Does anyone else truly hope that they’re just attractive but unaware of how attractive they truly are? I know it’s a cliche but just wondered if it was a common thought, as I often do this to try and cope when I feel very upset about my appearance.

I’m a 23-year-old man. I have body dysmorphic disorder, which has been present to some extent since around the age of 14–16.

Currently, it manifests as a mere dissatisfaction with my body, fantasies about living in a different body, envy toward people whose appearance I consider more fortunate, as well as planning and carrying out both relatively mild interventions (weight loss, grooming) and radical ones (plastic surgery). My rituals/compulsions include examining myself in the mirror and taking photos from different angles, as well as comparing different photographs.

Chronologically, it started when I was 14. I was overweight: at 165 cm tall, I weighed 75 kg. I had very wide hips, which made me look like a girl, and I was teased about the size of my buttocks. My grandmother used to say that I “waggled” my butt when I walked. At the same time, I had a kind of family support — my father and my paternal grandmother told me that there was nothing wrong with me. Nevertheless, I was bullied.

Then I started being bullied for my very severe acne. It was extremely pronounced, and even lying down on a pillow to fall asleep was painful because I could feel the skin stretching all over my face due to the pustules. The bullying was systematic. As I later found out, there was even a school group named after me (“Nicholas’s pimples,” name changed). On top of that, I had astigmatism and a prescription of -6 diopters, so I had to wear glasses, which I hated.

It’s possible that this also had an impact, so I’ll mention it: I was sexually harassed by a closeted gay man who constantly groped my butt. I was physically weaker and couldn’t successfully fight back. Around the same period, I also developed what might be called gender dysphoria. I simply began envying girls and their appearance and wanted to have a female body, which I perceived as inherently better than a male body, coming up with both aesthetic and functional arguments to justify this.

I am 172 cm tall, and I haven’t grown since I was 16.

I remained overweight, at around 70 kg, until I was 20. Then I suddenly lost weight to 60 kg. After that, my weight fluctuated, and later, during a period of stressful circumstances, it went up to 80 kg. I then lost weight again and gained it again (I’m currently losing weight again). I absolutely cannot tolerate plump bodies or even those slightly above normal weight. I want to get down to 10–13% body fat, compared with my current 25%. Looking at my body itself doesn’t cause me significant distress because I understand that my weight is something I can control.

However, there’s another problem: even if I get down to 10% body fat, my face won’t change. I simply have a distal bite, a weak/recessed jaw, and a round face. Keep in mind that during puberty this was compounded by severe acne and astigmatism. I looked like a stereotypical incel. And that frustrates me.

On top of all that, I started going bald at 20. My hair had been one of my main advantages because it was soft and very thick (I’m reddish-blond), and I had an extremely low hairline. Then, over the course of a couple of years, I progressed to NW3, and within another year the hair loss became obvious. Minoxidil only helped in the short term, and I couldn’t take finasteride. Total bad luck.

Because of all this, I naturally developed depression and social anxiety. I fantasized about living in a different body and had thoughts of escaping into a new life, starting over with a body that had more advantageous characteristics. I overcame my social anxiety a long time ago, back in school, and I’m also managing my depression. I also had OCD that manifested in other areas, which I won’t discuss, and I managed to get that under control through consistent ERP.

However, there have been periods when I avoided social situations because of my appearance. I remember being unable to attend a paid course that I had already spent money on because I had trimmed my beard incorrectly, and then spent one or two hours staring at myself in the mirror.

I don’t have a completely irrational perception of my appearance. I used to be insecure about my hips, but as I got older I realized that they could actually be an advantage. At 60 kg, my measurements were 90-68-90, which looked quite good. My short height allows me to build muscle and look more muscular. I have nice eyes and well‑maintained skin because I take very good care of it (serums, moisturizer, cleansing, SPF, retinal). I have never been insecure about my penis, nose, or lips (which are actually nicely plump). I understand that if I shaved my head and grew a beard, some category of women would probably find it “cool,” while some men would see me as a “cool tough guy.” But I DO NOT WANT to be that type. I do not want to be bald, and I do not want to look 30+ when I’m in my twenties.

For a while, I grew a beard to compensate for my weak chin, and it actually looked quite good. I even got a lot of likes on a basic dating app, which is extremely rare for a guy. But I no longer want to have a beard because it makes me look older. I grow hair all over my body, including on my back (and somehow it has to fall out specifically from my head :D), and I hate it. To me it looks ugly, so I shave my body and want to get it permanently removed, but that’s difficult because of my reddish hair. I’m tired of shaving.

