So I'm An Ass

I said I was going to update this regularly and I didn't. I've been very busy writing my book along with a couple television appearances here and there... I was on Tyra Banks along with Franklin, and I'm not exactly sure when it's going to air, but I believe it's going to be Thanksgiving week. I'll post the date when I know the exact date and time. I'm also appearing on The Joy Behar Show on HLN next Monday along with two other people that were featured on Hoarders, one of the therapists from the show, and a professional organizer from the show. The past couple months have been pretty crazy for me.

A&E also asked me to post this: If there are any young hoarders out there, please contact me ASAP for a possible opportunity. By young hoarders, I mean in your 20's - they're trying to continue to show that mental illness doesn't have a specific demographic - so as I said, contact me if you are in your 20's, and are a hoarder, and we'll speak.

New video blog coming up by the end of tonight!

Oops!

Sorry for those reading this that I haven't updated in a week and a half! I have been seeing someone, looking for a new job, and reconnecting with some old friends, and have therefore been a little sidetracked... especially by the person I'm seeing. Will be back in the swing of things starting tomorrow: new update, video update, and back to regular updates.

It's just really cool that I met someone that gives me that crazy excited nervous feeling you get when you meet someone you really really like. Now here's the difficult part: working past BDD enough to make this work out. Hmmm... topic for tomorrow's update: BDD & Sex. Sounds ace, no?

A's and H's

This isn't my official weekly "editorial" on BDD, that will come later, this is just something interesting I heard in my therapy session today.

My therapist, who is amazing, told me that when I am in a relationship, I am an A.... think about the way the letter is structured. Alright, now think about an H. Notice anything similar? The only difference is in an A, the sides of the H have collapsed into eachother. He told me, in a healthy relationship, both sides are equally apart and have a bridge - this bridge is everything they share, but they also do not absorb eachother, as people in an A relationship do...

I just thought this was a nifty little "diagram" of sorts that is totally accurate.

I guess I need to learn not to fall over my bridges!

Weekend Update: Call Me Evil

Call me evil, but I have to touch on a subject here that has been getting to me. So, for those of you that know, a good portion of the people that were on Hoarders post on the official message board (Located at: http://boards.aetv.com/forum/Share-Your-Thoughts/700182839) but there is a noticeable missing presence: Shirley.

I really would like to know what happened with Shirley (also, for those that don't know, we shared an episode.) Does anyone know?

The reason I said "Call me evil" is because I don't want to know her fate because I am interested in her well-being... I want to know what happened to the cats she was allowed to keep. If someone could inform me, if they have any knowledge at all, I would like to know.

I find it very unlikely she was able to take care of them to the degree they need. I certainly hope I am proven 100% wrong, but alas, I do not have much faith in that possibility.

So, if you have info, PLEASE, post it in the comment section.

Animal hoarding is an extremely serious and unhealthy problem. It is cruelty to the highest degree. I understand that it is out of good intent, but it is extremely harmful (as I'm sure you're all aware) to innocent creatures that have no power over the situation. It makes me want to cry. There are many injustices in this world, but cruelty to animals is the one that stabs me in the jugular the most.

Video blog is here! A day late, I know, I know, but here! In two parts, none the less.

Perfection, Symmetry, and Barbie Dolls!

It's no secret to anyone that we live in a society obsessed with beauty. This topic is much of a dead horse; it has been debated and discussed with fervor since the beginning of modern media. Children are force fed a lie that all adults are physically gorgeous. Alas, even in my childhood, the ages of Disney and innocence, before even a fifth grader knew the word fuck, I was fed lies too: Do women really all look like Ariel, Jasmine, Cinderella, or Barbie? And the men, are they all masculine heroes hell-bent on machismo? These are well known fallacies to adults, and I admit, in the context of a children's cartoon, they are innocent.

However, at what cost do we view the cover of Vogue, or Cosmopolitan? It is a hard enough lot for a "normal," healthy, sane individual to drown in these subliminal messages. Even as TV moves towards a more normal reality, it does so in an unhealthy manner. Yes, Khloe Kardashian is not the skinny princess we grew up with, but is she not still insanely beautiful? Most people do not look like that, at all.

As someone with BDD, these thoughts are pure poison. Even viewing a female, something I have no desire to be, fills me with sadness. In a country so obsessed with symmetry and beauty, it is deathly terrifying to view myself in the mirror and realize I am not that at all, and I never will be.

One thing I have learned in BDD treatment is symmetry is non-existant. For those that are curious to see what their face looks like symmetrically, I implore you, follow the instructions on this link: http://www.photoshopfacelift.com/tutorials/symmetrical-face/index.php

Nature is not symmetrical. Indeed, I can see the beauty in everyone else's face but my own. I often thought with my ex-boyfriend "God he's so attractive, his face is perfect" - I was challenged by my therapist, Daniel, to find inconsistencies in his facial symmetry. I was shocked to find that almost every single feature in his face was asymmetrical. His jaw, nose, eyes, lips, almost everything was uneven, but it was something my brain chose to ignore for the sake of my negative grandiosity.

