Every time I see a reflection of myself it looks different. Sometimes I look huge, sometimes I look normal, and it varies from mirror to mirror, mirror to photographs, reflections, etc... Sometimes the way my day has gone affects what I see. i.e, if I've gotten validation from other people, I will look more "acceptable" and thin the next time I see myself. It's exhausting and I often have no idea what I really look like.
me too. body dysmorphia is so much more complicated and HARD than people make it to be. my whole day revolves around how i look, but i don’t even KNOW how i look (so u can see the complication there). so i rely on others input on me, pictures of myself, body checking, comparison, etc, to see how i should feel that day, and how my actions will reflect off that. and not to mention the body dysmorphia you get about the image of your own face.
I never thought that i was fat either! But i was extremly terriefied of gaining weight... I couldnt see how skinny i was even when i was underweight, I thought i looked 'normal' (whatever this means). i think this was mainly because when i got anorexia, it got worse very fast and maybe my brain wasn't able to catch up so quickly? Maybe it still had the perception of my healthy body and therefore couldnt see how unwell i was... Anyways, sending lots of love! And Thank you for being such an amazing woman! Xx
when i was really underweight, i saw myself huge in the mirror, but the next minute i'd look again and see that i'm scarily skinny and look sick. and the next it would change back to seeing huge.
I agree perception is a really weird thing and is different for everyone. I know when I was in the thick of it I couldn't see myself the way other people saw me because of my body dysmorphia, but as I was slowly recovering, I would look at old pictures of me and be like wow is that what I looked like? I think as you get healthier and reach your individual set point weight, you'll see yourselves in old photos and see what other people had been seeing all along. It is kind of crazy how powerful our minds are though and that it can truly twist the way you see yourself and its hard to explain it to people who have never experienced it.
For me the sensations of weight gain is super difficult (speaking from memory here...) but feeling bigger was tough and sometimes feeling bigger even when I lost weight was very difficult... or feeling bigger after eating a certain thing... just crazy stuff...
@@tabithaschutz7713 well I am sorry to hear that... I don’t have that but it doesn’t make recovery any easier (i ve been sick for 20 years and never thought I was fat any single day of my life). So hopeful this can help you feel better about your dysmorphia 😉
I didn't have that wrong body perception thing as well and I also hated (and still hate) these scenes where a very thin girl looked in the mirror and saw herself really fat. That kind of thing made me think that I didn't have an eating disorder after all and that I should have that wrong perception as well. Time to show a more realistic and more diverse picture of eating disorders in the media etcetere. Thank you dir speaking up about this in this video! 👍
I am struggling with this exact issue now but at the other end of the weight scale. I feel ok in myself and then I catch a glimpse of myself somewhere and I realise how big I’ve become
I can totally relate! I feel like I have body dismorphia into the other direction as I usually feel allright but when somebody takes a picture of me I’m shocked when I see me body. Now that this has happened many times I doubt myself and I start realizing that I have REALLY become that big. That hurts...
What happens the other way around? When the photos look bigger than what you had anticipated? When you're not at a suppressed body weight anymore, exceeding a non-suppressed body weight for your body even, and you see yourself in the mirror, some days, and think, "oh I look smaller today" only to see yourself in a picture and have your assumption/s disconfirmed? This, I think, is the most jolting and triggering experience for me, four years into my recovery.
I have experienced exactly this. Very strange how the mirror image was different to a photo of myself or caught in a shop window..... I got so used to the day to day way I looked. It was only when I saw photos I realised how thin and scary I looked. Now I think I do see me as I am...... In the mirror and in photos. Very odd I also never thought of myself as fat.. It was never about being thin despite this being the result of my restriction.... I knew I was thin but still had the fear of weight gain and change as you described.
Absolutely me. I knew I was underweight & I knew How I looked. I just couldn’t do anything about it. I tended to blame the fact that I looked so bad on my age, as I was 60 years old at my worst. Now that I’m in recovery & weight restored, when I see a reflection or photo of myself, I’m shocked & relieved that I look pretty good because,in my mind, I tend to think of myself as bigger than I actually am. It’s confusing & a bit frustrating at times.
