I was 12, the first time I can remember experiencing what I now know as Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
I was in year six of primary school and had to have a small operation on my nose. The operation was simple and tiny, but I had no idea of the massive impact it was about to unlock on my life. Waking up from the surgery, I was disappointed that my nose didn’t appear smaller, knowing full well that the surgery wouldn’t have done that anyway.
Not long after, I had my first proper phone and had reached my first year of secondary school. I can vividly remember one of the first videos I watched on Instagram – a very pretty lady, heavily contouring her nose to make it look smaller. That’s where my insecurities started becoming visible to other people. I started purchasing fake tan, dark brown eyeshadow, contour sticks, even tattoo needles and ink, and would go as far as taking a pair of sharp kitchen scissors to permanently mark a line across my nose.
At this time, school was becoming insufferable. I would wake up at 5 am to apply layers of extreme unblended contour to my nose, fake freckles, blusher, and heavy eyeliner, then I would go into school. Children are cruel, and so are adults when they don’t know what’s wrong. People thought I had dirt on my nose or was awful at applying makeup. They had no idea that I couldn’t be seen without it. Every day was a new comment about my nose, how silly it looked, how funny it was. People in public would point or stare and laugh. It got to the point where going to school was just too much, and by halfway through year eight, I was refusing to go to school, and no one knew why.
Until the first time my mum had noticed that something was wrong. I had a sleepover with my best friend, slept in a clay face mask the whole night, and refused to take it off by morning. It was at this time that my mum realised I couldn’t let anyone see me without my extreme makeup. I had convinced myself that I would rather die than let anyone see me. I would walk to the bathroom with a towel over my head in the morning, like a ghost, wouldn’t go swimming, not even on holiday, and had completely stopped going to school or making any contact at all with some of my closest friends. My family didn’t see me; only a hand out my bedroom door and standing up would cause me to nearly faint due to lack of sunlight. My mum would slide food under my door on the days that I was just too exhausted to spend hours doing my makeup. I would lay in my bed with the blinds shut and spend days at a time a prisoner in my own room. On the days that I did put makeup on, I would sleep in it because taking it off again was awful.
The first time a name was put to it was by a homeopath that my mum was seeing. She sadly passed recently, but she had no idea how much she helped me and my family by giving it a name. My mum reached out to the BDD Foundation and after a few years I was officially diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder by Professor David Veale.
I started on fluoxetine, a game changer and continue to take it to this day. I am nearly 21 years old, and after over 80 sessions of CBT, lots of trial medication, a whole lot of mental and emotional turmoil, and a few more years hiding away, I can now walk around my house makeup free. I have a boyfriend, my best friend is still my best friend, and I have achieved a driving licence. I’m aware that I will never exactly be ‘free’ from my BDD and certainly not from the trauma it has caused me, but I am a whole lot happier.
BDD is still a massive part of my every day, but it’s moments where I feel sorry for myself that I realise how grateful I am to have had the support of my family and the BDD Foundation. I hope that more people, whoever they are, can reach out, talk , and get the help they need. No one should go through this alone. I wouldn’t have survived by myself.