 I've actually been avoiding doing this video for about, how many years have I been doing this? Like four years now? I've never done a video talking directly about this. Even like just showing how I genuinely see myself, because I've never really known how I could do it because when I edit stuff I see myself, the way I see myself when I look in the mirror. So what my idea is for this video is I'm gonna show you what I think of myself and I'm gonna have someone else editing this for me because they obviously see me differently to how I see myself. This video has caught them a lot of anxiety and I want this video to raise awareness for body dysmorphia which is something I've struggled with since I was a kid. It's always been that and still is. It's still affecting me now, obviously. It's been getting worse for me as time's gone and it's slowly starting to trigger back the euthan disorder mind of me and I don't like saying that but I'm getting help for that. This is how I see myself. Hi, my name's Lydia. I'm 20 years old. I live in London in the UK which is pretty cool. I've been diagnosed with body dysmorphia disorder for around five years. It controls everything in my life. Like when I look in the mirror it makes me want to cry. I genuinely think I look horrible. I genuinely hate the way I look. I can't stand the sight of myself. I often think I wish I could just scratch my face off sometimes because I genuinely hate myself. I have a hearing how I've looked for years. I can't stand the sight of myself which is really hard because my mirror is opposite my bed so a lot of the time I end up sleeping down the other end of my bed. I think the hardest thing about having this condition is that I get very anxious when I'm around people and when I'm in public. I'm living in London. I have to do it on the underground a lot. Quite often the first thing I think is how can anyone stand the sight of me? Like why do people like me? How do these people see me? What are they thinking when they look at me? There's also like the chub in my stomach. Like it's all pudgy and chubby and I look horrible. I look like that. I think you do look fat. They think I'm fat. Can they see the chub that I see? Can they tell that I've put on weight and it's such an irrational thing because if people don't even know me they don't know anything about me. To have this irrational fear of people judging me it's so hard. Do anything that I can know is like a chub. It's all chubby. Look at how much chubby it is. So it controls everything. It really does. What I hope this video shows people is that just because you see yourself as it and why it doesn't mean other people see that way I think that's one of the important messages because it's like I still struggle with it and I will probably never see myself the way other people see me and that's quite a hard thing to accept. And like my arm is just chubby chubby chubby chubby. Just chubby but that's horrible. I just look so unattractive. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. You do look horrible. I think one of the biggest things that triggered this in me was always being told oh you look fat oh you look chubby. One thing that stuck with me since I was about seven or eight was when my mom was washing my hair and she was like oh you've got a bit of chub and she poked my stomach and yeah it was a bit more chubby back then than I am now but I remember that so vividly. I can remember it like it happened yesterday and it's really hard. It's a very hard thing to get over and then I was bullied throughout my entire secondary school life which was from the age of 11 to 16 I think it is now quite a while ago for me now. All through all that time I was bullied about Highlord and essentially it's what caused me to make my first ever attempt on my own life. I was suicidal. I was struggling. I wasn't eating. I never ate a meal in the school cafeteria. I was so afraid to eat around people and I dropped to about five stone during that time period which isn't healthy. I'm only five foot two but it's just not ideal or healthy. I think my ideal weight at the moment would be around seven stone eight and currently eight stone five which is a very high number. I'm triggering and I hate it. I remember when I first waved myself wanting a lot of scales in between and I checked my weight and it said 9.02 and I turned around and kicked the scales because I hated it. It's a whole different world. It really is. Like it's a completely different world and people on the outside don't understand it. I know my mom. A lot of people that are close to me don't really understand body dysmorphia and I think this video should open their eyes. I hope. I last year started making videos about body image, about body positivity. I then also this year for the first time revealed my weight and since then my weight has gone up a few, about a week ago it hit nine stone and then I was like maybe my irrational fear of being chubby and that is real and I've dropped over half a stone in a week because I immediately just stopped eating and like I say I am trying. I do try. That is weekend I've had pizza, I can eat and I don't struggle with food as much as I used to but you get so obsessed with the numbers. The number on the scale controls so much of my life. This video is sponsored by Better Help. Better Help is a online service. It's available on the app stores and on Google. If you use BetterHelp.com slash Lydia you can sign up using that. It's not free, you do have to pay for it but they do also offer financial aid to those who can't afford it. It's essentially therapy, privately done, they can offer help payment but overall I think it is an amazing service.