This was literally my experience, I felt like I could only tell what I actually looked like from pictures and when I actually left the house and saw my reflection (this all happened in lockdown times so I didn't leave the house often probably perpetuating the whole fact I didnt know what i looked like) but even seeing myself and seeing how bony and ill i looked, its like I still didn't realise that that was me? I still felt the same weight as I did pre-ed and everything felt the same. Its hard to explain but yeah even now im still slowly gaining weight as i should but I feel like i'm always way bigger than I actually am... but atleast I have realised that now lol
Something I dont get is I see that I am just skin and bones, it looks scary/ugly, it feels painful, yet i m scared to gain weight. And although i dont think i have body dysmorphia i know that when i was at my lowest I saw i was very skinny but after gaining a little and seeing pics of me I was like oh shit i looked like that?!? and yes exactly like you i never saw myself as fat as I was "lucky" to be think before my ED, so why am i so afraid of weight gain now that i am literally just a walking skeleton with flesh that i know and see that...
Tabitha answers this question in a previous video. Look back as it was a fairly recent one!! ❤️ Think was titled something like unconscious fear of weight gain?! 💕 Good luck with your recovery xx
@@harmonyhope1709 Thank you! I will listen to it again then as i probably didnt pay enough attention or missed the video all together ;) thank you!!! :)
The fear of weight gain is also because there is no end point or feast to end the famine, So the brain wants to move to the point where food is abundant and gaining weight means that you stopped to eat food but not being in the place where there Is food in abundance, (because you restricted or didn’t convince the brain that the famine is over!)
@@harmonyhope1709 was it called "cultural Biases towards thinness" ? Just listened to it, rare one i had not watch, but it really does not answer my question but maybe I didnt phrase my question correctly. Definitely don't care what society thinks and at my level of skinniness i know that gaining 10 pounds would still leave me extremely underweight and still very sick. But maybe that was not that video... thanks for the help though!
When underweight I would think the sizing was wrong when small sizes were baggy. I could not get over the mind f@%# of knowing I was too skinny and feeling so fat. No matter what I tried on for clothes, I just hated my body. Now that I am recovering, I just remind myself of that whenever I "feel" fat. I was shocked when I looked at pictures when underweight- I couldn't believe how distorted my body image was. I felt like I didn't trust anything my brain was telling me at that point-freaked me the hell out.
Some mirrors do make you look bigger. I was trained as a ballerina and the mirror in the dance studios would do that 😂😂😂 so it might be just the mirrors and nothing wrong with your head/vision... ;)
i suppose the lesson here is not to focus on the actual mirrors And what they do or don’t do, ultimately it’s how I/we perceive ourselves And focusing on recovery. Prior to an eating disorder I wouldn’t of cared what a mirror was ‘doing to my size’ even by reading this comment my anorexic brain is saying ‘well if the mirrors are adapted to make me look smaller I am not ill’ 🙄
I definitely recognize what you are telling! But now, in a later stage, I see myself like, how I am (I am amply in the 'healthy' BMI zone), but without a mirror I "feel" different. So my internal representation in my brain has not shifted yet. I Learned about a really interesting study on this topic and tought you might find this interesting to read too (because you say we don't know much about this phenomena yet). You can find it here: journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064602
Every time I see a reflection of myself it looks different. Sometimes I look huge, sometimes I look normal, and it varies from mirror to mirror, mirror to photographs, reflections, etc... Sometimes the way my day has gone affects what I see. i.e, if I've gotten validation from other people, I will look more "acceptable" and thin the next time I see myself. It's exhausting and I often have no idea what I really look like.
