Living with body dysmorphia disorder (bdd

I can't remember when all of this started, but somewhere along the way I lost my self confidence, which ended up affecting my whole life and those around me as well. Before I get started I just want to start out by saying the next time you think about making fun of someone for their appearance or asking what's on their face, think about how it would make you feel if you were in their shoes, embarrassed, feeling like you want to crawl back into bed and just cry. In highschool I remember we had a project to research a mental illness or anything really and as I was researching I found the term "body dysmorphia disorder." I don't like To slap a label on things, especially labeling myself as being depressed, and having anxiety. In my opinion people are more than labels. But the more I researched the more I realized maybe it's ok to label myself as having body dysmorphia, after all it's a little reassuring to know that there's a name for your mental illness and others around you suffer from it too. For those of you who are wondering what body dysmorphia is, it's an illness where someone has compulsions and rituals, for example, I take off and put on make up over and over again because I don't think it looks good enough. If I get a blemish or something I tend to get depressed and won't go out. I'll spend hours on end in the bathroom. I feel like whatever I do I don't look pretty enough. I can't believe I'm actually admitting this to you, you don't realize how hard this is for me. I've spent two years now suffering from this illness and I can't stand it anymore. I've gone through years of therapy and nothing seems to work, but I have to be the one willing to do something about it. I've been in and out of hospitals, through a month in a residential program with mostly girls with eating disorders. I was taken there because body dysmorphia is similar to eating disorders in which girls with anorexia think they look large when they really don't just like my thinking is sometimes distorted. Anyway I was there for a month but nothing seemed to work. So now here I am laying in my bed writing this trying to send a message to you all. Through out this while journey suffering with body dysmorphia it's taught me one thing, love yourself. You are so much more than that blemish on your face, so much more than what your mind is telling you. It's so hard to believe but please, coming from someone that suffers from this, I mean it. Love yourself and your life will be so much better.