours ago
I have it with my weight. My BMI is 26, but I still see myself at my heaviest weight, nearly 100 lbs more.
The needle on the scale moved, the clothes changed, people notice, but my brain just isn't updating. I hate it, it's been like this since as long as I can remember.
TigerIllustrious6801 | 10 hours ago
Same story for me. Spent most of my life very overweight, the scale doesn’t have the high number but my eyes still just see my fat self.
nodrugs-justyoga | 10 hours ago
I completely relate! I’ve lost 100lbs in the past year and I just keep wearing clothes that are way too big on me because my brain can’t accept that I’m skinny now.
HungHippoHippy | 7 hours ago
WOW! 100 pounds is crazy! Congrats.
Was their any health implications with losing that much weight so fast?
nodrugs-justyoga | 3 hours ago
The only issue I ran into was my doctors not adjusting my medication doses to match my current weight, so I experienced all the side effects of every medication.
TigerIllustrious6801 | 6 hours ago
Every time I go to put on a shirt or pants it always looks like it will not fit. I wear compression shirts all the time, it makes me feel slim. Over 100 down also.
SunLitAngel | 7 hours ago
Same here. I have lost over 90lbs but I still look down and see the same thick thighs. And is the stuff on my stomach skin and fat or just skin. Grandma always said if you can pinch more than an inch, and i swear that echoes in my head.
ChemicallyAlteredVet | 6 hours ago
I’ve been wondering if this is happening to me. I’ve finally lost 60 of the 85 pounds that 3 years of steroid use caused and I literally see no difference in the mirror. My old clothes are way too big, the scale number is different and people have told me. All I see if the bigger me, especially in my face. I don’t know how to change it.
polite_giraffe | 4 hours ago
You don’t. And I don’t mean that in a mean, dismissive kind of way. What I mean is, you don’t look in the mirror and try to force yourself to see something you don’t. The more you focus in on something, the more distorted your perception of it becomes. Consider it like seeing a big old spider- your brain tells you it’s huge and threatening and dangerous, but if you look at photos from a safe place, you can suddenly see that it’s only and inch or two across- tiny! Your brain attaches a lot of emotion to your appearance, which can make it genuinely difficult to tell what you really look like. There’s a lot of good advice in this thread, but my personal method is to focus on what my body does for me, rather than what it looks like. The endorphins it gives me from a good workout, the feeling I get from a cup of coffee on a cool morning, that kind of thing.
AspieAsshole | 2 hours ago
That sounds like a really great way to think about it. I wish it would work for me, but my body betrayed me when I was 20 (which is what led to me becoming overweight). My body is failing and falling apart. I try to appreciate the pieces that aren't having problems, but it's getting harder - and they're getting fewer.
shellys-dollhouse | 57 minutes ago
yes, unsure if this is similar to your experience, but i’ve struggled a lot to maintain body neutrality or gratitude about what my body does for me since it decided to suddenly become disabled & crazy unwell. my entire life & consequently who i am as a person has irrevocably changed since i got sick, i imagine it’s incredibly difficult for the resentment i have about my body’s capacities to not impact the way i perceive my appearance.
AspieAsshole | 54 minutes ago
I was definitely a lot more neutral or even positive about it before it crapped out on me, that's for sure.
shellys-dollhouse | 50 minutes ago
getting sick also objectively just changed my appearance lol. i was never confident in my appearance (but like you, could even be positive about it at times), but i look back & can recognise i was conventionally attractive as a teenager. i got sick at 18-19 though, meaning i never really got to have my ‘original body’ (reductive way of looking at it but it’s hard not to feel this way when disability is so isolating), so it adds more gasoline to this resentment fire i seem to have going on about my body lmao.
i’m sorry this is something you have similar struggles with! it sucks.
BatmanandReuben | 10 hours ago
I had an eating disorder for a long time. A big part of healing for me was learning not to think about what I looked like at all. Neutrality and decentering my looks helped a lot more than trying to brute force negative thoughts into positive ones. I know it’s different for everyone and it’s so connected to our individual world views though.
AspieAsshole | 10 hours ago
That is what has been working for me, except for certain times. I do have to avoid mirrors as much as possible though.
theavocadolady | 7 hours ago
A really weird thing that I found is that the mirror shows me one thing, but I can take a photo and then I'm able to evaluate an outfit or whatever and I see it closer to what others probably see.
I spent years with pretty debilitating anorexia, bulimia and body dysmorphia, and had so many days where I just couldn't go out because I just could not bear to get dressed.
Now I just have thousands of photos of my random outfits over the last 15 years, haha. I'm not suggesting this will work for anyone else, not at all, more just agreeing that brains are weird.
Not_Me_1228 | 11 hours ago
I’ve never liked my appearance, either, but nothing as extreme as the article describes. I just think I’m garden variety ugly. I manage to tell myself that my value as a human is independent of my appearance.