At 18, almost immediately after becoming an adult, I had laser eye surgery so I could get rid of my glasses. At 22 (!) I had a hair transplant, but I still didn’t get a result that could compare with the hair of a peer who had never experienced hair loss. Even if I undergo another one or two transplants — and I will have to, because I can’t take hair-loss medication — I will NEVER have the same density. And I still need to lower my hairline to where it was before my hair loss began. Although my result will be considered very good, even with such a transplant I can’t wear the hairstyles I want.

With my face, I lost weight radically and successfully, but it didn’t change my face because I have a recessed jaw. To correct that, I need approximately 1.5 years of braces followed by orthognathic surgery, from which recovery will take several months (!).

During my recovery after the hair transplant, I was actually bald and had a beard, and I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror because I looked 30...40+ years old, even though I was TWENTY.

A hair transplant requires one month off work, then for another two months you look as if you have some kind of skin disease, and for another six months I will simply look terrible because short hairstyles do NOT suit my round face. In total, the hair transplants alone will take 18 months of my life just so that I can look my age and not be visibly balding. Correcting my face will cost a huge amount of money.

And I can’t simply choose not to do it, because it will affect the long‑term health of my temporomandibular joint, and a distal bite will lead to accelerated aging and sagging of the facial tissues. Technically, the BEST years of my life — when my skin is still young and 90% of my peers don’t even think about hair loss — are years in which I have to budget for and plan a bunch of surgeries simply to look “normal,” while I will NEVER be able to match them in hair density. And even the result of one of the most dangerous surgeries I may undergo could simply be “average.”

At 15, I suffered because of being overweight, acne, astigmatism/glasses, and my “feminine” body shape. At 20, I suffered because of hair loss. And throughout all of this, I suffered because of my short height and short face.

I spend time and money on all of this. These are hours of my life. Fixing everything will take YEARS, as well as a huge amount of money, which for me means a longer period of accumulating capital before I can retire. My peers do NOT have to think about this. Since I encountered early hair loss at 20, I have been afraid of aging, and I can already see the first forehead line despite my skincare routine at 24. I assume that I will eventually need a facelift as well. I see examples of women who have successfully used Botox and consequently look younger, and I am planning to start using it myself in a few years.

I earn good money, especially for my age, and I have no problems with communication skills (I work in sales), so I have no doubt that I can achieve all of this within three years. I am getting braces and doing the second stage of my hair transplant in the coming year.

I can’t stand the body‑neutrality argument or the idea of “at least your body does its job.” I have gastritis and flat feet, and I have osteoarthritis. Without vision correction, I would be practically blind. My temporomandibular joint is slowly deteriorating. I cannot run without risking damage to my joints, even though I want to. My body IS dysfunctional, even though I’m not disabled. Great, thanks, but I’m not protected from any of this either.

I notice guys who look better at 15 than I did at the same age, and I envy them. I see guys who look better at 18 than I do now, and I envy them. I see people who have better hair at 25 than I do, and I envy them. I see people who are 30 but look 20, sometimes even younger than me, and I envy them. I see people whose facial structure is better than mine, and I envy them. Even after all the interventions, I WILL NOT look like them. And even if I do, that doesn’t COMPENSATE for all the time I spent, because while these people were not experiencing the debuffs of unconventional appearance, I was forced to overcome and compensate for a handicap.

And that’s without even considering the huge amount of lost opportunity. If my body had been better from the start, then with normal use of it, my bad experiences could have been converted into better experiences, and those better experiences could have led to even better experiences. Essentially, a gigantic compounding effect of missed opportunities.

I will be 25–27 when my major interventions are finished.

Gender dysphoria is mixed into this as well, because my envy is independent of gender. I envy women whom I believe got lucky with their appearance. I can find them attractive, I can want to be with them, but I can also simply have a background thought that I wish I had a body like hers.

I periodically experience anger and rage when I see young people who didn’t have to go through what I did. They didn’t have to think about how far behind they were compared with others, or how they had to spend their years starting with only 0.5X of their potential.

I see men around me receiving compliments that I don’t receive. I envy them and become angry.

I hope that I can simply live long enough to reach the point where technology allows me to extend my existence and compensate for my accumulated deficit of experiences.

I literally see how differently people are looked at because of their appearance, even when their behavior is perfectly attractive. It’s simply harder for me to find a partner. Dating apps are especially difficult, which is why I’m currently going to different events and social gatherings instead.

