What Exactly Is Body Image Dysmorphia? (And What Can You Do About It?)

Dr Elayne Daniels
7 min readSep 26, 2022

There’s one relationship you can’t escape: the one with yourself. And that relationship extends to what you see in the mirror and how you perceive and respond to it. Most of us see things we would like to change. But, for some people, those little wishes or cues for a “healthier” lifestyle are replaced by an obsessive distortion of “what is.” Body image dysmorphia (also known as body dysmorphia or body dysmorphic disorder (BDD)) causes extreme anguish for those affected by it.

People with body dysmorphia hate what they see and often hate who they are. They feel trapped in a body and physical features they can’t stand, tortured by their wish to not be “like this.”

Their body image — negative, misconstrued, self-loathing — controls their existence. Everything they see in others, everything they experience in themselves is through the filter of BDD.

What is body image?

Body image is a person’s relationship with their body. The relationship includes cognitive, emotional, behavioral, perceptual, and sociocultural dimensions.

A person’s “body-relationship” can vary or stay consistent across situations, circumstances, and time.

What is true for all of us, however, is that none of us is born with body image dysmorphia.

What is body image dysmorphia?

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