When I visited Dr Phillips in 2019 for my official BDD diagnosis, I never expected to come away with anything other than an official diagnosis. I believed there wasn’t much I could learn that I hadn’t already deduced myself because I’d lived with BDD for 25 years by that point and had read every book written by Dr Phillips.
I was wrong.
Even though I already knew I had Body Dysmorphic Disorder, I never knew I had Body Dysmorphic Disorder. You see, I knew I had a problem with my face, but never had I considered my body a part of my BDD. It would be more accurate to say I have Facial Dysmorphic Disorder, but that term doesn’t yet exist.
As far as I was concerned, I had everyday bodily dislikes, nothing out of the ordinary. My diet needed work, by then I was eating mostly and exclusively chocolate, but I didn’t even consider that a problem because it was a just a phrase.
When Dr Phillips listed non-purging bulimia on my diagnosis, I was flabbergasted.
It turns out, I was indeed eating disordered and didn’t even recognise it. Here are the symptoms Dr Phillips recognised that I overlooked:
- Overeating one day then restricting the next
- Chewing and spitting my food
- Abusing sport supplements
- Overexercising
- Using diuretics and laxatives
I’d never thought much of these behaviours. My sister was doing it. I wasn’t starving, I was fasting, just like a religious fast. I wasn’t vomiting. But it turns out, I was using these “compensatory” behaviours as a means of purging and offsetting calories.
This was not the only symptom I’d overlooked in my journey through the disorder, and yet I never thought I could overlook something like disordered eating.
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