Anxiety Toolbox: The Complete Fear-Free Plan. Gloria Thomas
may become highly muscular, they still see themselves as puny. When they feel that they can no longer develop, steroids are taken to boost physique. Other common male concerns are about penis size and receding hairlines.
BDD can take over an individual’s life to the extent that they become self-loathing, living in torment that others will notice their ‘flaws’. This makes them more susceptible to developing other disorders, such as OCD, depression and social phobias, and as a result such people can completely isolate themselves in order to avoid anyone seeing their perceived deformity. They believe that true happiness and self-esteem can only be possible if they change their defect. This anxiety disorder is considered delusional, as it is often only the person who is suffering that is aware of the defect – although they are convinced that it is obvious to others too.
The Symptoms of BDD
Self-Assessment
– Do you suffer from BDD?
– Not at all/a little/some of the time/a lot of the time/all of the time
– Do you find yourself obsessing about your self-image?
– Not at all/a little/some of the time/a lot of the time/all of the time
– On a scale of one to 10, how strongly do you currently feel anxiety about your self-image or certain parts of your body?
(0–1 = no anxiety, 2–3 = slight anxiety, 4–6 = moderate anxiety, 7–8 = marked anxiety, 9–10 = severe anxiety)
CASE STUDY for BDD
Roalh is a 29-year-old physics teacher who works in a tough inner city school. He had always been self-conscious about his body size and height but, on taking up his first teaching job, he quickly became concerned that many of his teenage pupils were bigger than him and could physically intimidate him. Unfortunately, his worst fears were realized when he was taunted and bullied by a group of teenage boys and their girlfriends. He was so ashamed that he was unable to stand up to them that he became overly conscious of his size and took up martial arts and bodybuilding. Even though he reached a size that would have been foreboding to the most ferocious youngster he was not satisfied and turned to steroids and other methods of making himself look stronger.
In order to treat his obsession with his body I carried out the appropriate TFT treatment (see chapter five). We then explored his beliefs and focused on working towards self-acceptance.
Phobias
A phobia is an intense and persistent fear or aversion for a specific object or situation that poses little or no danger. It is estimated that 1.9 per cent of adults in the UK and around 6.3 million Americans experience phobias, with women suffering more than men.
When an individual has a phobic reaction, they are likely to experience an extreme paralysing fear along with symptoms of panic and nausea. People who suffer from phobias know that their reaction to the object in question seems irrational to the rest of the world – and often they see it as such themselves. However, knowing this makes no difference and, in fact, often only increases the emotional distress and embarrassment the sufferer feels.
Phobias are very easy to identify because of the intense irrational response to the normally harmless, perceived threat. Specific phobias can be about spiders, snakes, escalators, lifts, blushing, visiting the dentist, particular kinds of food, insects, birds, injections, exams, animals, flying, water, blood, needles, heights, tunnels…The list is endless. There are also more complex phobias, such as agoraphobia, which can be made up of a number of fears.
Like all anxiety disorders, phobias differ in their degree of severity. Some people can manage their phobia simply by avoiding the object or situation that they are phobic to. This is straightforward enough if you have a fear of something very specific that isn’t part of your everyday life – i.e. a fear of flying or a phobia about needles. However, certain types of phobia can interfere with life on a day-to-day basis. A water phobia could, for example, not just prevent you swimming but also washing; a phobia about germs can prevent you from ever going outside your house; and a social phobia could have an impact on career choices and relationships.
The cause of most phobias can be found in childhood. Often a state of high emotion is linked to an event or an object or situation, so that whenever the individual finds himself or herself in a similar situation they have the same phobic response. Even the thought of the object or a similar situation can bring on a strong phobic response in the body. Phobias can lead to personality disorders, avoidance behaviours and other anxieties such as OCD.
Symptoms of a Phobic Reaction
Self-Assessment
– Do you experience extreme fear of one specific object or situation, for example, flying, heights, water, animals, insects, injections?
– Not at all/a little/sometimes/a lot of the time/all of the time/
– Do you feel worried or anxious when you even think about these objects/situations?
– Not at all/a little/sometimes/a lot of the time/all of the time
– Do you avoid the object of your fear?
– Not at all/a little/sometimes/a lot of the time/all of the time
– On a scale of one to 10, how strongly