Nicola_Swan | 9 hours ago
Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder. Many studies have shown that what people find attractive is largely based on what they are exposed to and what ‘stories’ are told about beauty in their culture. Consuming media from different time periods and different parts of the world makes a person more appreciative of different bodies and differences in appearance.
Anecdotally, I have dated people who were very conventionally beautiful and some very much not, but I found them all attractive in different ways. In my experience, frequent contact with someone “regular” looking makes them more attractive to me over time and I discover new things I like about how they look. By contrast, frequent exposure to someone conventionally beautiful makes them seem less attractive over time. Perfection is not especially compelling in the long term.
livingdeadgrrll | 11 hours ago
I'm sorry that is your reality. That sounds truly unsettling. Hopefully we can find a solution to alleviate the distress you and others experience.
If you want unsolicited anecdotal advice; I started taking an ssri for anxiety and found that I don't have a negative emotional reaction when I look in the mirror anymore. I'm far from qualified from giving medical advice but maybe the glimmer of possibility will give you hope.
stuffitystuff | 12 hours ago
I had this for a long time but realizing I looked like someone moderately famous and that every girl I'd ever dated like me because I looked like that guy helped a lot since it's no longer about me.
Plus my wife being "that's my husband you're talking about!" is such a killer awesome line
AspieAsshole | 11 hours ago
I guess that's the problem, I can rationally evaluate my body and see what kinds of people I look like, and they are not thought of as attractive people. I have pretty much come to terms with it though. 🤷♀️
gefish | 6 hours ago
I think we can delude ourselves more easily and readily when compared to how readily our trusted and loving significant others will lie to us.
Imo our subjectivity makes it nearly impossible to make a clean read on ourselves especially when it hits insecurities that we've lived with for so long.
I think we tend to hold onto these narratives more strongly than their actual relation to the real world because they reinforce the world truth weve conceived in our minds.
For things like this where the opinion and viewpoint of my partner clashes with my own insecurities and their viewpoint can make my life better, I'm choosing to just trust them and call myself delusional and out more stock in their viewpoint. I trust them to have my interests at heart.
gtfomylawnplease | 8 hours ago
I’m in absolutely phenomenal shape. Abs, vascularity, dark fake tan most of the time. I’m objectively an attractive human. I feel like I’m atrocious. That’ll never go away. I’ve tried every look. It seems like I just don’t like being human.
skeptical-speculator | 5 hours ago
>I truly don't know if I'm hallucinating my own body or if my wife is lying to me (I assume the latter though).
Why did you marry a liar?
Mikeseddit | 12 hours ago
Our 22 year old has this. It’s pretty awful. Besides ADHD and anxiety and depression, he got a late autism diagnosis at age 20 (level 1 ASD, no cognitive or verbal impacts) which comes with its own complications.
CBT and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy don’t work with autistic people, generally. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy works a little better.
He was the kid that had a million friends and everybody wanted to be his friend, until about 6th grade, and then the landscape of how you make friends shifted- he felt like there was a seminar on how to make friends beyond elementary school, and he missed it.
He’s in a residential treatment program now and is in a 6 week streak of meeting the obligations of the program, and just signed up for a class at a community college, so, there’s hope.
Not_Me_1228 | 11 hours ago
I’m on the autism spectrum, and I feel the same way about the transition to teenagerdom that he does! I think I’ve described it in similar terms, even. It’s good to find that I’m not the only one who thinks that.
Minute_Jacket_4523 | 11 hours ago
I always said it was like everyone else got a really nice hardback handbound manual of how to interact in society written in the plainest English so that even a toddler could have understood it, and I got the charred scraps of a manual written in old Frisian. Sure, I can somewhat understand some of it, but its gibberish for the most part.
kirbyfriedrice | 11 hours ago
Very common feeling for autistic people. That's about the stage when social demands increase, because socially allistic peers are beginning to develop and form their own identities.
glitchinthemeowtrix | 13 hours ago
It’s so interesting that we’re finally talking more openly about these issues now that young men are struggling with them…
When I was 15 I had a friend who thought she was so ugly that she fantasized about dousing a cloth in gasoline, putting it on her face, and lighting it on fire. And that was just considered normal for a teenage girl to feel at the time and adults waved her off as an insecure teen girl (which… she was, but like come on).
Edit: a lot of you have way too much time 🫶
Itsmyloc-nar | 11 hours ago
Man, you got some insanely hostile replies for just sharing an anecdote that happened to be about a girl
glitchinthemeowtrix | 7 hours ago
lol I know, I was surprised to open my inbox and see so much… discourse (??) under my comment. Amazing what people can extract from one small comment! Either way, I ain’t reading all that.
lilbluehair | 5 hours ago
Really suggest you think about the meaning of your words before criticizing others for their reaction. It's easier to keep your comments to yourself if you don't want any reaction.
