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We’re thrilled to announce our partnership with See Emily Play on the release of her brilliant new song, WHAT THE HELL IS BDD. Through the power of songwriting, Emily joins us in our mission to improve awareness of BDD as a condition. We are sure you will agree WHAT THE HELL IS BDD is a relatable and validating depiction of what it can feel like to experience BDD. Alongside this release, Emily has bravely opened up about her personal journey with BDD and the resilience she’s built through recovery. Her story, shared below, offers inspiring and relatable insights, and we’re honoured to support her in spreading awareness and hope to others who may be struggling.

Emily’s Story

The human brain is a wonderous and terrifying thing. Last week I released a song called WHAT THE HELL IS BDD. The song is a frank, uncensored snapshot of a difficult period of my life. While preparing for the release I’ve thought more about that period than ever before, and I have realised how much of it my own brain has censored out. I can’t remember, for example, writing WHAT THE HELL IS BDD. I fished my old phone out of a drawer and scrolled back through hundreds of voice memos of sketches of songs in various states of completeness. WHAT THE HELL IS BDD appears, fully formed, on the 24^th January 2021, but I suspect I’d been working on it for some time before then. I know I wrote it while I was living in a flat in Adelaide, almost certainly during lockdown, but I have no specific memory of the song forming. I have very little memory of that period altogether.

I do remember the shame, though. By January 2021 I would have been experiencing very distressing, intrusive thoughts about my body for around three and a half years. I cried the first time a therapist asked me if I’d heard of body dysmorphic disorder. I had read about BDD online. I’d even gone as far as to match some of the repetitive thoughts that preoccupied my mind with the symptoms of BDD, but something about it seemed ridiculous. I had worried that on telling the therapist my deepest shame- that I felt unbearably anxious and completely preoccupied with my own appearance- that I would be diagnosed with vanity or, worse, being a bad person.

Maybe this sounds hard to believe, but for me it was never really about what I looked like. Yes, the distress was about whether my body was the wrong shape, but what really troubled me was the idea- to me an unassailable truth- that if my body was the wrong shape that would mean I was completely unlovable. I’ve never had a great sense of self-worth. Most of how I value myself comes from seeking the esteem of others. Most of the messages you get about how society values you as a young woman, from the people you meet to the media you consume, is based on what you look like. It was probably inevitable that these separate things would amalgamate and form into something unhealthy for me at some stage.

The thoughts themselves were a bit like picking at a scab or wobbling a baby tooth: An irresistible, strangely comforting, addictive kind of pain. I would scroll through old photos of myself on social media, panic at the subtle changes to my face, hair, and body that were magnified to horrendous, gargantuan size in my mind’s eye, and completely derail the next few hours. I did this habitually, going back to the same picture multiple times a day, just in case I had gained a new perspective in the interim and maybe it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Nothing ever changed. I could distract myself for short intervals, but then I would repeat the exercise, sending myself into a spiral of acute anxiety over and over.

I developed the same pattern with looking at my own reflection, with pictures of women who, in my head, posed some kind of threat- exes of partners, for example- and with strangers I saw in the street. I felt deeply uneasy at social gatherings. Even going to the supermarket became difficult. I couldn’t stop the urge to compare myself, unfavourably, of course, to every person I saw. I simply had to keep upsetting myself. My brain liked to keep things fresh to maintain the panic, so my focus shifted around- one day it would be my nose, the next my hair, the next my physique. People no longer looked like people but a collection of features to be fearful of. It was exhausting, but somehow it felt more exhausting, if not physically impossible, to resist. 

My recovery was slow and not entirely linear. Therapy helped a lot, though not immediately. For a long time I felt like I understood the assignment but lacked the strength to complete the task. Eventually, I was able to implement the techniques I learnt. A turning point came when I decided to run a marathon. I spent four months running six days a week and my relationship with my body changed entirely. My body started impressing me in ways that were nothing to do with how it looked. It became a powerful machine that I needed to look after. It felt great. I ended up running four marathons in four years.

Turning thirty was a defining moment, too. Something about escaping my twenties felt liberating. However, I don’t want to attach too much significance to the number itself. I’d moved closer to home and my work was going well. It was easier to believe that I was loved and worth something than it had felt previously. A few months after my thirtieth birthday my parents popped in to see me on the way to a gig. At the very last minute I decided I wanted to join them. I didn’t have time to get changed or put any make-up on, but I didn’t mind. On a rainy Tuesday evening I finally understood that nobody would notice and nothing bad would happen. Instead of feeling anxious about other people, I happily stood in my newly-discovered anonymity and enjoyed the show.

There are still relics of the misaligned, circular thoughts that used to accompany my every waking minute. I haven’t been to a proper hairdresser for eight years because I’m scared of what will happen if I look at my reflection for an extended period. I’m not connected to my partner on any social media because I’m scared that I’ll lose the plot and fall down a Facebook-stalking-rabbit-hole and never return. I still enter rooms sometimes and feel like I’m not worthy of being there because of my appearance. Writing about BDD has been surprisingly uncomfortable. I’ve become aware of how fragile I feel my mental state still is, and how terrified I still am of regressing back to the upsetting, repetitive thoughts. But, there’s also a lot to celebrate. When I wrote WHAT THE HELL IS BDD I would have found it hard to imagine that I would ever perform it on stage, that I would pose for photographs for the single cover, that I would make videos to post on social media to accompany the release. These were impossible feats for me in 2021. In 2024 it hasn’t just been achievable, it has been fun, and I have felt, very much, like me.