Do you consider yourself ugly? Perhaps this is a mental disorder
'31.10.2022'
Source: Clever
In the era of the dominance of rigid social standards - both behavioral and bodily - a person always has difficulty trying to fit into the system. Since we are all social beings, acceptance and acceptance are essential to maintaining our health. However, often our vision of ourselves (in this case, literal - in the mirror) can become an extremely serious obstacle on the way to this.
The culture of harmony up to the extreme thinness for women and a pumped-up body with relief muscles for men led to the fact that in striving for the ideal, the very image that we see in the mirror is seriously distorted, writes Clever... Many teenage girls at some point start to worry about their weight and appearance and struggle to lose weight, not realizing that the methods they choose not only do not work, but can also be dangerous. The catch is that often the problem sits exclusively in their heads, and even frankly thin girls that correspond to the standards of beauty, manage to find innumerable "flaws" in their appearance and "excess weight."
What is body dysmorphic disorder
First of all, it is a serious mental disorder in which people perceive themselves as catastrophically ugly, with any critical flaw, even in cases where they fully comply with existing beauty standards. People with body dysmorphic disorder obsessively focus on the details of their appearance, have extreme difficulty seeing a complete picture of their appearance
But although many people have similar problems, directly dysmorphophobia is an extreme condition that only a few percent of people deal with (in Russia there are no exact statistics, in the USA about 2,5% of men and 2,2% of women have a diagnosis). But in a lighter version, its symptoms are extremely common. Trained to seek out faults in themselves, people (especially women) become absorbed in this or that imaginary defect and unconsciously bring their concern to the point that it begins to interfere with communicating with people around them, make decisions and simply live.
Absorption with imaginary problems in appearance often manifests itself in various rituals and obsessive habits. For example, people consider themselves in all the reflecting surfaces that they come across or actively avoid them, endlessly compare themselves with others, refuse certain items of clothing, hairstyles or makeup, which, in their opinion, make them worse. And this is not about a calm, measured decision, but about the refusal, accompanied by a sharp fear or even panic, to try something new.
Why is this happening
The secret of reflection in our mirror is that our brain builds this picture. And he does this, relying on ... our own feelings and emotions about his appearance. According to Randy Nelson, an American professor of neuroscience and psychology, hormones are often involved in shaping our reactions and behavior. One of the impetus for their development is a certain emotional and / or mental state (for example, chronic stress with persistent dissatisfaction with their appearance). Accordingly, in response to our emotional state in terms of appearance, the brain produces the appropriate hormones - and if it leaves much to be desired, then these will clearly not be endorphins, oxytocin and dopamine.
Hormones, in turn, affect what kind of picture the brain builds for our eyes. Therefore, all those close to those people who, looking at themselves in the mirror, claim that something is wrong in them, should be asked: do not devalue their suffering! They do not lie and are not cunning - they really see these flaws! And actually unable to see what you tell them, no matter how you try to bring it to them. The best thing to do in this case is to say that you accept the way they see themselves, but cannot agree with this, because you see them differently. And at the same time explain the principle of our perception of the world.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the whole (or almost the whole) world tells us that we are not good enough! The figure should be thinner, the chest is bigger, the nose is straighter, the eyelashes are longer, the hair is thicker, the eyes are bigger, the lips are fuller - our "ugliness" is not visible to the end! So a vicious circle comes out: the environment constantly tells us that we are somehow bad; we internalize this message and build it into our view of ourselves; get angry, upset, and hate ourselves because of our imperfections; the brain reacts to this by triggering a corresponding hormonal response - and in the end we actually see an image distorted by current beauty standards and often very far from our real appearance.
What you can do to love yourself
Learn to see the whole picture. Yes, every time the eyes are torn to see once again a certain "flaw", which is obviously awful! But try to gradually rebuild yourself as a whole without focusing on any parts. If it doesn't work out yet, focus better on what you like about yourself. If everything about you is “objectively ugly” - look again. Once again. Once again. And further. Ultimately, in the absence of a mood for the worst, the brain will still allow you to see how beautiful you really are. The whole / the whole whole.
Stop comparing yourself to others. It sounds like something out of the realm of fantasy, yes. But one simple thing is important here: the beauty of others does not make you less beautiful! Would you compare, for example, red and blue and think that if one of them is beautiful, then the other is necessarily terrible? And if you don’t like one color, it doesn’t mean that no one likes it.
Do not hurry. And do not rush to be disappointed. Remember that you have been struggling with years and decades of the habit of seeing yourself as the ugliest. A week, month or even a year, alas, is often not enough to destroy what has been under construction for so long. Be patient, make this new way of thinking a habit, and it will work.
The fact that you can and should love your body does not mean that you need to try to force yourself to do it. As practice shows, it still works a little worse than nothing. But you can get closer to harmony with yourself by starting to understand what the standards of appearance are and why it is impossible to comply with them, how all of us (especially girls) are taught from childhood to determine our value through the compliance of our bodies with these very standards, and assessing how much it worsens the quality of our life. So maybe we will take away from the system the ability to determine how we see ourselves and what we do in connection with this, and make this opportunity our own?