Murrabbit | an hour ago
It was a good comment and I'm glad they shared it. Go be miserable somewhere else.
ClarifiedInsanity | 5 hours ago
It's easy to handwaive away the comments and a lot harder to actually reflect on what you've said and why people would disagree with it. You have said something bigoted, it's up to you whether you learn from that or continue on as you are.
PM_ME_SUMDICK | 4 hours ago
Its bigoted to suggest that male issues are often taken more seriously than female issues? Especially in childhood?
ClarifiedInsanity | 3 hours ago
Women's mental health both recieves more support and is taken more seriously than male mental health. To look at this situation as yet another example of men being privileged is bigoted. It ignores the realities of how mental health is handled in order to push an ignorant narrative.
shellys-dollhouse | an hour ago
which is totally why ASD or ADHD diagnoses are under-represented in women / girls unless they present how boys do lol.
justplay91 | an hour ago
That's because it's on men to take men's mental health seriously at this point and y'all won't. 🤷♀️
glitchinthemeowtrix | 2 hours ago
I'll be continuing on as I am and I have it on good authority (two degrees covering these topics and a nearly 20 year career covering topics surrounding these issues) that I did not say anything bigoted.
Thanks tho!
ClarifiedInsanity | 2 hours ago
2 degrees has led you to believe that mental health is ignored unless it's male mental health? Interesting.
glitchinthemeowtrix | an hour ago
Quite the opposite babes!! Patriarchy and misogyny hurt both men and women, but I fear most of you are on a fan fiction journey from my OG comment. All I did was notice an interesting tend surrounding this topic now that young boys are experiencing more body image issues and presenting disordered eating characteristics.
Literacy crisis is in full effect in the comment section, this is my last reply because I’ve already broken my own rules for responding to people who show signs of using Reddit to cope with depression and anger instead of therapy and SSRI’s 🫶
With light and love, have a great day and consider not responding further.
ClarifiedInsanity | an hour ago
The mask slipped on that comment a little. It's off-putting seeing someone who works in the mental health field passive aggressively use mental health as an insult. Don't further insult the intelligence of the people reading your comment and deny it. Something else to reflect on.
glitchinthemeowtrix | an hour ago
Dude I don’t work in mental health lmfao Im a writer and my background includes two degrees that required learning about topics such as feminism and misogyny
I warned you to consider not replying!! Smdh egg on your face again, it’s feeling a bit unfair on my end you keep lobbing these easy ones at me and I can’t resist lol.
ClarifiedInsanity | an hour ago
Lol, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. But fine, two degrees and 20 years experience covering these topics but the reality is you are not a health professional, you don't work in the mental health field and you have no real authority on the matter. You were intentionally vague because you are talking out of your ass.
Responsible_Fox9454 | an hour ago
She is garbage. Anyone that throws the university of Phoenix degrees at people is not bright.
glitchinthemeowtrix | 58 minutes ago
lol oh now I’m garbage!? University of phoenix?? My dude, who hurt you?? I know it was probably a woman, but it wasn’t me I promise!
ajpiko | 5 hours ago
I mean, it makes sense though. Her assumption was that the issue is getting attention because men are now starting to struggle with mental health issues and, whereas women's issues are ignored, men's aren't, and the conversations are finally happening.
But that's a fundamentally misandrist and narcissistic mischaracterization of societal dynamics. The more likely truth is that men have always suffered from these disorders, but we're finally encouraging men to seek help and not be afraid to be vulnerable.
So worse than failing to admit that society has been failing men in their mental health struggles, the commenter tried to present the root cause as an example of how men get better healthcare than women.
Edit: my real belief is that generally we've been failing both men and women, and continue to do so. I also believe women and men are and have been subjected to people trying to discipline their struggles out of them through shame. But regarding user's specific comment, I believe user is misandrist.
MeatMarket_Orchid | 4 hours ago
I'm going to go ahead and predict OP isn't going to respond to this, reflect on it or learn from it. Excellent response.
glitchinthemeowtrix | an hour ago
Psst OP already knows this because it’s her entire educational background and career - patriarchy and misogyny hurts boys girls men and women alike, but what’s happened here is I made one mostly innocuous comment that has triggered people into writing fan fiction about me instead of moving on or showing curiosity.
