What Is Height Dysphoria? Causes And Effective Treatments

Height Dysphoria

There is a huge number of people contacting our team on a daily basis. Most of these people are complaining about how they feel short-heighted, and there are also people who think they are too tall and experience problems in their daily life due to height-related problems. These cases of dissatisfaction about one’s height can be summarized as one term: height dysphoria.

Height dysphoria is a type of body image anxiety disorder, where the affected person feels anxious, nervous, sad or dissatisfied due to the fact that they feel their height is short/tall. In many cases, these people compare their height to others’ height: to the height of a person (usually a celebrity) they admire, or to the height of the people in environments they spend time.

Also, there are people with height dysphoria who want to become taller in order to achieve what they cannot get with their current height: becoming a basketball player, getting qualified for a job with strict height requirements, pave their way to a successful career, or impress women and make it easier to find a partner. Nevertheless, there are still a number of people who just want to be taller or have a certain height, x cm or x inches, independently from what people think about their height or how they look compared to other people around them. They have their own perception of how their body should look and don’t feel comfortable with their current body height.

If you feel dissatisfied about your height, and this dissatisfaction is not something you feel every once in a while and can live with it, but that has become more of an obsession and makes you feel depressed, then you may have this condition named height dysphoria. In this case, the first thing you can do is to arrange a meeting with a psychologist, who will help to re-evaluate your perception of height and look at the ways of improving your life quality from a different point of view.

In case nothing helps, and there is nothing you can do to accept your height the way it is, there is one last resort that may help. This last resort is surgical height increase/decrease, which is also called limb lengthening or limb shortening. Of course it is a serious decision to make. Limb lengthening and limb shortening surgeries are not cheap for most budgets. It takes up to 1-1.5 year to achieve height gain plus fully recover from the procedure.

As in any other surgery, there are possible risks and complications, although limb lengthening surgeries have become a lot safer nowadays. For these reasons, you will need someone with whom you can discuss your decision of limb lengthening/limb shortening surgery and the reasons of your height dysphoria, to get a professional opinion and medical point of view. Please feel free to contact our patient consultants to get free consultation service.