So if he can be asymmetrical and beautiful, why can't I? This question resounds in my head, constantly. From a purely selfish stand-point, a quick glance in the mirror answers this question for me: my nose is ugly, it's misshapen, uneven, and fat. But really, from a realistic point of view, is this not a bizarre double-standard I hold against myself? How often do I come across someone and think the same thing about them? This condemnation is unrealistic. Sure, I have come across people in my past and had similar thoughts, but were these not clearly extreme cases, in which their nose was so noticeably deformed that it did nothing but draw my attention to it?

But such is the nature of BDD. Cruel, and discriminating. To spit on everything you know to be real in your life. To tell you the lie that you are held to a higher standard than others, to force the idea of "perfection or disaster" down your throat until you are gurgling under it's massive pressure as it squelches every bit of happiness out of your sweaty, gripping palms.

Prologue

This blog, as previously stated, is going to be a mix of rantings of a psycho with BDD and OCD (myself) as well as excerpts from my as of yet unfinished book. My book (which is about 30% done or so) is a collection of relevant stories to the culmination of my insanity and how I got to the point I'm at today. I intend to give readers a look into a rare mental illness: Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and it's entailing features.

Excerpts from my book will be in quotations, and unless stated otherwise, are direct quotes from me. I will cite sources where necessary, as a blind foray into a mental illness a large portion of the public is unaware of would be kind of silly. First and foremost, however, I would like to direct you to the extremely accurate wikipedia article on said subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder - these are all facts that are artfully constructed, and despite wikipedia's reputation for being incorrect, almost everything there is true, untwisted by opinions or bias.

So my intent with my book is to not offer an education; I am in no way "formally educated" on the subject, beyond my own reading and investigation. What I can offer, however, is something that is much harder to find than factoids: A human, first person perspective on this rare mental illness and my journey through recovery. My book of course also heavily deals with OCD and Hypochondria, as both of these illnesses appeared in my life much earlier than BDD, but BDD has been the prevalent source of my misery for many years now.

Once a week, I will post a video blog of me talking on the subject, probably Friday, methinks. We'll see. Sorry my blog is so ugly right now, by the way, that awful banner is something I made in like 2 minutes in Photoshop - I just wanted to get the blog up and running before I devote some serious time to making it look nice.

And so, without further ado...

This is my new, general, but still BDD focused blog

I have decided to shift any and all focus from my myspace blog to here, on blogspot. Besides the fact that myspace has apparently died, this is a much more suitable home to my thoughts, I think. The aforementioned plan in this blog is no longer valid, as I have a vision of what the next year will be for me, and I plan on following that vision with utmost zeal.

My mental illnesses have taken so much from me. They have robbed me of many opportunities, and have lulled me into a false sense of complacency that keeps me somewhere between fear and comfort. It's easy to live life in a changeless fashion, avoiding anything that places you outside your comfort zone, but this is a fatal choice as it stunts growth to the point of non-existence.

I like to compare it to job hunting; if we were to fall apart at the first sign of rejection, we would never get jobs. So to we must do things that hurt more than words can explain to truly grow in life. I have grown so much over the past five years, despite what my brain would probably like me to believe... and I intend to make this my catapult into adulthood, giving up the comfort of the "peacefulness" of inactivity, and utilizing my very setbacks that have caused me so much pain to be my life's mission.

After all, is it not normal to want to utilize our tragedies for good? For the benefit of ourselves and others?

This blog is very bare bones right now... I am working very hard to make it pretty!.... first article in my official format is coming up sometime this week. Thanks for reading.

Backstory

A little bit about myself...

My name is Jake and as of right now I'm 21, though I'm soon 22. I'm a gay guy living in Marin County and aside from what happens inside my head, my life is relatively normal. I have friends, I play video games, I love weird movies, I love spending time with my dog, I love just relaxing out in nature, and I love my music with a crazy passion.

But inside, it's not so normal. Unfortunately, I'm perfectly sane, so every crazy fucking thing that happens in my head, I'm 100% aware of. I have three diagnosis: OCD, BDD, and Hypochondria. While I think it's safe to say all of these are related, they're all entirely different monsters. As you might guess, I have a strange thought process that really makes no sense to even myself.

It all started when I was seven years old. I came down with a particularly horrible case of Strep Throat - of course, we live in a modern industrialized country, so this itself was not an issue. But shortly after, strange things started occurring with me. I became deathly afraid of bacteria, and it's ever looming presence. As a young child, it was quite confusing to me as to why I suddenly was possessed with such intense fear. But it didn't matter. If you wanted to touch me, you had to wash your hands. And I had to wash mine, many times over.

I didn't know it back then but it was the start of a very long and arduous journey.

Over the years, my OCD changed shape and form. I always justified it as a normal way of thinking, that everyone had things like this they dealt with. And then at around 15 I discovered drugs and things went spiraling out of control.

Very soon, I became fearful of the sun. I was afraid it would cause skin cancer, and that it's reflection off metallic surfaces would blind me permanently. I was terrified to share this information, as I thought I was schizophrenic, and was relatively sure that I was genuinely insane. Little did I know, my self-awareness of the insanity of these thoughts is what separated me from actually being crazy, but unfortunately, the cause of my suffering as well.