I feel a little famous to be honest… didn’t know I could cause such a stir!
ajpiko | an hour ago
People develop convenient and flawed worldviews to protect themselves from difficult truths and their own traumas, it's one part of the toxic cycle. Mother to son, father to daughter, and every combination, we share our faults with the people we love. It wouldn't surprise me if OP also has had toxic men in her life, maybe a father who had a similarly negative view of women as she has for men. Or maybe not, maybe it's something else. But ultimately, we're all part of the same cycles- and our failure to develop solutions, which would require clear perspective, is a detriment to us and the people we love.
glitchinthemeowtrix | an hour ago
I can’t lie I’m loving this fan fiction you guys are writing about me… do more!!
lilbluehair | 5 hours ago
It wasn't just an anecdote though, it was the dismissive comment at the beginning
JBDBIB_Baerman | 3 hours ago
It wasn't about that, it was about the hostile opening that many people already explained and op chooses to gleefully pretend to be ignorant of. It is also very very stupid to think that there haven't been men to struggle with it before just because they hadn't seen an article about it
somethi | 10 hours ago
Maybe some men are annoyed that they can’t express their own insecurities without women hijacking it.
thataintapipe | 10 hours ago
Hmmm I’m wondering if maybe you don’t have the emotional balance or critical thinking skills for True Reddit. “Hijacking” is an insane overreaction.
Maybe it would help if you tell me where your dislike of women comes from
Qzry | 9 hours ago
It happens seemingly in anything related to womens problems too. When it comes to big groups, there's bound to be someone who makes it about their own demographics in general. It's a bit of a shame for sure.
Cute-Tie6398 | 6 hours ago
Body dysmorphia disorder isn’t solely a male issue. It just happens to be an issue that is being talked about because society is more open to males having difficulty with their appearance and body.
livingdeadgrrll | 8 hours ago
Yeah I call it out on threads about women's issues too. I want to get into the issues and find solutions, not sling mud.
glitchinthemeowtrix | 6 hours ago
Reddit, where we famously find solutions to the worlds problems and solve them
labuzan | 6 hours ago
Excuse my ignorance, but isn't anorexia a specific form of BDD?
If so, I can assure you that we were talking about BDD a lot in the 1980s and 1990s.
And it was entirely focused on women, and rightly so, as they represented like 90% of the cases at that time.
There were after school movies and we talked about it in health class in HS.
Maybe it dropped off the radar a bit after a couple of decades?
Anyway, my point being that America was pretty thick with discussion and awareness of anorexia 40 years ago.
oliguriarchy | 3 hours ago
No it's not. Eating disorders are their own thing, often comorbid with BDD. Dysmorphia may be a symptom of eating disorders including AN.
https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/eating-disorders-not-the-same-as-bdd/
BrushNo8178 | 3 hours ago
According to the view of the 80s and 90s anorexia was a form of BDD yes. But now there is growing awareness that it often is a symptom of underlying autism, and autism in women was more or less unknown at that time. If you don't understand social situations the world feels frightening. Your weight is at least something you can control.
skeptical-speculator | 7 hours ago
Where was this place that a girl wanting to set her face on fire was considered to be normal? I think that would be concerning in most cultures.
BaconBitz109 | 8 hours ago
We’ve been having open conversations about how this has affected young women for at least the last 20 years.
errie_tholluxe | 3 hours ago
Forget them. As someone who watched similar take place I find it pretty mysogonistic of them to say differently.
livingdeadgrrll | 11 hours ago
Do we really need yet another thread to devolve into gender wars?
We thought it was a female-exclusive issue 20 years ago. Clearly it isn't gendered and people of every gender and age are suffering.
I'm so happy we're talking about it, but if the talk focuses on the problem and not solutions then it isn't going to aid any progress.
glitchinthemeowtrix | 11 hours ago
All I said is that it was interesting, I didn’t pull out a gun or anything.
PabloDiablo93 | 9 hours ago
It's not really fair to divorce yourself from the implications of your statement and then act like you're being unfairly attacked. . The clear impression you left everyone with is that the subject wasn't taken seriously until it became a problem for men.
I'm just asking a question... I'm just sharing an anecdote... I'm just making an observation... These are the weapons of social provocateurs.
ThomasBombadil | 9 hours ago
I think u/glitchinthemeowtrix makes a fair point though. When I grew up 20-30 years ago, girls could even get labeled as "shallow".
Does it serve the situation now to bring it up? Idk. Maybe it's just a reminder of that the world can be compassion-less.
UneducatedPotatoTato | 7 hours ago
Called shallow then and called shallow now. At least in the corporate world. As a woman you’re often judged by your appearance but don’t try too hard or you’re accused of calling attention to yourself.
PabloDiablo93 | 9 hours ago
We are speaking past each other. I have not and will not comment on the merits of u/glitchinthemeowtrix's (OP's) anecdote or opinion, or your anecdote.
My contention is with the fact that OP implied the issue of body dysmorphia was not taken seriously until it affected men. OP then tried to run away from that implication in OP's reply to u/livingdeadgrrll. I think it would be more productive for OP to either own the implication or refrain from making provocative comments.
DazzlingFruit7495 | 8 hours ago
How is that not a comment on the merit of their opinion?
And do you disagree with the implication or do you just not think it’s productive even if it could be true?
PabloDiablo93 | 8 hours ago
OP said, "It’s so interesting that we’re finally talking more openly about these issues now that young men are struggling with them…"
A commenter replied with a comment critical of OP, feeling OP's comment only served to stoke "gender wars."