Me too!!
me too. body dysmorphia is so much more complicated and HARD than people make it to be. my whole day revolves around how i look, but i don’t even KNOW how i look (so u can see the complication there). so i rely on others input on me, pictures of myself, body checking, comparison, etc, to see how i should feel that day, and how my actions will reflect off that. and not to mention the body dysmorphia you get about the image of your own face.
@@zoelopez3993 omg yes!!especially the image of my own face,it literally determines my actions every single minute of the day:(
Your thumbnails are actually pretty and nothing triggering, thank you so much for that Tabitha, have a nice day 💛
I never thought that i was fat either! But i was extremly terriefied of gaining weight...
I couldnt see how skinny i was even when i was underweight, I thought i looked 'normal' (whatever this means). i think this was mainly because when i got anorexia, it got worse very fast and maybe my brain wasn't able to catch up so quickly? Maybe it still had the perception of my healthy body and therefore couldnt see how unwell i was...
Anyways, sending lots of love! And Thank you for being such an amazing woman! Xx
when i was really underweight, i saw myself huge in the mirror, but the next minute i'd look again and see that i'm scarily skinny and look sick. and the next it would change back to seeing huge.
Yep. This is the hardest thing to recover
I agree perception is a really weird thing and is different for everyone. I know when I was in the thick of it I couldn't see myself the way other people saw me because of my body dysmorphia, but as I was slowly recovering, I would look at old pictures of me and be like wow is that what I looked like? I think as you get healthier and reach your individual set point weight, you'll see yourselves in old photos and see what other people had been seeing all along. It is kind of crazy how powerful our minds are though and that it can truly twist the way you see yourself and its hard to explain it to people who have never experienced it.
For me the sensations of weight gain is super difficult (speaking from memory here...) but feeling bigger was tough and sometimes feeling bigger even when I lost weight was very difficult... or feeling bigger after eating a certain thing... just crazy stuff...
I have severe body dismorphia
@@tabithaschutz7713 well I am sorry to hear that... I don’t have that but it doesn’t make recovery any easier (i ve been sick for 20 years and never thought I was fat any single day of my life). So hopeful this can help you feel better about your dysmorphia 😉
I didn't have that wrong body perception thing as well and I also hated (and still hate) these scenes where a very thin girl looked in the mirror and saw herself really fat. That kind of thing made me think that I didn't have an eating disorder after all and that I should have that wrong perception as well. Time to show a more realistic and more diverse picture of eating disorders in the media etcetere. Thank you dir speaking up about this in this video! 👍
I am struggling with this exact issue now but at the other end of the weight scale. I feel ok in myself and then I catch a glimpse of myself somewhere and I realise how big I’ve become
Same here... And sometimes i question myself like oh maybe I don't realize how big I am now and people around must have noticed
I can totally relate! I feel like I have body dismorphia into the other direction as I usually feel allright but when somebody takes a picture of me I’m shocked when I see me body. Now that this has happened many times I doubt myself and I start realizing that I have REALLY become that big. That hurts...
This video is so relatable. I always used to get surprised at my pictures.
What happens the other way around? When the photos look bigger than what you had anticipated? When you're not at a suppressed body weight anymore, exceeding a non-suppressed body weight for your body even, and you see yourself in the mirror, some days, and think, "oh I look smaller today" only to see yourself in a picture and have your assumption/s disconfirmed? This, I think, is the most jolting and triggering experience for me, four years into my recovery.
Omg this is SO true.
Please can you do a video about picking yourself up after going backwards xx
I have experienced exactly this. Very strange how the mirror image was different to a photo of myself or caught in a shop window..... I got so used to the day to day way I looked. It was only when I saw photos I realised how thin and scary I looked. Now I think I do see me as I am...... In the mirror and in photos. Very odd
I also never thought of myself as fat.. It was never about being thin despite this being the result of my restriction.... I knew I was thin but still had the fear of weight gain and change as you described.
