Imaginary Ugliness
In a way, society has always led us to follow certain canons of beauty. It is normal and healthy to take care of our appearance and feel good about ourselves, both inside and out.
Many times we are not satisfied with the image we have. We would like to be taller, slimmer, have bigger eyes… To some extent, this is considered normal. Nobody is comfortable with their physical appearance one hundred percent, but that is not why we are constantly brooding on the subject or suffering because of it. We accept it and that’s it, since we are aware that the external appearance is not the most important thing about a person, that the physical is something subjective and also ephemeral.
Unfortunately, there are certain people whose thoughts and concerns about their physical appearance are so extreme that it leads them to feel obsessed about any physical flaws or imperfections. Imperfections that perhaps for our eyes are small normal defects or even we do not appreciate them. These people suffer from a psychological disorder called Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
People with this disorder oversize their physical imperfections, focus all their attention on them, until they perceive a really distorted image of their physique that does not correspond to reality. The subject of the physical occupies the entire mind of the patient, becoming the central theme of his life. It is they themselves, with their obsessions, who enlarge that “little imperfection”.
The consequence of all this is that the person with dysmorphic disorder believes that they really are horribly ugly, which will obviously cause their self-esteem to plummet, as well as a very significant psychological discomfort and lead them to act in a way that will only make them maintain their disorder.
These behaviors will be looking at yourself again and again in the mirror analyzing yourself all the time, putting on makeup in different ways to cover your supposed defect, asking everyone if your defect is really such or even locking yourself at home and not wanting to go out for fear that someone makes an unfortunate comment to you and you may feel humiliated or ridiculed.
In extreme cases, the person consults with plastic surgeons or dermatologists to help them change their physique, something that is useless since the problem resides in the mind of the patient and not in the physical one. In fact, they are usually people with a normal appearance, rather attractive. When they operate on one thing, the problem moves to another part of the body.
These behaviors can, in the short term, generate relief for the person, who, by not having to be exposed to other people who may have an opinion, by being made up so that they do not notice what they want to cover or by reassuring themselves and Again looking in the mirror, they stop facing the fear they feel that what he or she thinks will be confirmed but in the long term they only serve to make the disorder worse.
By avoiding and fleeing from any situation in which their wrong beliefs about the physique can be confirmed, the person feels momentarily safe. What he ignores is that these perceptions are just distorted, unrealistic beliefs and he is depriving himself of a lot of things just because of an irrational fear, which has no foundation. He never gives himself the opportunity to check if what he thinks is real but to flee or avoid over and over again, making the problem worse.
It then falls into a vicious circle in which more and more reassurance and avoidance behaviors are needed as negative thoughts about oneself become stronger and stronger.
What can we do to get out of the vicious circle?
Cut it by some of its points, for example, thoughts or obsessions. The false thoughts of the patient about his appearance should be corrected and modified by other realistic ones through objective and true data in addition to de-dramatizing about the physical.
On the other hand, the person must progressively expose himself to everything that he was avoiding until now. In other words, they must be able to abandon their safe behaviors: go to parties with many people, stop putting on makeup for the defect, stop asking people about the defect or stop looking at themselves again and again in the mirror.
What is the goal of this treatment? That in the end the person realizes for himself that his thoughts were really absurd, that nothing that he wrongly feared happens, I know that he was magnifying everything and that an interior that projects security is much more attractive than any physical one.
