Reddit reviews The Broken Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder

You certainly sound obsessed and making permanent, expensive decisions when you're obsessed isn't the best idea. Odds dictate that you'll find something else wrong with your appearance after you get that done and you'll obsess over that. It's hard to make a sober decision based in reality when your thoughts are constantly pushing you in a fixed direction that you can't help but follow. As far as aesthetics go, you look good without any surgery. You've got nice eyes, eyebrows and a very symmetrical face.

You're very young and your face will continue developing into your 20s. You're not finished cooking yet. Your profile isn't a glaring flaw despite what your thoughts are telling you. I think you would be better off saving that large amount of money and investing it in your future because I guarantee that if you have an obsessive personality, you will always find something new to obsess about.

You need to slowly realize that the problem is not based in reality, it's in your mind. Your thoughts are not real. Your problem is not your face, it's that your brain is obsessively self-focused. Changing your face will not change the wiring of your brain. It will always find some new thought to latch onto and repeat on a loop. You'll save yourself a lot of suffering long-term if you shift your focus to addressing your tendency toward obsessive thinking and not toward the content of the thoughts.

Consider the fact that simply raising the levels of certain chemicals in the brains of obsessive people effectively eliminates their obsessive rumination and lets them experience a night and day difference in their mental state. I know it's true because until I experienced it, I couldn't believe that it was possible to think about anything else but what I was obsessing about. I learned how arbitrary my thoughts are, what craziness the brain is capable of producing, and how easy it is to buy into it.

Can you even imagine what you would be thinking about if you were not obsessing about your appearance for hours a day? If your brain wasn't a broken record, what would it think about and want to do? You're very young, I think it's worth considering treating this as a mental issue before you make drastic changes to your body. When you break the obsession, you will see how silly it was and how much power you gave to thoughts that don't have any basis in reality. I know it's hard when your thoughts are shaping your attitude and you feel like there's no way out. You feel like you have no choice in the matter and you're drowning in your brain's bullshit. It doesn't have to be that way man. There is hope. Pick up [The Broken Mirror] (https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Mirror-Understanding-Treating-Dysmorphic/dp/0195167198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537207938&sr=8-1&keywords=the+broken+mirror) and learn about the true nature of your problem. It's not in your face.

Yeah, I think I do have a dysmorphia. I want to try to treat this myself before going through some kind of therapy though, and I think that's mostly because I don't have any health insurance and don't really have any experience with therapy.

Thinking about reading this,

https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Mirror-Understanding-Treating-Dysmorphic/dp/0195167198/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1526973118&sr=8-2&keywords=bdd

might help me. Thanks for the input.

You are definitely not ugly. You have a great profile and a nice face.
BDD is s bitch. Fellow struggler here, so I feel ya.

I read this book called, ["The broken mirror"] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195167198/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1381246235&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX110_SY165)
by Katherine Phillips over and over and found it very helpful, so you may want to give it a read :-)

It's been a while since I read the 2005 Broken Mirror and I no longer have it to compare, but the 2009 book seems to cover some stuff I don't remember seeing. Maybe compare the two via Amazon previews? (Also, the newer paperback seems to be on sale for $5.98!)

I went through something somewhat similar and found I had body dysmorphic disorder. I saw someone who specialized in BDD and OCD which helped and taking the right meds really really really helped. The Broken Mirror is also worth reading to better understand BDD.

I think it is very likely you have BDD. I'm not qualified to diagnose of course, but I've done a lot of reading about it and you sound like a textbook case. Here is a book about BDD that discusses CBT and other treatment options, it's very thorough and I would really recommend it.