Kitty is the Head of Operations for the BDD Foundation and she shared her experiences of BDD with Annie Kelly from the Guardian.
Kitty describes that finding the BDD website and reading the list of symptoms was “like someone had crawled inside my brain and written down everything they could find. The idea that what I had was a condition, that it wasn’t my fault, was like a huge weight disappearing from my shoulders. For years, I’d blamed myself for everything.”
After discovering what BDD was and seeking help, she began treatment with a CBT specialist for BDD.
“At the beginning, going into treatment was really tough but soon I was having these huge moments. I clipped my fringe back off my face for the first time and was able to walk down the street without believing that everyone was staring at me,” she says. “It was a slow release from the grip that BDD had held over me since childhood.”
After a BDD relapse in her late 20s she decided she wanted to get involved in helping others and made contact with the Foundation again.
‘In her job now, as the BDDF’s head of operations, Wallace is constantly in contact with people who have BDD and sees her story reflected in their struggles. “For me, it was an overwhelming belief that there was something wrong with the very core of who I was, inside and out, and that is really isolating,” she says. “At the BDDF, a lot of our work is trying to show people that they’re not alone and it’s not their fault.”
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