Hair

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Hair

My hair is the centre of my life, all attention and commitment for the hair, if i should go out or not is decided by what the hair conditions will be like: will it be windy? will the sun make it blonder?

My hair determines my mood; is today going to be a good day or a bad day? I'll just consult the mirror, will it be a bad hair day? no such thing, i only have bad hair weeks.

I map my life around my hair, my thoughts of the future are generally thoughts of what my hair will be like, will it be as horrid as it is now? Will my wife think my hair is OK?

Getting my hair cut is a trauma, the weeks following the cut are spent as a hermit, wearing a hat at all times, never going out without extreme embaressment - even a balaclava to cover my crooked teeth - I'll mumble just to hide my upper row.

I can't even stand my own family seeing me when my hair isn't absolutely perfect, I beg them to not think of me as I am now, but to think of me as I was when I was perfect.


It's call Body Dysmorphic Disorder and I wanted to educate you all of what i go through every day with a mental illness that's caused me so much more pain then autism ever has.

phonic

Even after reading your post, I can only imagine how this disorder has affected your life. Most of us have some experience of being preoccupied with our hair, our weight, our skin, etc. But, yes, yours sounds like an extreme preoccupation that truly affects your quality of life. That being said, I don't think it's fair to make this a point of comparison with people on the autism spectrum. We all have our crosses to bear, and some of us bear it better than others.

For me its my skin.

My mood is dependant on how red and how deep the scars look on that day.

I'm only happy when my face doesn't look like a tomatoe, which seems to be few and far between these days.

thank you for your kind words, however when I mention autism I am only speaking of my ecpierance with it, not anyone elses

For me it's skin and other stuff I can't even bear to think about cause I CAN'T CHANGE IT EVER. I just had a nightmare last night where I was screaming in my sleep about it. Which sounds ridiculous. It's worse now cause I went off medicine for a week. Finally caved in and got back on it.

Anyway I completely understand. What's interesting to me it that your hair is something that you can change and that is not permanently in whatever state it is in at the moment under discussion, which actually gives me a lot of hope since what I fear the most is irreversible negative things happening to my life, myself, my body, and I thought this was integral to the disorder but your condition sounds so similar to mine in every other way I have no choice but to think BDD is not about me seeing actual decay in my body, it's about something else.

For you Phonic it sounds like all your fears of not being what you want to be in the present (even if it's a present that occurs in the future) are focussed on your hair and also teeth. Would this be fair to say? Whereas all my fears about the future, of impending lossthat hasn't occurred yet, go into my obsession with my skin etc.

I wish to God I could do something to make you feel better because from my point of view, the point of another person obviously VERY obsessed with having their body a certain way, there is no way that your teeth/hair would not be "perfect".

When I was a teenager before I shifted my focus to ageing a bad hair day did ruin my day at times but not to the extent you experience it. My mom experienced it closer to what you experience it because her "ethnic" hair was not acceptable by popular culture/society growing up in the 60s and still isn't"in favor". There's a section in my favorite book of all time that I talk about way too much, White Teeth, about a girl Irie who has the same hair concerns as well as body concerns because she's half black half white and she desperately wants "straight straight flickable" hair which she'll just never have unless she gets a someone else's hair attached to her head which she does. And she has a curvy body which is also attached to her "not acceptable" ethnicity. And so her (this fictional character who obviously the author created from real feelings) body dysmorphic concerns could be said to be the manifestation of her deep desire to fit into a world which is saying SHE herself, her very being, is not okay.

Anyway I think BDD sufferers probably each all have their own deep psychological fears that come out as a material fixation with a body part or parts.

I can understand the pain that you go through, and I think I understand what you mean by it causing you "more" pain than autism.

Being "gender queer" or "transgendered", I also experience a certain amount of BDD, and it is absolutely one of the most troubling and disabling aspects of my life. I actually enjoy my autism, I don't want to be like NTs, I am so thankful that I was born honest, creative, courteous and near genius.

But daily I SUFFER from BDD. A mere thought or mental image can send me spiralling into a meltdown and then shutdown. I actually can't type anymore about it because I am getting agitated. But you get the idea.

Wishing you a "good hair day" from the bottom of my heart.

Also I'm just thinking about this more and there's something to one of your obsessions being teeth and this book that I was referencing being titled White Teeth... a theme or trope or symbol or whatever you call it of the book is that (to oversimplify it) no matter who people are, no matter how different their external features we can all see pretty much one and only one internal feature (unless you want to count eyes) and it looks pretty much the same for all humans, it's their white teeth. So white teeth (or relatively white, I mean as opposed to coming from birth in varying colors like skin does) links all humans and when someone is focussed on their teeth and how they may differ from others' it seems to me that must be based in the deep-seated fear of not being human like the rest , accepted by the rest as you are at your very core (in addition to the cultural fixation with "straight teeth"). You literally can't do anything with teeth but brush them or get braces, unless you do some drastic tooth-piercing procedure or your teeth fall out or something... I wonder also (I have a bunch of probably weird evolutionary theory-based theories) if it's not related to your unwillingness to show your teeth to other people because people show their teeth for two reasons, to either get closer to someone (by talking amiably, smiling or laughing) or to assert their enemyship with another person (by shouting at someone or making a menacing face that goes back to the fact that people at their most primitive like all toothed animals can bite to attack, though modern humans' teeth are much blunter than wild animals). So maybe it's tied to a fear of being social, of making any sort of social stand. I know you said crookedness is your fixation and I do understand that but I feel there might possibly be another side to it?

Also I read that in male sufferers of BDD hair and teeth are two of the most common areas of fixation by far. Probably cause guys don't get "dolled up" the way girls do so these are the two main ways to assert identity/social status.

Ha, I can relate to both. I keep my hair shaved, just so I don't think about my hair so much. As far as skin, early on, somehow I based my self worth on the clarity, smoothness, non-acneness of my facial skin. A theory is, I saw how people with clear skin (and not to mention, that were beautiful) were "idolized" and lauded. I wanted that too. When I had really bad acne in late high school, I'd look in the mirror compulsively. I still do that. My skin is clear and people tell me its great, but it's as if I'm looking at my skin through an electron microscope, whilst they are looking at it from 10 feet away, ha. Granted, I observe it so detailingly, that I see the most insignificant things. Ugh.