I was halfway through filming a documentary into body dysmorphia, when one of the people I was interviewing asked me an unexpected question.

She asked if I had become self-conscious about my own body, after spending so much time around people with body image disorders.

Daniela is about the same age as me, with glossy hair, a killer tan, and a job supplying breast implants to plastic surgeons.

She's also living with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), which means that she sees flaws in her appearance that she's convinced make her hideous.

For weeks I'd been interviewing people about how they saw their body, for a documentary exploring body image I was working on for the ABC's Catalyst program.

We were trying to understand when being concerned about how you look turned into something unhealthy, even dangerous.

We wanted to know where that tipping point might be, and what cultural, social, and biological factors are at play.

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When how you look is your top priority

During filming I had discovered some startling facts, such as 10 per cent of Australians thought that the way they looked was the most important thing in their lives — more than their family, or their work.

I'd met people like Megan, who had become so obsessed with "clean eating", she felt like the food on the shelf at the supermarket was talking to her.

I'd spent time with Josh, a 25-year-old fitness trainer who could reel off a list of perceived defects with his body at a moment's notice.

And then there was Daniela. She was convinced that her thighs were so big that she couldn't bring herself to look at them in the mirror.

At this point in time Daniela hadn't been diagnosed with BDD, though she suspected it might be the case.

The condition causes people to focus on a particular body part — a nose they think is oversized, a chin they're sure is weak, teeth that aren't straight enough.

What people will do to fix those "flaws" can be extreme.

During filming I was told about a woman who hated her nose so much she performed her own rhinoplasty, using chicken cartilage.

Daniela told me about putting hard objects in between her thighs while sitting down, to separate her legs, so she couldn't see them touching each other.

She said she'd taken up body-building at one point to try and tone her legs, but ended up blaming them for being too big when she only came third in a competition.

During our interview she compared herself to me, calling me "beautiful" and "tiny", and saying she felt like a "little elephant" next to me.

After Daniela told me all this, she wanted to know how I felt about my own body, and whether her concerns were rubbing off on me.

And I answered no, not at all.

I told her I felt comfortable in my own body, and that nothing about the show had made me feel different.

My own mental list

Of course, that was a lie.

If I was honest with Daniela I would have told her that in the weeks before we even started filming Investigating Body Dysmorphia, I went on a diet.

I was anxious about having a camera on me for weeks, worried that the audience would scrutinise my body the way that I was scrutinising other people's.

I didn't feel beautiful or tiny. I felt exactly how most women with an Instagram feed and a mirror feel — sometimes deeply insecure, sometimes confident, and often comparing myself to others.

Filming a show about body image forced me to scrutinise how I view my own appearance. ( ABC Catalyst )

I have my own mental list of my "worst" body parts — the ones I would change first, given the chance.

I lied because it was too difficult to admit how frail my sense of self image and happiness with my body can be.

But what I came to understand through making Investigating Body Dysmorphia, is that BDD isn't really about bodies at all.

About the brain, not the body

It's not really about how my body looks or how Daniela's does.

BDD is an illness that lives in a person's brain and distorts what they perceive and how they process it.

Daniela and I visited Swinburne University together, where eye tracking technology could help identify how our brains process visual information. We were both asked to assess emotions on a series of faces, while an infrared camera tracked our eye movements.

My scans showed a "normal" pattern — my eyes would move to a person's eyes and mouth as I tried to figure out if they were sad, happy, angry or disgusted.

But Daniela's results were different. There was no pattern, just a random zig-zag line, showing her eyes darting around trying to avoid looking at any one thing for too long.

What became obvious is that Daniela was perceiving herself and other people in a completely different way to me.

That's what BDD does.

It affects the way people not only perceive themselves, but other people, and their environment too.

Scientists don't know exactly what causes body dysmorphic disorder.

According to Professor Susan Rossell from Swinburne University, it's likely a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

"We know with people with BDD, that they experience a lot of bullying, a lot of childhood trauma," she said.

"Some of them have these families that are very aesthetically sensitive to the environment and want a lot of beauty and appreciate beauty in their environment."

"So these two interacting factors seem to lead to them over scanning and having this pattern of eye movements."

Scientists don't have an exact figure people it affects either — I was told it was about 1 or 2 percent of the population — or 1 in 50 Australians.

That's about the same amount of people affected by bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. I've heard so much about those conditions, yet I knew barely anything about BDD.

What scientists do know is it's debilitating. BDD can stop people from leaving the house, forming relationships, finding work. Left untreated in can completely consume people's lives.

But you often wouldn't know a person has BDD just by looking at them.

They look normal. But that doesn't mean they're healthy.

The biggest thing I learnt

And as we continued filming, it became increasingly obvious that I had thoroughly bought the idea that looking healthy and being healthy are the same thing.

It's a concept I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't questioned or interrogated with any intelligence.

But it's the biggest thing I learnt working on this project — that mental and physical health can be completely unrelated and looking good doesn't mean feeling good.

That's why it was so exciting to meet the people working on new ways of treating the condition: using oxytocin, a hormone that we produce naturally.

Professor Rossell told me her latest research showed that people with BDD had low oxytocin.

"When we gave patients with BDD oxytocin, it actually returned their brain imaging to normal to a typical pattern."

"It dampened down the visual system, it dampened down these intrusive thoughts in this frontal activity and increased the limbic system activity."

"It was fabulous results. We're really looking forward to doing some more intensive studies with that data."

For Daniela, Professor Rossell's research has validated her struggle with BDD.

"I feel like having these results now is almost re-confirming the fact that I don't exactly see what other people see."

"I couldn't be any happier."

Daniela hopes that by sharing her experience on national TV she can provide hope to others.

"If I've got it, then some other people must have it. We can spread the word and everyone can get some help."



Ruby Jones presents Catalyst's Investigating Body Dysmorphia. Watch on iview.