Irish Independent Feature Article

Written by: Liadán Hynes , Mon 26 May 2025

I lost decades to body dysmorphic disorder – but I can look in the mirror now and not dislike what I see’

For Dubliner Keith Russell, two diagnoses five years ago gave a name to the deep anxiety he has felt since his teens – body dsymorphia and binge eating disorder. Through therapy and sharing his story, he has finally found peace.

It has been five years since Keith Russell received two life changing diagnoses, of body dysmorphic disorder and binge eating disorder. These followed the generalised anxiety disorder diagnosis he had received in 2016.

“I’ve been able to piece things together in the last few years and connect so many situations, emotions, and thoughts I had about myself to having a massive issue with my self-worth,” Keith, who turns 45 in October, explains of the work he has done over the past five years. “I hated myself in every way. I felt I was a failure, I hated the way I looked, and I hated everything about me.”

He describes the experience of processing his diagnosis in terms similar to those used in regard to the grieving process.

“There have been phases of confusion at the beginning, then sadness and anger, then there has been acceptance, which has been the most profound and important phase. I never, ever thought I’d be at a point of acceptance with myself,” Keith says.

“I’m much more content with who I am. I’ve learned to accept my flaws and to rationalise my thoughts. It’s still a process (but) it’s a process that’s got light at the end of the tunnel. The continuous feeling of endless negative thoughts has gone. I can look in the mirror now and not dislike what I see.“

“I’ve learned that my self-worth is not determined by how I look. It’s who I am as a person. Unravelling that took a lot of work, therapy, tears and meditation. I still see a therapist and I’m fully invested in continuing to grow as a person.”

A huge turning point has been the father of three’s newfound ability to manage his thoughts.

Now, he will challenge them: “Are they fact-based feelings or are they all in my head? I also think it makes me a much better father now.”

Keith had no body, confidence or food issues in his early years. Originally from Swords, Co Dublin, the younger of two children, he was a happy, outgoing child, with lots of friends.

Things began to change when he was 10 and the family moved to Ballyboughal: “There weren’t really many people around. I stopped playing sports. I stopped going to Swords, because there were no buses. I remember starting to feel lonely and isolated. When I look back now, my lack of self-worth was already starting to build.”

When he was 13, Keith and his older sister began life-saving classes at the local swimming club.

The activity compounded the issues he was already experiencing around his self-worth.

“I started to really notice other people’s bodies, to really focus on my own. (At) life-saving classes, you’re standing on the side of the pool rehearsing life-saving scenarios, you’re in the Speedos.”

He attended the lessons on Saturday evenings until he was 17. “I’d go home upstairs and literally just cry,” he says. “I was really starting to dislike how I looked. I now know that that was all part of body dysmorphia.”

He describes how Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a diagnosis he would not receive until well into adulthood, “takes control of your mind. It completely consumes you. You think about yourself morning to night in a negative way. It starts to basically control your whole life”.

Several times a day, he would run through a list of everything about his body he didn’t like, from head to toes.

“Because I’m telling myself day and night how horrible I look, I was thinking, ‘everyone else thinks the same,” he says. “This is how irrational it was. I didn’t like my wrists. I didn’t like my ankles. I didn’t like my hairline, my nose, my lower stomach, my back. I got to the point where I didn’t like the silhouette of my shadow.”

Eventually, Keith stopped wanting to go out. If friends asked him, he would run through scenarios in his head: “What type of t-shirt will I wear if I’m seated? I wouldn’t want to go bowling because I wouldn’t want to lean forward. I would be thinking, ‘everyone’s looking at my lower back.’

I have a small birth mark on my ear that nobody ever notices. But back then, I may as well have had a red flashing light on my ear, to me anyway, because I thought it was so noticeable.”

If he noticed girls looking at one of his friends, that could trigger huge upset: “They didn’t look at you, Keith, you’re absolutely horrible, just go home. There were so many nights I would go home and cry myself to sleep. I was going around looking for validation of how awful I was.”

It became about more than how he looked.

“Although that was always there, it started to be about how I was as a person,” Keith says. “My self-worth was non-existent. I basically withdrew from everyone. I hid in the shadows for probably 25 years. I feel like I’ve lost my teens, I’ve lost my 20s, and I’ve lost my 30s.”

In his 20s, his parents picked up on some of what was going on, and sent him for therapy for depression, which had become so severe that he, on two occasions, attempted suicide. While he found the therapist he attended for a year helpful with regard to depression, he never explained the root of his issues to her.

“I couldn’t really articulate it at the time,” he says. “I didn’t like myself, but I didn’t really know why. I guess it was just being a typical man – you don’t want to talk about the real reason why you’re feeling like this.”

