Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Body Dysmorphic Disorder - BDD from Anxiety Clinic (Part 2)
How The BDD Cycle Self-Perpetuates
Having thoughts just pop into your head is common for everyone.
However, what is it that makes this process obsessive where you constantly focus on the
same thing over and over?
Let's consider an example:
Sarah is unhappy with the shape of her nose.
She constantly checks her reflection and touches her face.
However, the most trying thing in Sarah's life is the constant thoughts she gets about
how her nose looks.
Sarah can be sitting watching the TV when a thought about her nose pops into her head.
She touches her nose and starts to talk to herself in her mind about how it's such and
awful shape and makes her look ugly.
Then she imagines other people making fun of her nose behind her back.
The internal chatter and speculating what others may think make Sarah feel anxious,
dissatisfied and intensely unhappy.
Now let's consider the process that is occurring in the example:
Sarah is already unhappy with her nose and has almost certainly thought about it (and
felt bad) many times.
This means her brain will have tested to see if the thoughts were important by considering
if they were accompanied by intense emotional responses.
We already know the thoughts make her feel bad so it would follow that her brain files
them at the top of the 'important thought filing cabinet'.
Sarah is watching TV and her brain (whilst she isn't focused on anything) selects a thought
from her 'filing cabinet' and pops it into her conscious awareness.
Sarah immediately starts talking to herself in her head and playing out different scenarios
- which elicit strong (unpleasant) emotional responses.
The brain assesses the thoughts to (still) be important as they elicit strong feelings
and so re-files the information back at the top of the filing cabinet.
Later (ten minutes, an hour, a day, etc) the brain will once more pop the same unresolved
thought into Sarah's conscious awareness... and the cycle will run again... and again.
This is where the obsessive thought patterns come from.
It's actually quite a mechanical process once you understand how it works. Here's a summary:
1 An unsolicited thought appears in your mind
2 You focus your attention on the thought and play out various scenarios
3 When a scenario plays out badly - you feel an intense negative emotional state
4 The brain associates the intense unpleasant feeling with the thought
5 The brain considers the thought important because it elicited a strong emotional feeling
6 The brain files the thought as 'important - please recycle' at the top of the sufferers
filing cabinet
7 The thought gets recycled - Go back to 1 and repeat...
Now, be honest - do you regularly engage with your thoughts, play out different scenarios,
talk to yourself in an unpleasant or critical way and feel bad?
Welcome to a very sizable chunk of your BDD problem.
The truth is (much as you may like to argue to the contrary) that your problem isn't actually
where you thought it was.
The problem isn't your body part... it's the way you THINK about that body part that makes
you feel bad.
The great news is that you don't need anaesthetic or surgery to sort out troublesome thought
processes.
It's relatively simple with the right specialised help.
Where Do The BDD Compulsions Come From?
The compulsions such as checking reflections, checking the body part and touching the body
part are all symptomatic (driven by) the thought processes we've already discussed.
Some BDD sufferers reach a point in their life where they realise their obsessing and
checking makes no rational sense - but it doesn't make it go away.
The reason for this is because when we rationalise we use logic to make sense of things, however
BDD is not driven by logic, it's driven by emotion.
Next we're going to explain specifically why logic and reason (no matter how hard you try)
can't overcome BDD.
Let's say you have a sixteen year old daughter and she's started dating a 22-year-old thug.
He has no job, a drink problem, a drug problem, a criminal record, a history of violence and
already has three kids by different women none of which he takes care of.
You see the potential danger ahead and decide to take your precious daughter to one side
for a chat.
You explain how this guy with his drink, drugs, lack of job, violence and relationship history
is going to end up hurting her and that it would make sense for her to dump him and find
a 'better boyfriend'.
You're pleased at how your talk has gone as there's no denying your logic or rationale.
However, afterwards your daughter turns to you and says "but I love him".
Is she going to follow your logical advice or go with her emotions?
You know as well as we do how it will turn out.
This is because our emotions are far more persuasive than logic (even if we like to
believe otherwise).
Emotions and logic are like oil and water.
You can't combine them no matter how furiously you try and mix them together - nor are they
interchangeable.
This is why you can't use rationalisation or logic (alone) to overcome BDD.
The good news is that we've pioneered something called emotional software and this CAN be
used to change emotions, break obsessive thought processes and do away with compulsive behaviours.
Sound interesting?
What Is Emotional Software & How Does It Work?
We discussed earlier that thought processes create emotional states.
If you have any doubt about this, for example believing emotions are caused things on the
outside like your boss, traffic congestion or the government - you need to look a little
deeper:
For example, have you ever felt nervous about an upcoming appointment (dentist, hospital,
job interview, first date, etc)?
Assuming your answer is yes (which it will be if you have a pulse) then you need to consider
that you were experiencing an emotional state (anxiety, fear, anticipation, etc) BEFORE
the event even took place.
The only thing that was taking place and creating the emotional states were your thought processes.
Think of a time in the past when you felt really bad.
You could have just split from your first love, lost a relative or been utterly humiliated
in public.
As you think of that, do you feel bad inside?
So you can feel bad inside by merely, THINKING about something which happened in the past.
How about an example from the present?
You're late for an important appointment and you're stuck in traffic.
You begin to feel increasingly anxious as the minutes tick by.
You imagine arriving late and having to apologise to disapproving looks.
You snap back to the present and in your head desperately plead "come on... come on..."
to the traffic in front of you.
It's easy to assume that being late or stuck in traffic is what is making you feel bad.
However, in truth it's the thought processes (the speculated imagery and internal talking)
that generate the emotional responses.
This is precisely why different people respond in different ways to the same situation - they
have different internal thought processes.
So, emotions are NOT generated by outside things like your boss, spouse, traffic or
weather.
They are generated through your thought processes... although you're hard-wired not to realise
that.
Now, let's compare thought processes to computer software.
This is actually quite an accurate comparison as your brain is essentially an automated
information processor and storage device.
Software is basically information (or code) containing a set of instructions.
In the same way, your thoughts contain code which tells your emotional centre what to
do.
The first instruction is whether or not to fire off an emotional response.
Yes or No.
If Yes...
The second instruction is to decide WHICH emotional response to fire (anxiety, fear,
anticipation, joy, etc)
The third instruction is to decide the INTENSITY of the emotional response (say on a scale
of 1-10)
For your obsessive thoughts with respect to your body part you'll get a YES, probably
followed by anxiety (revulsion dissatisfaction, loathing, etc) followed by an 8+ intensity
(maybe even a 10 if you have it bad).
Everyone has their own unique way of processing information and eliciting emotions.
However, we can 'map out' how you work internally.
It's then just a matter of re-programming the obsessive thought process that is making
you feel bad.
This is what we do... in fact fixing emotionally driven problems is all we do!
We've specialised in this VERY narrow niche for over sixteen years... and we get consistent
positive results!
Once the obsessive pattern is broken, the old 'problem thoughts' stop getting recycled
into your conscious awareness.
Essentially you just wont care about it anymore.
This may sound simple... because it is.
We've given you plenty of high quality, leading edge information on this video... but none
of it is complex.
If you'd like more information on what we do and how we help people overcome body dysmorphic
disorder and a host of other anxiety driven disorders - take a look at our websites.
If you're watching this on youtube you'll find links to our websites by clicking the
'show more' button below.
We're also in the process of adding more videos to our youtube channel so feel free to subscribe
and share.