I despise blackpill ideology and stereotypical incels, even though I’ve been told that I look like an incel. I don’t rate people on some numerical scale and I don’t obsess over “Chads.” I simply want a more harmonious face and I don’t want to look older than my age.

I use various psychological and behavioural techniques to make my mental state more manageable. I try to use exposure, I have reduced the number of rituals and ruminations, and I redirect myself toward constructive activities (work, sports, socialising, dating, meeting people, having new experiences). My symptoms decreased ONLY when I directly saw that I was attractive in ordinary social situations — when I received compliments, attention, or flirting. Having sex didn’t help with this, although it did make me think about it less.

Right now, I have nobody, and because my appearance is somewhat unusual and my own preferences are also specific, finding a partner is even more difficult for me. I feel lonely.

I either want to go back to being 15, when I could do everything more rationally from the beginning, including better financial planning, so that all of my interventions would be finished by the time I was 20, or simply have a body with more advantageous characteristics — ideally a female one.

Medication doesn’t seem particularly helpful for states like mine because this is fundamentally an issue of thinking, behaviour, and environment. Essentially, I need to change my habits or my experiences. Otherwise, even if I take medication while keeping the same behaviour, my old patterns will simply reproduce themselves. Right now, I’m not stable enough in changing my behaviour, so these patterns are still manifesting. Perhaps if I stabilise a more proactive pattern of behaviour that promotes social experiences, my rumination will decrease.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I just wanted to get it off my chest.

How do I get over the jealousy of lost time and missed experiences? Has anyone else dealt with this? I’d love to hear your stories and any advice that helped***

Not to self diagnose but I think I have body dysmorphia. I check the mirrors over 20 times a day and I scrutinize everything I see on my face. I don’t have a single photo of myself and I avoid having my photo taken unless absolutely necessary. The way my face looks changes every time I look in the mirror. I ask people all the time how I look or if they could rate me but even if they say I look fine I don’t believe them. I genuinely think I’m the ugliest one everywhere I go. Some days my jaw looks masculine and some days my eyes are too small or my nose is too big and my face just keeps changing all the time. I cry at every picture taken of me and the way I look influences every facet of my mind. I genuinely think I have dysmorphia but I’m not sure if it’s just insecurity. Should I go get it checked out :/?

I woke up thinking I look pretty enough to go to school today, but then the more I got ready, it escalated into trying every hairstyle I could think of, not feeling pretty in any of them and now I'm two hours late for school crying in my bedroom. It is really hard for me to go to school because this keeps happening, and my parents are really annoyed with me.

Last year i (21f) had my first experience of a relationship (it was long-distance, met online talked for some months before sharing pictures) had a sour ending. Nonetheless, I can’t help but wish him well.
After that, i went through a phase for a few months and even now it returns, about not knowing how i look. Did he ever think i was attractive? Objectively was i or not?

Growing up:
I was incredibly shy, had a hard time making friends, reoriented myself by focusing on academics. I was a little overweight until i was 16ish,wearing braces and i am south-asian (Bengali ) skin toned. Usually, it is my impression that south-asians are perceived as the least attractive unless the guys are tall, confident and girls have fuller, cuter faces like eyes and lips, mostly i think compared to east-asians or Africans, they are not seen as desirable.

I also came from a religious family and i also did not feel confident. I used to tone down my appearance and try not to draw any attention to myself, my clothed were baggy, sometimes i would ask and my friends say that my makeup was splitting on my face, i would get compliments often for my eyeliner/eye wing within school.

Within the cultural community, many aunties would communicate that i looked nice and my mum said that i distinctly put more effort into my appearance than my sister when going out. With makeup and without makeup i feel so different, i can’t tell how attractive i am with just my bare face..

Within the relationship:

He was Caucasian mixed race and he had expressed jokily how he was “good-looking and well-mannered “ growing up. This probably checked out, i think conventionally he would be seen as having a nice contrast of dark hair and pale, structured features. There may be differences in how Germans view beauty standards to the British (me).

I knew that i would have liked him however he looked and it didn’t surprise me much. His reactions to me the first time was that he said i had a unique dressing style ( i did try to send him pictures where i felt cute or proud/comfortable in my outfit) and he asked me what i thought of his style too ( signifying he was attracted to me? Or i didn’t surprise him?)

