system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is actually taking place in the brain/mind of someone suffering from body dysmorphia? How is it they can "see" others as the are but not themselves ?

That's basically it, just wondering how the mind is able to distort an image so drastically. It's as though you are showing them a circle and they swear it is a triangle. How does that happen ?
gpt
The distortion isn’t the mind interpreting different images objectively differently. There is cognitive distortion due to emotional hyper vigilance. 

High anxiety with body image leads to hyperfocus on parts of owns own body in a way that a person is scanning  parts of their image that feel threatening. Another person’s body isn’t threatening, so that highly critical hyperfocus distortion isn’t going to be there for others.