OP replied with, "All I said is that it was interesting, I didn’t pull out a gun or anything."
I thought that response was absurd, given what I see as obvious framing by OP in OP's initial comment. I replied, criticizing OP for playing coy.
I'm curious as to how I did comment on OP's opinion. I think you may be conflating OP's opinion with OP's rhetoric. In short, I am criticizing OP's rhetoric.
You also asked, "And do you disagree with the implication or do you just not think it’s productive even if it could be true?"
I prefer not to feed into this aspect of the discussion at all. I think it is unproductive.
DazzlingFruit7495 | 7 hours ago
Well the term “gender wars” would imply a bit more violence than someone pointing out that they’ve observed more attention on an issue now that it’s more commonly presenting in men, don’t ya think? Since we’re talking about implications after all.
And yea, ok so you think it’s unproductive. Personally, I think the term “gender wars” is unproductive, because it’s most often used to deflect away from addressing the gender issue. I have body dysmorphia, I know how painful it is to experience, and I think it’s actually very closely tied into our gender most of the time. Whether or not we look “feminine” enough or “masculine” enough. And how people react to us expressing that. I think in order to address the issue of body dysmorphia, we also have to address gender issues.
UneducatedPotatoTato | 7 hours ago
“How dare you point out gender inequality? That’s an attack on my manhood!!!”
People are so oblivious. The inequality is everywhere. I read an article that women are more likely to be injured and die in car crashes because the test dummies are built based on male proportions.
The fight about gender equality always seems so violent. When so many of the inequalities weren’t even borne out of malice. Like do I think some woman-hater made an executive decision about the test dummies? No, it’s just one thing that had been overlooked and has had a profound impact on our lives so we’re trying to point it out because we don’t wanna die.
bremelanotide | 7 hours ago
The gender war is a turn of phrase. I’ve never in my life seen it used literally outside of satirical fiction. It’s ridiculous to imply that it’s a reference to actual violence. I think people on this thread are being deliberately obtuse.
kazh_9742 | 7 hours ago
They should have started talking more about men with this issue a long time ago if so many men are this hysterical and bitchy about it. Maybe it would have been taken more seriously sooner with so many unhinged tantrums like in this thread.
glitchinthemeowtrix | 7 hours ago
Exactly! That was basically my point lol they are all that SpongeBob gif with the loose handcuffs
glitchinthemeowtrix | 7 hours ago
Ok actually, can someone make my flair “social provocateur”?? I know you’re trying to insult me but I love that, thank you!!
BloodyScout | 11 hours ago
Are you fr fr ?
We have been talking about this since at least 15 years ago. Did you really see one article mentioning men also deal with it and go “Oh so now that it’s men you care 🙄”
glitchinthemeowtrix | 11 hours ago
Didn’t say that, did I? Just said it was interesting. Have a good one tho lol
Lupercus64 | 10 hours ago
You're original comment implies that society is only addressing body dismorphia now that males are affected by it, and the you use an ellipsis to invite the reader to infer your meaning/complete the thought you are expressing.
You then use an example of a female friend from the past to demonstrate the nobody blinked an eye when a girl suffered from body dismorphia. Which reinforces the complementary side to your original statement.
I don't really see any other way to interpret your words, unless they are entirely meaningless. And you apparently can't even stand by your own words. At which point why say anything at all? Otherwise take this opportunity to acknowledge and examine your own bias as you would of others.
People suffer from these disorders regardless of gender. Griping about gender when talking about progress on these issues serves no purpose but to perpetuate division, and hurts progress for everybody. It's good that people are getting help for this, their identity is irrelevant to the value of it.
thataintapipe | 10 hours ago
Well I didn’t gather any of that from the comment, so maybe you should look inward to why you had such an averse reaction instead of tearing into a total stranger for giving a random example of BD inside a message of hope
Lupercus64 | 8 hours ago
If you consider examining a person's choice of words and punctuation in a public forum "tearing into" them, then I don't know how you expect to engage in discourse.
I have "such an averse reaction" because that kind of rhetoric/bad faith statement encourages division over unity and progress. This person did not take the opportunity to clarify their statement as a "message of hope" they deny the criticism and dismiss the critic. Now nobody is obligated to refute every critic, but if you're going to engage anyways, shouldn't you at least be able to defend your statements? Or at the very least correct somebody who misinterpreted them.
Engaging in good faith argument is a critical aspect of discourse. I did not mean to "tear into" anybody, just to confront the rhetorical devices the original commenter used to make a argument for gendered conflict when the article title and body only address gender with regards to the individual at the center of this account. Body dismorphia is otherwise addressed from a gender neutral perspective. It was the original commenter who made gender a topic of discussion on an article discussing a personal experience with body dismorphia.
