On Body Dysmorphia

Last month, I was faced with needing to buy more jeans. I armed myself with multiple pairs to try on, using my best guess to estimate size, and I want you to hear me when I say I was devestated when they were all too big. I didn’t want to buy jeans that fit because of the number on the size tag.

The fact that I feel such intense body dysmorphia around being too small is something I feel a lot of shame over.

I grew up in the diet culture of the early 2000’s. Magazines had covers of models with headlines of how she got skinny fast, or photos of regular sized women talking about how they’d gotten fat. Being in the medical world, I was used to a lot of criticism about my body. With the nature of my disease, I always existed in a slightly bigger body, and when I admitted for the first time that I thought I needed help with disordered eating, I was shut down because I didn’t fit the mold of someone who would have an eating disorder. I starved in silence, and I cut myself off from my body.

And then I graduated college and my body started getting sick in ways that no doctor could really understand, and the only thing anyone could think of to do was force more substance into my body. I don’t say nutrients because it wasn’t nutritious, my body was still starving, and I don’t say food because I realized long ago I needed a distinction between food and the formulated substance that was pushed into my body via feeding tube. I got sick, and my body changed, and I got pregnant, and my body changed, and then I needed an organ transplant, and my body changed.

And I experienced just as much body dysmorphia with losing weight as I did with gaining it. My personal opinion, and maybe it has to do with being raised in such intense diet culture, is that when I gained weight, it was during the body positivitity movement and bigger bodies were beginning to be embraced. I was also friends with people at the time who existed in, and loved, their bigger bodies. It wasn’t easy but I will say there was more support for me around loving a bigger body than there was loving a smaller one.

Post transplant, as my body started to recover, the weight fell off. And I kept hearing comments about how it was every woman’s dream. And then my abdominal wall began seperating from my body, keeping anything down became a giant struggle, and I would hear the whispers around “I wish I had a disease that made me skinny.” And maybe the hardest part of that for me was knowing I was quite literally dying inside my own body, and the only thing people saw of that they praised. I made a beautiful walking corpse.

So when I was faced with buying jeans that actually fit my body, I’d had experience in picking sizes that didn’t fit and knowing the number on the tag didn’t equate to my worth. And I’d heard the comments about how it didn’t matter if I was starving as long as I was skinny, and the skinny shaming of my growing up years where people bashed other people with different body types to feel better about their own.

And so I did what I thought I had to do to fit in, what I’d been trained to do. I started telling lies about my beautiful body. I made jokes at my own expense. If I overheard comments about me, I joined in the laughter. And every minute of it made me feel like I was dying that much more, but I did it anyway because that’s what I’d been trained to do if I wanted to belong.

Existing in a sick body has taught me that bodies are so much more than what they look like, and also that the only thing people see is what they look like. I struggle with body issues now just as much as I did then. I look in the mirror and my perception is so twisted I’m not entirely sure if I’m even seeing an accurate reflection of myself. I’m working on loving my body, but it is hard work.

“Here’s the thing, the first limiting thought we have is always the conditioned thought. Its the story that was handed to us by family, culture, patriarchy… We know this voice in our head by heart so we think its our own thoughts but its actually the ones we inhereited. Now my practice is to notice my mean conditioned thought when it pops in, name it and speak love and truth to the lie with as much compassion and kindness as possible.”

“I just lied about my body. I just told a complete bullshit story. And then I look in the mirror and say Oh sweet body, i’m sorry i just lied about you. You are so beautiful, wise and strong. I love you so much.”