As to your header question; 'do we all have bdd?', the answer is NO
There are some people who are actually traumatized by certain aspects of their appearance. Could be a number of things. The trauma comes in when other people MAKE FUN of their appearance and or ostracize them and if not for people doing that (usually kids/teens at school or total strangers pointing at them and laughing). If not for others making them miserable because of their appearance, they probably would not have noticed or had issues with it. You've heard the phrase; 'A face only a mother can love'. It's like that for them. When they are HOME, they are ACCEPTED. But when they are not home in their loving environment, other people make them hyper conscious of their appearance and might call them 'ugly'. So, when they get those things fixed, it gives them RELIEF from others traumatizing them for it.
Now that type of psyche trauma depends on the social group or circle and usually happens to kids, teens but has impact on later development and sense of self if they don't fix what they are given grief for having. If the social circle is one where parents teach kids to be accepting of others and/or NOT MAKE FUN of the appearance of others or just one where brains, personality and education are more important than LOOKS such that their 'looks are over looked'. So people from those kind of social environments won't be traumatized by their appearance because the trauma comes in when OTHERS REJECT them on that alone and that is fortunately absent from their social environment. Hence, they become more accepting, themselves, for features/appearance/looks that they could be tormented for having in other social environments. The more 'disadvantaged' the social group, the less likely they are to be brought up with 'niceties' or politeness and the meaner they can be.
We have a member of this board, 'Earl' who was traumatized by kids always making fun of his face. When he got a boat load of surgery to address everyone of his many aesthetic problems, he was RELIEVED to look NORMAL.
BDD is basically when a person traumatizes THEMSELVES for some MINOR imperfection that no one else notices or calls negative attention to. They MAGNIFY some aspect of their appearance way beyond objective assessment of it being normal and spend most of their time doing that. People who look FINE to OTHERS (in real life) as they are. They get surgery and the surgery never 'fixes' the flaw. It can't because the flaw is IN THEIR HEAD.
Then there is another type of BDD that can actually be INFLICTED in some cyberspace places such as message boards that GLORIFY models. In that situation perfectly normal looking people who would not be downgraded in real life for their looks are told just how low ranking they are on the scale of looks because the standard is based on MODELS. So, they get traumatized by others on those type of websites for not looking like a model and hence start to traumatize themselves for that. It's a form of BDD because it often results in a LOT of surgeries to 'look like a model' where that is hardly ever achieved and they inflict misery on themselves due to that.
THe other psyche problem is LOCUS OF IDENTITY. It's when people IDENTIFY with aspects of their appearance that would not be considered attractive but for which people in their social group were accepting of and due to not being made fun of or traumatized for having them, they learn to have more self acceptance and hence identify with them as being part of their 'uniqueness. The hall mark of LOI is when someone is made more objectively attractive or has some 'unattractive' feature corrected and BEMOANS the LOSS of that feature. There was a member on here who was made very handsome by his maxfax surgery, given a perfect smile and other corrections that elicited a 'WOW!'. Yet, he spent most of his time on board whining and crying that it didn't matter that this made him so much better looking because the new smile was not 'his' smile and the handsome face was not 'his face'. So, LOI is when there is improvement in the eyes of others (usually when the others are strangers looking at before vs after) but the person has become 'attached' to features others (usually others who are not family members) either might not find attractive or not want on their own faces.
So, of those 2, you might have LOI. But that's a GOOD thing at this stage because you still have some features that are unique to you such as the nose and some vestiges of the original chin that you, on some level might have identified with as 'being you'. Perhaps they would be missed by you or those close to you if you had surgery to change them. In that way, you can SAVE a LOT of $$ and spare yourself from missing them if you DON'T have surgery to change them.