-"now that young men are struggling" presupposes that attention has only been given to the issue because boys became affected by it, and that girl's struggle with it previously recieved little to no attention. That is just empirically false as the eating disorder awareness campaigns and media coverage have been overwhelmingly female-focused for decades. They don't have to provide evidence for their presuppostion because "now" frames their statement as settled background.
-"It's so interesting..." is an insinuation device. By presenting their conclusion as a mere observation they get their accustion on the record while maintaining deniability. The subject of body dismorphia isn't gendered in the article, but the commenter makes that link based on the sex of the child in the artcle.
-They then appeal to anecdotal evidence as generalization using an vivid, emotionally powerful single case followed by a leap to the conclusion that because she was a girl her suffering was universally dismissed. And when combined with the original pressuposition: girls suffered invisibly until boys started suffering, therefore this attention is unfair/late/hypocritical.
-And then they close it out with self-aware hedging that appears to perform fairness without conceding anything. They acknowledge that the counterargument exist in miniature, but immediately dismissed it which serves to innoculate themselves against the charge of oversimplification.
They are using a single anecdote to support a hasty generalization. Relying on the horror of the anecdote to bypass scrutiny.
And when confronted they offered a defensive non-apology and dismissal. They retreat behind their insinuation ("I only said it was interesting") as a means of refusing to defend their actual statement.
I understand that this wall of text probably conveys the image that I am furiously and passionately typing. And to some degree I am, but it is not meant as an attack on the person, but rather the argument they are making and it's implications.
I do not believe that identity should have anything to do with access to assistance for BD or any other disorders. Identity does, however help inform the best approach for individual treatment and understanding how we interact with these disorders. I think it is wonderful that children and parents have more awareness and access to resources surrounding this issue than previously, and i hope the trend continues regardless of the identity of individuals suffering from BDD.
alltheways7522 | 8 hours ago
Lay off the chat gpt, it really is not serving you well. It is designed to be sycophantic and agree with you, and is very boring to read.
Lupercus64 | 7 hours ago
So rather than read and refute my analysis of an argument and defense of my original statement, you just dismiss it as ChatGPT? That's some really high level argumentation /s
I'd apologize that I wasn't witty enough in breaking down the rhetorical devices in their argument, but that would be inane.
alltheways7522 | 5 hours ago
It wasn't your analysis. It was pure slop from a platform geared to enthusiastically support whatever nonsense you throw at it as a customer.
lilbluehair | 5 hours ago
What do you mean, finally? I'm in my 40s and have heard about anorexia and bulimia being a problem for my entire life
shellys-dollhouse | an hour ago
everyone in your comments yapping about anorexia, as if anorexia is reliant on or revolves around body dysmorphia. guys, it really isn’t i fear, it’s just one symptom anorexia nervosa can possibly manifest & if anything, it highlights how we normalise mental illness / ‘girl insecurities’ — that a unisex mental illness often associated with trauma is whittled down to “girls are just insecure about their looks & can’t see themselves properly, we’ve been talking about this for decades”.
glitchinthemeowtrix | 48 minutes ago
Yes exactly it’s just as someone who’s had both anorexia and body dysmorphia, and who’s friends mostly have as well, we were really just told it was a part of life we had to adapt to. Sometimes it’s just interesting to see how that changes when a different population suffers with something.
I even understand all the frustrated men in here writing fan fiction about me in the comments, but they don’t understand I’m on their side too ultimately.
Basically, if women were taken more seriously when we raised the red flag about these issues (and when girls started dying from these diseases in record numbers decades ago) we could have spared more young men from having to suffer through the same agony we did, but no one would listen to us. And I’m fully aware men have always struggled with these issues, it’s getting them to understand that really seems to be the issue. For instance, men’s disordered eating gets rebranded as like keto and intermittent fasting.
Every woman either was or knows a girl who got so sick she couldn’t leave her house for some reason or another, girls who quietly disappeared to rehabs, missed semesters of school. But society is so designed to dismiss us that it is taking kids like Clavicular, or this poor kid in the article, for people to understand the true impact these issues have on young people. That’s dangerous for boys and girls alike, I don’t want young men or boys feeling the way I did at 14 either, and it genuinely freaks me out to see how many boys are suffering exactly the same way I did 20 years ago, but no amount of saying that changes anything especially when they’re so reactive. Men fail each other by not being able to listen and being so conditioned to lecture ( also my goodness they can be so emotional!)
shellys-dollhouse | 36 minutes ago
it’s genuinely concerning to me how much people equate anorexia with BDD or some sort of vanity. not to get too revealing on my main account lol, but i’m still very presently affected by disordered eating (though mine is absolutely impacted by dysmorphia & not anorexia) & am in a few support spaces; it’s staggering how many people’s eating disorders have no reliance on vanity, looking good to others ect. so often it’s trauma-related, wanting to take up as little space as possible in people’s lives, seeking control, wanting to look grotesque to avoid objectification, wanting to feel like or try to resemble a child, wanting to be cared for, so on. it’s very depressing to me that such a complex disorder is kind of just seen as “girls are insecure disorder”, especially when you see so many non-binary people & men struggling in these spaces.
