MS6New Contributor
Has anyone experienced BDDBP? (Body Dysmorphic Disorder By Proxy)?
Hi there,
I'm a 31 year old male and I've been receiving treatment for a combination of orthorexia, exercise addiction and Body Dysmorphic Disorder for the last 2 years. I have come a long way in my journey and am now at the point of preventing relapse 🤞
If you want the full story (skip these next 2-3 paragraphs if not) I was overweight during my formative teen years and got the usual bullying you'd expect, which damaged my self-confidence and self-esteem. I am also a perfectionist by nature, and my parents had a rocky marriage and separated as soon as I finished high school. So when I hit 18 and, like many boys do, found the gym, it became a solace in that it was something I could 'control' and I could craft my body into the socially desirable image I craved. So naturally it quickly became an obsession that carried over into very strict dietary rules as per the bodybuilding culture so prevalent in gyms even today.
As is often the case when it comes to gym culture, I was completely unconscious to this being a problem and thought it was normal. Then, at 21, I met my now wife. For years in our relationship she bore the brunt of my obsessive and perfectionist standards of diet and exercise which of course she couldn't meet and slowly ate away at our relationship despite our love for each other. It was only 3 years ago that we discovered the term 'othorexia' and realised my views on exercise and eating were not normal and that I needed help, for both myself and to save our marriage.
Through my therapy and recovery I have discovered that Body Dysmorphic Disorder was at the centre of a lot of my behaviour. I particularly had an obsessive focus upon the stomach area, as this is what I was most self conscious about as a child. I would compulsively check my stomach area very regularly and subconsciously, touching my stomach to make sure the amount of fat was 'acceptable' and checking in the mirror when I showered too. If the amount of fat was more than I was comfortable with (i.e. I couldn't see some abdominal definition) then I would punish myself with HIIT cardio at the gym to get back to an 'acceptable' body. This has been the toughest thing to recover from of all as it was an ingrained subconscious thought pattern built over two thirds of my life.
Again, my wife unfortunately suffered the brunt of this judgement too. With my obsession with the stomach area, I found myself often subconsciously checking her stomach area too. In a perfect storm of circumstances, it just so happens that this is where her body tends to deposit her fat stores and she is highly self-conscious about it. She has also been unable to exercise anywhere near as much as she would like in recent years due to chronic pain, and last year we also went through three IVF cycles which did lead to some weight gain given all of the hormones her body withstood. Several times she has been asked by strangers if she has been pregnant when she of course is not, something which as you can imagine, is about as hurtful, painful and as psychologically damaging as you can imagine.
So of course, this perfect storm has been majorly traumatic in our relationship. Last year on the verge of our 2nd IVF cycle, she had gained some weight as a result of the 1st cycle and I was suffering through depression and feelings of a lack of control (on top of the IVF, both my parents had cancer at the time).
So, I had a relapse in my orthorexia, exercise addiction, BDD and BDDBP (see below), which led to me saying unforgivable judgmental things about my wife's body to her. I can't repeat them here even in an anonymous post, such is the shame I still feel about it. This of course led to her not wanting me in the room for the hormone injections and she opting to do them herself. This was the same for the 3rd cycle, and the memory is still so traumatic for her, that when we eventually try our first transfer, she is not at the stage where she feels like she can be vulnerable around me with seeing and touching her bare stomach and isn't sure if she ever will be.
Our love is strong and my wife is incredible for sticking by me despite what I have put her through. She does understand that the judgmental thoughts and words I have cast upon her have come from a very disordered place. To that end, one thing which had helped us enormously lately is the discovery of the clinical term for what I've put her through - Body Dysmorphic Disorder By Proxy, or BDDBP. To be able to actually LABEL it and know it's clinically diagnosable condition has been enormously helpful for her in making sense of the experience.
However, one thing that's still enormously tough is how alone she (and we) still feel in this experience. BDDBP appears to not be a very well researched condition and it isn't that well known. So my wife feels very alone in her experience which is of course very painful.
I am therefore posting this in the hope that others have gone through similar, or at least relatable, experiences. Have you either been the perpetrator, or the victim of BDDBP in a relationship? If so we would love to hear your story.
We believe that, like us, it's possible that many who have BDD also demonstrate symptoms of BDDBP and it's just not known well enough to be diagnosed.
It makes so much sense in terms of how these experiences may have increased your vulnerability and contributed to the mental health issues that you’re living with.