Keith also developed binge eating disorder. “I suppose the food was something I felt I could control, because I felt a lot of things about myself I couldn’t control. It wasn’t just the food – I got completely obsessed with exercise. I was thinking to myself, ‘if I change the way I look, I will feel better’. Obviously, that’s not how it works, and I know that now. I was avoiding it. I wasn’t working on the neck up, I was working from the neck down.”

Further difficulties came from Keith’s employment situation. Working for his father in construction, he was forced to retrain after the crash in the late 2000s, going back to college to study marketing and digital marketing.

All of this compounded his anxiety, he began therapy again, and he was eventually diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder in 2016.

“My kids weren’t getting enough from me. I was there in body, but my head was gone.”

He describes one distressing symptom of dysmorphia – over-grooming: “(People are) constantly kind of picking at themselves or grooming. For example, for me, I’d be constantly touching my chin or my face. And the reason was because I didn’t like my jawline, and my side profile. A lot of the time you’re looking in the mirror for validation of the negatives. It’s not a vanity game – it’s quite the opposite.”

A turning point came when Keith began writing a blog called The Endless Spiral. He now hosts a mental health podcast by the same name.

His first post was called ‘How I Use Sport as Escapism’: “I literally would sit down all weekend and watch sport to get out of my own head.” He recently read the post again, and says he would now describe it as avoidance rather than escapism.

“I was avoiding everything else. My kids weren’t getting enough from me. I was there in body, but my head was gone,” says the father of three, whose children are now aged nine, 11 and 13.

“I’ve got quite a lot of regret from when my kids were younger because I felt so anxious about going anywhere with them. I wanted to go places with them, but I couldn’t. I’d get out and just want to go home.”

It was the feedback he received to his writing that finally led to Keith understanding that body dysmorphia was at the root of his suffering, when a reader asked if he had ever heard of the condition.

“I had never heard that term before in my life. And when I Googled it, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. My life literally changed overnight.” What he read validated how he was feeling, and made him realise there might be help available. “Surely I’m not on my own in this,” he recalls thinking.

He finally spoke openly to the therapist he was already seeing for anxiety: “I was able to eventually go, look, it’s not about the money, it’s not about changing careers, this goes a lot deeper.”

“I was a typical man, just feeling like, ‘if I start talking like this, I’m going to look like an idiot. I’m going to feel stigmatised’. And obviously there’s no judgment towards the therapist, but I think it’s a societal thing that men have of wanting to be dominant or strong, or they shouldn’t have all these feelings.”

He was eventually diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder and binge eating disorder in 2020, alongside the generalised anxiety disorder diagnosis he had received in 2016.

Keith has since attended CBT.

“It helps you catch negative thoughts in your head,” he says. “Now I feel like I might have a normal sense of maybe having a bad day, and I’ll say to myself, ‘that’s just a normal thing, that’s okay’. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’ll just do a few small things, so I don’t start getting this feeling of ‘you’re useless.”

Speaking out about body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders comes with unique challenges for men, says Keith, who also works in advocacy and gives talks in schools – work that gives him a sense of purpose for the first time in his life.

“I think so many men feel that there’s shame when it comes to talking about their body image and food,” he explains. “Even just for me, when I started to share my stories, I had a massive fear that I wasn’t going to be believed, because I don’t fit the stereotypical image of someone struggling with body image or with food or exercise.”

Through blogging, social media and interviews on his podcast, the sense of loneliness he had experienced for years has been eroded. “I’d get so much feedback, and all of a sudden you’re starting to meet other people who are similar, and you find yourself in this little community of people that are quite supportive,” he says.

He outlines some of the changes he has now experienced in his life. He is able to rationalise his thoughts, and therefore suffers from stress less often. He exercises to feel good, rather than to obsessively monitor how he looks. Through podcasting, blogging and public speaking, he has created a community.

“The feeling of not being alone was massive for me, because I isolated myself for so long. I’m starting to realise that I’ve got a lot of positives as a human being,” he adds.

Most importantly maybe, his quality of time with his three children has entirely changed: “I create memories, we take lots of pictures, I bring them everywhere. Because I’m in a better headspace, the kids get a better version of me now and I’m present with them. Last week, I took my three kids to a water park. Previously, such an excursion would have been out of the question. It’s still a struggle, it’s still a process, I still get days where I’m not doing great. But I’m able to rationalise my talk so much better now. And that’s come from therapy, from sharing a story, speaking to people with similar lived experiences.”

Original article is available here : https://m.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/health-features/i-lost-decades-to-body-dysmorphic-disorder-but-i-can-look-in-the-mirror-now-and-not-dislike-what-i-see/a1626108737.html