Absolutely me. I knew I was underweight & I knew How I looked. I just couldn’t do anything about it. I tended to blame the fact that I looked so bad on my age, as I was 60 years old at my worst. Now that I’m in recovery & weight restored, when I see a reflection or photo of myself, I’m shocked & relieved that I look pretty good because,in my mind, I tend to think of myself as bigger than I actually am. It’s confusing & a bit frustrating at times.
This was literally my experience, I felt like I could only tell what I actually looked like from pictures and when I actually left the house and saw my reflection (this all happened in lockdown times so I didn't leave the house often probably perpetuating the whole fact I didnt know what i looked like) but even seeing myself and seeing how bony and ill i looked, its like I still didn't realise that that was me? I still felt the same weight as I did pre-ed and everything felt the same. Its hard to explain but yeah even now im still slowly gaining weight as i should but I feel like i'm always way bigger than I actually am... but atleast I have realised that now lol
Something I dont get is I see that I am just skin and bones, it looks scary/ugly, it feels painful, yet i m scared to gain weight. And although i dont think i have body dysmorphia i know that when i was at my lowest I saw i was very skinny but after gaining a little and seeing pics of me I was like oh shit i looked like that?!? and yes exactly like you i never saw myself as fat as I was "lucky" to be think before my ED, so why am i so afraid of weight gain now that i am literally just a walking skeleton with flesh that i know and see that...
Tabitha answers this question in a previous video. Look back as it was a fairly recent one!! ❤️ Think was titled something like unconscious fear of weight gain?! 💕 Good luck with your recovery xx
@@harmonyhope1709 Thank you! I will listen to it again then as i probably didnt pay enough attention or missed the video all together ;) thank you!!! :)
@@eleonoreconstant aww you're welcome. I hope it helps x
The fear of weight gain is also because there is no end point or feast to end the famine, So the brain wants to move to the point where food is abundant and gaining weight means that you stopped to eat food but not being in the place where there Is food in abundance, (because you restricted or didn’t convince the brain that the famine is over!)
@@harmonyhope1709 was it called "cultural Biases towards thinness" ? Just listened to it, rare one i had not watch, but it really does not answer my question but maybe I didnt phrase my question correctly. Definitely don't care what society thinks and at my level of skinniness i know that gaining 10 pounds would still leave me extremely underweight and still very sick. But maybe that was not that video... thanks for the help though!
When underweight I would think the sizing was wrong when small sizes were baggy. I could not get over the mind f@%# of knowing I was too skinny and feeling so fat. No matter what I tried on for clothes, I just hated my body. Now that I am recovering, I just remind myself of that whenever I "feel" fat. I was shocked when I looked at pictures when underweight- I couldn't believe how distorted my body image was. I felt like I didn't trust anything my brain was telling me at that point-freaked me the hell out.
Can you clarify the terms Under/Over-weight, and Larger/Smaller? These are relative terms no?
Mine is amplified it drives me crazy, how can I improve this
Changing room mirrors - I suddenly get a shock looking/seeing myself. Get home to my normal mirror and see something different. It’s so confusing.
Some mirrors do make you look bigger. I was trained as a ballerina and the mirror in the dance studios would do that 😂😂😂 so it might be just the mirrors and nothing wrong with your head/vision... ;)
I have also heard mirrors in some clothes shop changing rooms are adapted to make you look slimmer 🤷♀️
i suppose the lesson here is not to focus on the actual mirrors And what they do or don’t do, ultimately it’s how I/we perceive ourselves And focusing on recovery. Prior to an eating disorder I wouldn’t of cared what a mirror was ‘doing to my size’ even by reading this comment my anorexic brain is saying ‘well if the mirrors are adapted to make me look smaller I am not ill’ 🙄
Funny i always think i look less wide than i really am :/
I definitely recognize what you are telling! But now, in a later stage, I see myself like, how I am (I am amply in the 'healthy' BMI zone), but without a mirror I "feel" different. So my internal representation in my brain has not shifted yet. I Learned about a really interesting study on this topic and tought you might find this interesting to read too (because you say we don't know much about this phenomena yet). You can find it here: journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064602