On the subject of body dysmorphic disorder (WARNING: Some gooey personal details ahead, and notes on how I more-or-less fixed mine):
I am male, and have been told that I have it (and by my psychiatrist, even!). To me, therefore, this is a particularly good example of the discrepancy between automatic self-evaluation and abstract self-evaluation; I could abstractly note that people seemed to find me attractive, and that I was in many ways on the right side of the physical appearance bell curve, but looking in the mirror inspired nothing but revulsion.
So, of course, this became the first subject at which I attempted mindhacking. I started with the typical self-help-book advice: Look in the mirror every morning, and tell yourself you’re attractive. This was, somewhat surprisingly to me, partway successful—but only partway. The result was that my subjective evaluation eventually transformed to “I could be so good-looking, if it weren’t for X, Y, and Z!” (although really the list I made had a lot more than 3 items). The primary feature to which the fixation reduced at this stage was my nose—rather than go into the specifics, allow me simply to say that I disliked it very much. So, I thought, this halfway worked—why not meet it from the other direction? I’ll get a nose job.
So I got a nose job. And I didn’t tell anyone I was getting one, figuring I could see if there was a change in their reactions (Results: some people figured it out, some did not. Of those who did not, the most common comment was “Did you get your teeth whitened?”.) The change to my subjective self-evaluations, after a settling-in phase, was quite the opposite of the usual “plastic surgery will never make you happy/satisfied” advice we hear—my perception of my own attractiveness rose substantially. The other items on the list did not go away, but with the primary one gone, I self-evaluated much more positively.
So, I thought, I’ll give the self-help method some more time. I started playing with lighting around and above my bathroom mirror, which made for an interesting effect—using more flattering lighting improved my self-evaluation and feelings of attractiveness for that day, even though I abstractly know it doesn’t make a difference outside, but having the ability to switch lightings around in general also helped me grok that one’s toothsomeness is not a fixed value; it very much changes based on the situation.
Grokking that particular fact produced another increase in my self-evaluation of my appearance, albeit a smaller one, and also put me on another track—what other circumstantial things that I’ve been neglecting could help? This post grows long, but basically: I fixed my posture and started dressing nicer (where “nicer” simply meant anything that I self-evaluated positively when looking in the mirror) and tried various new things with my hair (which had been very long and shaggy). Both helped notably. I also opted to try more elective procedures—first Lasik (which went swimmingly—worthwhile even if you don’t think your glasses make you look ugly; having 20⁄15 vision is AWESOME) then electrolysis. Both of these also seemed successful, although nothing produced the dramatic change in my self-evaluation that rhinoplasty did.
In sum, it does seem to be possible, at least in my case (and n=1 so p >>>.05, obviously) to remove physical attractiveness as a major daily concern for someone with BDD. I still think about my appearance, and sometimes contemplate things to change/improve, but no longer have angst or pervasive worries about it. Since my self-evaluation is no longer so overpoweringly negative, I seem to be able to just take people at their word (or body language) about my appearance these days. This is not quite the same as perfecting my ability to self-evaluate, but I’ve manually pushed and prodded my self-evaluation close enough to the outside consensus that outside evaluations are now responsible for much of the daily/weekly/monthly variation.
In this context n is the sample size of the number people, and p is the associated chance that this would occur by chance. In classical statistics one generally cares about results that have a p < .05 (that is there’s a less than 1⁄20 chance of the result occurring due to random chance).
Yes, but it’s worth spelling out the heresy more explicitly. A good LW Bayesian isn’t supposed to regard the number .05 as somehow special. Also, the whole notion of p values is misguided and counterproductive. Any more questions?
The change to my subjective self-evaluations, after a settling-in phase, was quite the opposite of the usual “plastic surgery will never make you happy/satisfied” advice we hear—my perception of my own attractiveness rose substantially. The other items on the list did not go away, but with the primary one gone, I self-evaluated much more positively.
How much of this reaction (decline in severity of BDD) was from the material change observable directly by you, and how much of this reaction was due to the failure of others to notice any change and yet still rate you as attractive (in your opinion, if you can even guess)? I’m curious.
I should clarify—though a lot of people didn’t figure out that it was specifically my nose that had changed, most people with whom I had any semi-regular interaction noticed that something was different about me, and commented to that effect (and of course there were certain groups—flatmates, lovers, my anatomy teacher—who immediately realized it was a nose job). The lesson I took away from that was that while people do evaluate your attractiveness when they see you, mostly they don’t cache much more than a general positive or negative impression of your appearance. Thus when something changes for the better, they think “Ey looks better” but can’t quite place why. I should have realized this before—the number of times I’ve thought someone looked different but not been able to place why defies counting.
In light of that, I would say it was definitely partly due to the reactions of others (positive without knowing why) and partly due to being able to observe a material change myself, but as to their proportions I have only speculation. As a hunch, I would guess that the latter was a larger factor—my self-evaluations after the settling-in period were pretty close to what I imagined they’d be, when I was visualizing myself with a new nose before the operation.
