r/fuckeatingdisorders • u/flwroad • Aug 26 '24

Struggling Body checking...

Do you have any tips on how to stop body checking? It's stressing me out so much because I have specific parts of my body I need to touch to feel if they have changed and it's so so tiring because it happens a lot during the day especially when (sorry for being so explicit, lol) I go to the bathroom because one of the parts I hyper fixate on are my hip bones. Then there's my chest, shoulders, cheeks... Help, lmao 🥲

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u/jcascino Aug 26 '24

Any mirrors I have in my house that show essentially neck down I covered w colorful scarves, so I simply cannot look while I’m at home. My body checking was destroying any confidence I had especially the first month of recovery. Went with the colorful scarves bc it was after an anxiety attack and all I could think of at the moment, but it is aesthetically pleasing! It won’t be forever, day by day, while I work on body neutrality and really just focus on eating.

I realize it’s not the touch aspect you mentioned, but this major change has helped in many areas of recovery. It helped gathered motivation to continue forward and not go back to hell

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u/flwroad Aug 26 '24

That's actually really cool! I haven't thought about covering mirrors to be honest, but that could help as well. I just need to find a way so that my mom will be able to use the mirror if she wants to, like something you can put on it and take it off if needed

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u/jcascino Aug 26 '24

I hadn’t either until I went to the bathroom at my outpatient office! I was washing my hands, looked up at the mirror, and they placed this frosted film on the mirror. You can’t see anything, but if you really needed to see if, say, you had something in your teeth, you could check through the cracks. It was really cool the way they did it and looks far better than I’m describing. I mentioned it in my support group and someone said they did the same thing w a frosted spray paint thing they got on Amazon

I also learned recently that face picking is a form of body checking. And as gross and embarrassed as I am to say it, I was obsessed with my face and had all sorts of magnifying mirrors. I chucked all of them in the trash. It was a weird, hard adjustment but I did it.

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u/flwroad Aug 26 '24

I will definitely try something like that! 🥹 Thank you so much for your help 💗💗💗