Abnormal Psychology In The Workplace: Body Dysmorphic Disor

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Colorado Technical University Online
Teandra Vincent
Abnormal Psychology in the Workplace PSYC377-1604B-01
Unit 2 Discussion Board 1- Anxiety Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive & Related Disorders
Prof. Nicole Darling
November 23rd 2016

Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a body image disorder often categorized by one’s distorted perception of how they appear to others. An individual that has body dysmorphic disorder may look in the mirror but often doesn’t see themselves instead, they are persistently and intrusively overwhelmed by their perceived flaws and perceived imperfections. This type of individual has no control over their negative thoughts and don’t believe others when others tell them that there is nothing wrong with them. The thoughts
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These BDD afflicted individuals often cannot focus their time and attention on much else but their imperfections. This often leads to avoidance altogether. People with BDD may not even leave home at all, may often consider suicide and even attempt it as well. The disorder may cause the individual to engage in compulsive or repetitive behavior to hide and improve their flaws for temporary relief this person may do things like camouflage using makeup, clothing, and hats, compare their body parts or their shortcomings to others ‘ appearance, seek surgical opinions or options, check in a mirror, avoid mirrors altogether, excessively groom or excessively exercise to name a few behaviors ("Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA," …show more content…
However, I feel that the portrayal of what men face when dealing with muscle dysmorphic disorders has been treated a bit insensitively. After looking through an array of articles regarding the topic on the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation website, I noticed that the articles pertaining to females are written more sensitively while the articles pertaining to males are short and don’t go into much detail about the disorder. This is not to say that every article about muscle dysmorphic disorder is written in this manner, but the ones I have come across aren’t really informative. For example: most of the articles address muscle dysmorphic disorder as bigorexia which to me pokes fun at the disorder and makes light of it ("BDD | BDD in the media,"