On the subject of body dysmorphic disorder (WARNING: Some gooey personal details ahead, and notes on how I more-or-less fixed mine):
I am male, and have been told that I have it (and by my psychiatrist, even!). To me, therefore, this is a particularly good example of the discrepancy between automatic self-evaluation and abstract self-evaluation; I could abstractly note that people seemed to find me attractive, and that I was in many ways on the right side of the physical appearance bell curve, but looking in the mirror inspired nothing but revulsion.
So, of course, this became the first subject at which I attempted mindhacking. I started with the typical self-help-book advice: Look in the mirror every morning, and tell yourself you’re attractive. This was, somewhat surprisingly to me, partway successful—but only partway. The result was that my subjective evaluation eventually transformed to “I could be so good-looking, if it weren’t for X, Y, and Z!” (although really the list I made had a lot more than 3 items). The primary feature to which the fixation reduced at this stage was my nose—rather than go into the specifics, allow me simply to say that I disliked it very much. So, I thought, this halfway worked—why not meet it from the other direction? I’ll get a nose job.
So I got a nose job. And I didn’t tell anyone I was getting one, figuring I could see if there was a change in their reactions (Results: some people figured it out, some did not. Of those who did not, the most common comment was “Did you get your teeth whitened?”.) The change to my subjective self-evaluations, after a settling-in phase, was quite the opposite of the usual “plastic surgery will never make you happy/satisfied” advice we hear—my perception of my own attractiveness rose substantially. The other items on the list did not go away, but with the primary one gone, I self-evaluated much more positively.
So, I thought, I’ll give the self-help method some more time. I started playing with lighting around and above my bathroom mirror, which made for an interesting effect—using more flattering lighting improved my self-evaluation and feelings of attractiveness for that day, even though I abstractly know it doesn’t make a difference outside, but having the ability to switch lightings around in general also helped me grok that one’s toothsomeness is not a fixed value; it very much changes based on the situation.
Grokking that particular fact produced another increase in my self-evaluation of my appearance, albeit a smaller one, and also put me on another track—what other circumstantial things that I’ve been neglecting could help? This post grows long, but basically: I fixed my posture and started dressing nicer (where “nicer” simply meant anything that I self-evaluated positively when looking in the mirror) and tried various new things with my hair (which had been very long and shaggy). Both helped notably. I also opted to try more elective procedures—first Lasik (which went swimmingly—worthwhile even if you don’t think your glasses make you look ugly; having 20⁄15 vision is AWESOME) then electrolysis. Both of these also seemed successful, although nothing produced the dramatic change in my self-evaluation that rhinoplasty did.
In sum, it does seem to be possible, at least in my case (and n=1 so p >>>.05, obviously) to remove physical attractiveness as a major daily concern for someone with BDD. I still think about my appearance, and sometimes contemplate things to change/improve, but no longer have angst or pervasive worries about it. Since my self-evaluation is no longer so overpoweringly negative, I seem to be able to just take people at their word (or body language) about my appearance these days. This is not quite the same as perfecting my ability to self-evaluate, but I’ve manually pushed and prodded my self-evaluation close enough to the outside consensus that outside evaluations are now responsible for much of the daily/weekly/monthly variation.
Forgive my noobity, but what are n, p in n=1 so p>>>.05?
In this context n is the sample size of the number people, and p is the associated chance that this would occur by chance. In classical statistics one generally cares about results that have a p < .05 (that is there’s a less than 1⁄20 chance of the result occurring due to random chance).
Yes, but it’s worth spelling out the heresy more explicitly. A good LW Bayesian isn’t supposed to regard the number .05 as somehow special. Also, the whole notion of p values is misguided and counterproductive. Any more questions?
How much of this reaction (decline in severity of BDD) was from the material change observable directly by you, and how much of this reaction was due to the failure of others to notice any change and yet still rate you as attractive (in your opinion, if you can even guess)? I’m curious.
I should clarify—though a lot of people didn’t figure out that it was specifically my nose that had changed, most people with whom I had any semi-regular interaction noticed that something was different about me, and commented to that effect (and of course there were certain groups—flatmates, lovers, my anatomy teacher—who immediately realized it was a nose job). The lesson I took away from that was that while people do evaluate your attractiveness when they see you, mostly they don’t cache much more than a general positive or negative impression of your appearance. Thus when something changes for the better, they think “Ey looks better” but can’t quite place why. I should have realized this before—the number of times I’ve thought someone looked different but not been able to place why defies counting.
In light of that, I would say it was definitely partly due to the reactions of others (positive without knowing why) and partly due to being able to observe a material change myself, but as to their proportions I have only speculation. As a hunch, I would guess that the latter was a larger factor—my self-evaluations after the settling-in period were pretty close to what I imagined they’d be, when I was visualizing myself with a new nose before the operation.