BDD came along very soon after. I was with my friend one day when she accidently broke my nose by bumping her head into my nose. At first, it didn't really bother me, but within a few months, I was spending hours looking in the mirror at my nose. And then, another incident. A not-so-great friend through a rather large and heavy portable phone at my nose, breaking it in the same place, yet again.

From there on out, my nose became my obsession. To me, it was cleary, very very clear how disgusting my nose was. Today, my nose retains the causal of that incident; my nose is noticeably asymmetrical, clearly having been broken before. And as the way BDD works, soon it started devouring any confidence I had.

By 17, I was terrified of going outdoors and being seen by people. Any minor glance from someone was evidence they noticed my nose and how ugly it made me. And then came my obsession with my skin. Soon, I was convinced I had wrinkles all over my face.

A trip to the dermatologist revealed some strange news. He told me very sternly, "I am not going to give you anything for your skin; it would be unethical. What I am going to give you is serious advice you need to take to heart: You need to see a psychologist, and you need to see one soon."

Of course, my brain justified this as a lie. BDD has a funny way of doing these things; the question "Is this flaw really there and really that gross?" is almost always met with "No, what are you talking about?" - but BDD is very smart, and extremely tricky. The immediate next thought in what I imagine to be every BDD sufferers head is "They are lying to me to make me feel better."

So long story short, I was 5150'ed for several reasons, but it was necessary. I became diagnosed with OCD, and shortly after, BDD.

That was 5 years ago.

I have no gotten better in any way what-so-ever since then... I have found truly amazing distractions: relationships, pot, friends, video games, etc...

But it remains, I am no further along in my life than I was 5 years ago. I have wasted 5 years of my life avoiding something I can never escape. I am almost 22, and have done nothing with my life. But this is the time I stop. This is the time I get better.

I have devised a plan for recovery - it starts out rather simple.

The first three steps are:

1. Get a job
2. Interview for a better job
3. Attain better job.

I completed step one; I work at a movie theater I used to work at. It was very very easy for me to do so as I have many friends there. But I can't live on the money I make there. I am a trained and decently skilled bartender, and it is my full intention to have a bartending job by summer's end. I know I could easily get one, but I lack one major factor: confidence.

I am a serious pussy when it comes to interviews - I can't do them. Not because I feel like I'm incapable of getting the job, or because I feel like I'm not qualified - I'm terrified of being judged physically.

And soon, the first entry in my journey will be posted here, and the journey will begin...

The Mirror Is Lying To Me

Hi, welcome to my (for now) simple blog. In case you didn't know, this blog is being created to document my journey of recovery from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (from here on out, BDD.) It was quite a shock and disappointment to me when I searched for a patient-driven blog on this subject and found nothing. Perhaps the stigma involved is too much for some people to handle. Or more likely, perhaps it is terrifying for those suffering from BDD to show their face on the internet. I know, for me at least, it is terrifying.

I woke up today feeling particularly horrible. I stumbled from my half-drunken sleep to the bathroom and did the great taboo - I looked, for probably 45 minutes, in the mirror. It's an interesting experience that someone without BDD could probably never truly understand, but it's my goal to make it as understandable as possible. It's a complex problem. Why, having a fascination with self-hatred for our appearances, do we torture ourselves so?

Looking in the mirror is certainly not going to change the way we look. Yet still, we endure this sick self-inflicted pain only to come to the conclusion that we are hideous. It's extremely confusing to live in a world where you possibly have no idea what you really look like. The reality in our heads is that we are ugly - no one could ever find us attractive. Why seek out affection when we know it is unattainable? It's almost a form of insanity, but to us, it's very real.

After sufficiently destroying any good feelings I had this morning, I walked back into my room and sat down, alone, spinning out mentally, thinking very deeply about the implications of what it means to be ugly. I cried for about half an hour, until the crying had ran it's course. I don't enjoy crying, but I feel so helpless - so disadvantaged. There are many things you can change about yourself, but your appearance is not one of them.

But that is the key: I can't change my appearance. I am stuck looking the way I do. What I can do, however, is change my brain. It is disheartening, but I came to accept today that maybe I will never find myself attractive. So many people, of varying attractiveness, live completely normal lives, full of confidence, self-assured and knowing they are worth everything that comes to them.

But as much as that really truly blows, it's the first step to recovery.

And at the suggestion of my therapist, I have decided to document my journey. Maybe no one will ever read this blog, and that's totally ok. It's not about viewership, or popularity, or anything of marginal importance like that.

It's about exposing myself to life on life's terms, and being ok with that. As I said, there may never come a day I am happy with my appearance... but in the end, all I can do is play with the cards I've been dealt. No amount of crying or self-pity will change my life. The only thing that can change my life is changing my views on life.

And I sincerely hope, that if anyone out there reads this, BDD or not, that they can gain a greater understanding of this bizarre mental illness, which remains largely absent in popular media. And my greatest hope, is that I succeed, and those out there that know the deep, deadening, seemingly endless pain that BDD causes, can see that it truly can be done.