Eating
What you see in the mirror doesn't match what's there and the checking has become its own daily structure.
You spend hours a day checking your appearance. You see flaws that other people swear aren’t there. You avoid photos, avoid mirrors, or you check them constantly. You compare your face or your body to other people’s in ways that consume the day. You’ve considered or had cosmetic procedures and they didn’t fix what you were trying to fix.
The thing you’re seeing in the mirror is not what’s in the mirror. It’s what’s in the lens you’ve been using.
The checking continues.
Educational, not diagnostic. Not a substitute for clinical assessment.
© The Institute for Applied Strategic Therapy. All rights reserved.
Body dysmorphia is structurally an OCD-family disorder. The intrusive thought is about your appearance. The compulsion is the checking, the comparing, the procedure-seeking. The relief from the compulsion is brief. The relief reinforces the next round of checking. The cycle has been running on its own logic, and the actual appearance of your body has very little to do with it.
You very likely came up with a particular relationship to being seen that taught you that being acceptable required passing inspection. You may have grown up with a parent who policed appearance, including yours. You may have been the kid whose body was commented on at a developmental moment that left a particular flag for the body part that’s now the focus. You may have absorbed messages from social media that have trained your eye to see flaws that no human eye would have seen before the comparison was constant.
For the OCD framework that this fits, see I have OCD and I can’t stop checking things . For the broader eating-related framework, see I have an eating problem .
The thing you’re trying to fix isn’t what needs fixing. The system that’s been producing the perception of the thing is what needs addressing.
Strategic therapy treats body dysmorphia as the OCD-family loop it actually is. We work on the checking ritual itself (which mirror, which angle, which photo, which comparison), on the reassurance-seeking that has been maintaining the loop, and on what the compulsion has been giving you in exchange for the time it eats. The relief cycle weakens because we stop feeding it.
The mirror becomes furniture again. Your face and body stop being a project you reopen every morning.
Write to us and we'll get back to you personally. A qualified practitioner answers every inquiry, usually within two business days.
Message received. We'll be in touch at the address you provided.