2016, August, my body dysmorphia was born with a simple sentence:“she’s too big.”

That was all it took.

It’s funny how something so small, so casually said, can rearrange the way you see yourself permanently. Because in that moment, it didn’t matter that the person saying it wasn’t important in my life. What mattered was that I heard it… and somehow, my brain decided to keep it.

What hurt even more was that nobody said anything. None of my friends defended me. Nobody countered it. It just floated in the air like truth, and everybody moved on, except me.

Late September 2016, it settled fully through a mirror.

I took a picture with a friend that day, just a normal mirror picture. But when I looked at it, I didn’t see two girls taking a cute photo. I didn’t see a memory. I didn’t even see myself as a whole person.

All I could see were my big, wrong looking arms.

That orange short-sleeved top suddenly felt like a public announcement. And from that day, I stopped wearing short sleeves.

 

That’s the thing about Body Dysmorphic Disorder. People think it’s just insecurity. Just “not feeling confident.” But it’s not that simple, it’s not random, it doesn’t come and go like a bad mood. It stays, sits, and builds roots.

It is being intensely preoccupied with flaws that are either very minor or not even there at all, but your brain refuses to let you see anything else. It is looking in the mirror and seeing a completely distorted version of yourself, and no matter what anybody says, your mind will argue back.

It shows up in different ways.

Sometimes you’re checking mirrors constantly, adjusting, analysing, criticising. Other times, you avoid mirrors completely because you cannot deal with what you might see. You become more withdrawn, more aware, more… careful.

Because in your head, everybody is watching.

And the worst part is not even the condition itself sometimes, it’s people.

“Ah ah, you wey fine like this?”
“If you dey complain, wetin we go talk?”
“It’s all in your head.”

Yes, that’s literally the problem.

They say it like it’s a switch you can flip. Like you can wake up one morning, go into your “settings,” and select confidence — high. As if this is a game and not something slowly eating away at your perception of yourself.

Having something like this in Nigeria is especially exhausting because mental health is still treated like a joke or a luxury. If you’re not visibly falling apart, then you must be fine. And if you try to explain, you’re dramatic.

Meanwhile, your entire life is quietly shifting.

I wasn’t even a particularly outgoing child before all this, but that one statement dimmed something in me. I became more withdrawn. The way I dressed changed; baggy clothes became my best friend, sweaters in weather that had no business accommodating sweaters. Just anything to hide.

Because somehow, I had convinced myself that when I entered a room, nobody saw me, they only saw my arms, that was my reality.

BDD does that to you. It takes away your ability to see yourself clearly. Every time you look in the mirror, your brain zooms in on what it has labelled as “wrong,” and that’s all you see. Your “flaws”. 

And then to make things worse, people will now joke about the exact thing you’re already insecure about.

And laugh like they’ve just delivered the punchline of the year.

It’s actually wild when you think about it, because our brains are constantly learning from repetition. If I am already thinking “my arms are too big” quietly in my head, why are you helping me say it out loud? Who asked you? Who sent you?

Because you don’t know what people are carrying.

You don’t know what one careless comment can reinforce.

I’m not going to sit here and say I’ve completely overcome it. That would be a lie. There are still days I look in the mirror and my brain tries to drag me back to that same place. But I will say this — I became very intentional about what and who I allowed around me.

I distanced myself from people who spoke carelessly about others’ bodies.
I stopped consuming media that pushed unrealistic standards like they were normal.
I chose people who saw me fully, not in parts.

Healing from something like this is not a dramatic overnight transformation. It’s small decisions repeated over time. It’s learning to exist in your body without constantly trying to edit it.

And honestly, one of the simplest, most overlooked things we can all do is control how we speak about other people’s bodies. If it is not kind, it does not need to be said, not every observation deserves a voice note.

Because sometimes, all it takes is one sentence…to change the way someone sees themselves for years.