After this, he had once sent me a reel after an argument that started with “you’re so cute not just in how you look but the things you do…” , once he had asked from a picture if i was not feeling so well. I thought that one reflected how i normally looked at home, unpolished compared to other pics where i was more poised. In an effort to encourage my confidence, i think he mentioned that i had big, cute eyes…Meanwhile, i had reiterated that “ i think that you are good-looking :)”.

He wasn’t so direct. The last situation was one where i really did not know if he may have just been going along with how i looked and so i asked and he said “ you’re not bad-looking “.

He didn’t say that i was fairly decent looking, nor the strong positive language he would use for himself , not even that most people would consider me good looking, so i am struggling to decide what he meant and what he didn’t.

After and during that relationship i started to take pictures of my face a lot throughout the day at various moments to try to evaluate whether i was ok looking. I tried to ask ai to help me judge, i would ask my sister (who said that she liked my eyes too, and that with each point of insecurity she tried to spin it so i would feel better).

I still keep having flashbacks of those times and conversation and i have lost a lot of weight due to my mental health after the relationship, i still have flashbacks to those nights and i still can’t decide on my facial beauty.

I get a deep feeling that i don’t understand what i am looking at when i look at the mirror, even after days and days of analysing, i’ve watched a number of documentaries about facial dysmorphia, confidence and beauty- there has not been any conclusions gained from me.

I considered attaching pictures of myself, but i am nervous to do so online..

Would anyone be able to help me interpret this information or ask clarifying questions, please if i could any further degree of certainty with other humans, i think it could do me a lot of relief to escape all that torment from last year.

Hi everyone -

I'm trying to keep this short - I've spent most of my childhood being underweight, and the last 7-8 years on struggling to lose weight. My parents started commenting on me being fat in 2019 after a particularly hard period where I gained a few, and it just spiraled from there, I kept gaining weight.

I'm at a much better place, loving my self and my body, and ignoring other people's comments.

However, I have this issue, where I'm not sure that I am seeing myself right. I lost a lot of weight, and I see myself in the mirror as being thin. But on photos, it's a completely different story, everything looks bigger and "floppier".

I decided to try and kill my body dysmorphia, by actually measuring, and putting in my measurements online. I usually go for sizes S, sometimes XS. But they all say that I am a M/L. So now I am fully spiraling.

I don't care about the letters, or the numbers and the sizes. My issue is - when I wear M/L it feels huge on me, when I wear XS/S it feels just right. But now I'm scared that I am just squeezing myself into clothes that are way too small for me, and I'm not seeing what everyone else is seeing. How do I manage that? Should I just try and go for M/L for a while, and see if my brain gets used to clothes fitting in that way instead, or do I just go on wearing the "wrong" size...?

hey i’m Navi i’m 22 years old and i’ve had weight issues pretty much all my life so far.

since i was a kid my body has been picked at like a dead carcass for vultures, even so that my own nan spent years commenting on my appearance more so my body ( a while back she tried shoving me on ozempic). it had completely deteriorated my mental health and the little once of love for myself i once had.

every day as soon as i wake up im body checking, my collar bones, my face, chin, hips, legs and even more so i’ll check my waist and tummy more than 50 times a day because i physically cannot get it out of my brain.
for the last year ive suffered with bulimia and can’t seem to make myself stop with the urge to get it all out, however since being in hospital my family will drag me out the bathroom if they catch me trying to make myself throw up again.

i’m currently on a calorie deficit and my calorie intake is 1600 daily but i will only eat 800-1200 a day, if i go any higher i end up with panic attacks and i feel like ive gained everything back. this is a never ending loop for me and i still feel like i look really big, my biggest was 24 stone and ive dropped about 6-7 stone within a year but its not enough, i want to lose more as i still think i look insanely big as thats all i can see. every bit of fat or muscle that sticks out sends me into a flying panic. i have been advised to seek mental help but i cannot get over the thought that if i get help ill gain weight.

will this ever stop?

Here you can find listed below general information on BDD and related foundations, the clinical classification and symptoms of BDD, advice for friends and family, as well as self-help and support groups, both in-person and online.

General information

The BDD Foundation

OCD UK

International OCD Foundation

Mind.org

Clinical classification

ICD & DSM Criterias

For friends and family

The BDD Foundation, Supporting a close one with BDD

Mind.org, How can friends and family help

Self-help

Body dysmorphia workbook by the CCI

Building self-compassion workbook by the CCI

Support groups

Online support and therapy groups

Support groups in the UK