How to Look In a Mirror (Objectively)

One of the first things your therapist asks you to do when you’re there to talk about your Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is to objectively describe yourself. They say that objectivity helps with anxiety, because it forces you to think about the facts and not the invisible-only-to-you nuances that turn a glance in the mirror into a session of anatomical cartography. 

For example, I have dark brown hair and light brown eyes. I am 5’8. I wear a size 9.5 shoe. I have pale skin, which I am often reminded is probably paler than I think when people marvel at how translucent I am—

You see? We’re already getting off track. 

The problem with objectively describing yourself when you have BDD is that even the basics are difficult. Is my hair as dark as hers? How broad are my shoulders, really? Did the shape of my jawline just change, or was it a trick of the light? 

Sometimes, I look in the mirror and my facial features are obstructed by a pattern of shadows. Other times, I can only make out general shapes and colors. When I was first diagnosed, I was told that BDD falls under the umbrella of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It makes sense now, considering the time I’ve spent picking at a minuscule chip in my manicure until all the paint on all ten fingers and all ten toes is gone.

But I’ve also spent hours asking therapists if they’re one hundred percent sure that there isn’t some schizophrenia sprinkled in. I have personal experience with schizophrenia, and it’s a valid question. How else would you explain what happens when I’m in the middle of doing my makeup and suddenly my lips are two thin flesh-colored lines and not the pink cupid’s bows that were there a minute ago?

I like my lips, okay?

I try to be objective about it. I have a mouth. Teeth. A face with enough space to go around. Because my head is kind of large. Now I’m feeling insecure. Does my forehead look a little too rectangular to you? 

Stop. I ask myself what my therapist asks me every week: “Why does this matter?”

Why does it matter if my forehead is a trapezoid and my lips are a steak knife and my body is a wristwatch and not an hourglass? 

“It doesn’t,” I lie. Maybe it’s a half lie, or maybe it’s not a lie at all, because really—it doesn’t. But we convince ourselves it matters, because for women, beauty is so often a meal ticket. An entrance fee at the club door. The price we pay for respect. And yet, if a woman is beautiful, everything else she has to offer the world falls second.

Sometimes I wonder if when I die, I’ll get a summary of my life in numbers. I imagine it as a tally of the times I listened to the Wicked soundtrack or said the word “fuck,” or a count of the number of minutes I spent on phone calls with my mom. Then I think about what it would say next to “Hours Spent in Front of the Mirror” or “Social Engagements Avoided Due to Body Image-Related Anxiety.” And I’ll wonder why I wasted such large portions of my life worrying whether someone thought I was beautiful.

—

Look In the Mirror Less Often is the new game we’re playing, my therapist and I. That’s where the C in OCD comes in. It’s a compulsion to look, to check, to make sure. Fighting compulsions so they don’t become obsessions. Battling obsessions so they don’t become death-bed regrets.

I don’t have a how-to on this one yet. Maybe next week.