i’m sorry that these struggles have affected you & so many other women you know, & i would agree with you that it’s exceptionally common & accepted that girls / women will just feel like this rather than figuring out how to alleviate these issues (which as you say, could have equipped us with how to avoid this commonly occurring in young boys too). like, it’s totally normal to be genuinely distressed & repulsed by our appearance — not ideal, but seen as common & almost inevitable. we need to put more thought into actually trying to prevent this from happening (to all genders) & how to treat such a complex mental health issue, instead of throwing up our hands & thinking this is just a universal experience all girls go through.
SimilarWizards | 3 hours ago
okay but this article implies that the psychiatrist who was willing to treat her child made the condition worse without offering any evidence of that whatsoever. The author goes on to say "We stopped those sessions soon after, but sometimes I still want to scream at myself: how bad would it be now if I had never put him in front of that guy?" This woman wanted a provider to treat an extremely complex condition in an anxious teen in a couple of sessions and then blamed the provider when her son wasn't magically cured? As a therapist this is a massive red flag, and if I consulted with this mom, I would not treat her child. I would be concerned that she would blame me or her child if the treatment doesn't work quickly. The truth is that most mental health conditions take some time to see improvement. And a provider has to first establish rapport which can take quite a while with an anxious teen boy. Further, when treatment is effective, sometimes symptoms actually get worse before they get better. This is very common in treatment and most competent providers spell this out clearly in their informed consent. There are enough tells in this article for me to say that I believe the mom needs to take an honest look at her own biases and lack of understanding of this condition, rather than writing an article disparaging the providers who tried to help. I'm glad to hear the kid is getting specialized treatment, but I worry what might happen if his mental health ebbs again, as it often does, because mental health is a continuum, it is not black and white, sane or "insane".
SimilarWizards | 3 hours ago
I also want to add that while I fully support her decision to raise awareness of this condition and share her story as a mom, she probably should have done so anonymously. All these pictures of her child are really uncalled for because if he is that dysmorphic, there is a very high chance having his personal story with his face and mom's full name plastered across the internet is just about the worst thing for him right now. He needs his parent to be patient and understanding of his progress, to find small positives about his 18th birthday rather than making a list of all the ways it was ruined FOR HER, and maybe to consider her actual child in all this rather than herself.
Wide-Relation-9947 | 4 hours ago
And yet the article has a picture of the boy's face? And I am apparently the first person to comment on this?!!!
SimilarWizards | 3 hours ago
as a therapist I wholeheartedly agree. This whole article screams out at me that the mom needs to get some treatment of her own. It also says she is a "leadership coach". That leads me to believe she is "coaching" other parents in this position which she is not qualified to do in any way.
horseradishstalker | 2 hours ago
I don’t know why the mom agreed to show pictures of her family or if her son agreed to it as well although it is doubtful. However, her son is no longer a child. While there may be a moral reason why his picture should not have been shown in general there is no legal reason not to publish it.
ZestycloseAd5918 | 12 hours ago
Extended covid lockdowns seriously screwed up a whole generation of young people.
OnlyACsNoFans | 12 hours ago
No idea why you're getting downvoters. This is absolutely true. Ask any teacher or psychologist, they'll confirm
ZestycloseAd5918 | 12 hours ago
People like to dismiss anyone who says this as an anti vaxxer. I’m not. Covid was not killing children or the majority of working age healthy adults. The lockdown response was severely over blown and now there is a generation of young people who are socially and academically screwed. Small businesses were decimated. The response to COVID was a disaster.
Delores_Herbig | 11 hours ago
> Covid was not killing children or the majority of working age healthy adults.
That… wasn’t the point. The purpose of the lockdown was to prevent the mass spread of COVID. Kids go to school, interact with hundreds of other kids, pass the virus back and forth, etc. Then some of those kids go home to their grandparents or immunosuppressed relatives or just go out into the world spreading the virus, which eventually makes its way back to those people.
Lockdowns were about protecting the most vulnerable from the rest of us. And also to prevent the entire collapse of the healthcare system, like certain places who were initially hit hard experienced… corpses being stored in trailers, hospitals running out of body bags, no PPE for healthcare workers, staffing shortages, and on and on. That’s not sustainable, and they needed to staunch the flow.
Most healthy people caught COVID and recovered at home, but some percentage didn’t and the system wasn’t prepared for that on a massive scale. Still isn’t.
ZestycloseAd5918 | 11 hours ago
The most vulnerable should have been on lock down and taken extreme precaution, not all of society.
SilverMedal4Life | 10 hours ago
What do you do if you're living with grandma and grandpa?
Like, that's how daily life is for a lot of people.
ZestycloseAd5918 | 10 hours ago
Grandma and grandpa and that family should have taken extra precaution (isolate grandparents to one room, extra care with hand washing for the entire family, etc). Fucking up an entire generation of young people by insisting EVERYONE must take extreme precaution was a huge mistake.
SilverMedal4Life | 10 hours ago
What a world where being at home for a year is enough to screw kids up.
Where are the parents in all this? Do they bear no responsibility?
mrnotoriousman | 3 hours ago
A year? Most of the country was out and about after a month or so but that doesn't fit the narrative that everyone was forcibly locked inside their houses for months on end by the government
SilverMedal4Life | 3 hours ago
Yeah. Like, I locked down for a while but that was because I was getting my degree and so I just spent all my time indoors studying - would have been doing that anyway. My parents are old and are lifetime smokers, and I was living with them at the time, and I wanted to make sure they didn't get sick.
Thankfully, they didn't, and I've still got some time left with them.
ZestycloseAd5918 | 8 hours ago
A year is a heck of a long time in terms of child development. And here in CA it was basically 2 school years
Katyafan | 6 hours ago
Where in CA? Here the schools were open the next semester. Los Angeles area, to the North.
Delores_Herbig | 10 hours ago
Again, while the hardest hit were the elderly and immunocompromised, some people who required intensive medical care or hospitalization or who died were young and otherwise healthy. When you have an illness like that, and it’s spreading massively throughout the general population, you’re going to overload your health systems. Not to mention the fact that your healthcare staff is getting sick from the constant exposure. Now you don’t have enough beds, doctors, nurses, PPE, ambulances, general medical supplies, etc. That results in lack of care or delays for everyone, covid patient or not. That is a societal problem.
And you can’t exactly just lock up the elderly. They often depend on other people for basic support, and there was no way to prevent their loved ones from catching the virus when everyone was just out and about living their lives as selfishly as possible. I was classed as an “essential worker” at the time, in a public facing job, and people just did not give a flying fuck about anyone else. Coming in coughing, sneezing, touching everything, arguing about wearing a mask for five minutes… Thirteen of us caught Covid in the same two-week period.
Was Covid handled the best way it possibly could have been? No, but its handling (or lack of) was a mess from the very start. Lockdowns happened because we weren’t prepared as a country, and people flatly refused to make simple daily sacrifices to keep it at bay. It was a last resort.
Into-the-stream | 11 hours ago
Im a sa pro vax as it gets. When the vaccines were released i lined up for hours at 6am to get one, and I still keep them up to date.
But a lot of the time, during lockdown, they pointed fingers at kids and declared locking the children up and isolating them with overworked parents trying to work full time and do full time childcare, was the main strategy for saving the elderly.
Now no one wants to talk about the real consequences of that choice.
And it isn’t about whether it was right if wrong to isolate them, but about a real crisis happening. But people react like when someone puts their dogs face close to a misplaced poo and says “look what you did”. They don’t want to look at it. They don’t want to feel like they are being shamed.
So we created a mental health crisis in an entire generation of people, and we do everything we can to ignore the cries for help because it makes us uncomfortable. We continue to fail them, years after covid ended, but this time we don’t have the disease as an excuse.
THAT is the part where we should feel ashamed. THAT is the part we should be rubbing their noses in.
ZestycloseAd5918 | 11 hours ago
Well said. The elderly and people with compromised health and comorbidities should have been encouraged to lock down and given the support and resources needed to do so, the rest of us needed to wash our hands more and go about our lives and to get the vaccine when it was available.
graceling | 5 hours ago
Yes but people didn't wash their hands even during the pandemic... People were actively dying in hospitals and still denying that covid even existed.
ZestycloseAd5918 | 5 hours ago
All you can control is yourself and your actions. I can wash my hands. I can choose to believe or not believe whatever I want. Obviously Covid was a real thing, but was it the black plague? No. Those people who died in a hospital beds likely were elderly or had serious underlying medical issues. Of those, denying you have covid on your death bed in a hospital is a big who the fuck cares. You fucked around and found out. Oh well. You’re dead regardless of what you believe.
OnlyACsNoFans | 12 hours ago
I agree 100%. My kids were locked down during critical periods and it had a huge effect on them and their friends.
Capricancerous | 11 hours ago
Never have there been better candidates for psychedelics-assisted therapy.
antiduh | 8 hours ago
Seems more like a have-hammer, will-nail answer instead of solving the problem from its bones up.
attimhsa | 3 hours ago
Forgive me, but this is perhaps a somewhat myopic response to a seemingly defacto comment.
Sticking to a path defined by nuance, there may be some validity in what they said in terms of raw neuroplasticity. And I don’t believe they were implying some kind of inherent connection between dysmorphia, and the hallucinations often associated with psychedelics, though I could be wrong.
RIP Timothy Leary.