I have a chest deformity and feel self conscious about the way it looks (male)

I just googled it and there seem to be varying degrees of how prominent it can be. Even still if you were wondering, as a girl it wouldn't affect my opinion on whether or not I dated you.

Luckily mine isn't anywhere as severe as some of the google images results

I have it too, pretty mild case, but I think it is much worse than it is, which sucks for self confidence.

Nobody has said anything to me about it during all my years of PE, so I assume it can't be as bad as I think it is. Now the hair is growing in, it is becoming less noticable, which is nice, but I would still be uncomfortable taking my shirt off in public. You can see it through the shirt, it looks like I not only have massive manboobs, but also four of them, because of the protruding ribs.

I don't want surgery, because I don't have the time to be disabled for six weeks. But I feel really ****ty about it. Not sure what to do really. From the itnernet pictures, I can see I am fairly mild, but that doesn't really help.

I love swimming, but don't get to go because of how I feel I look.

Apparently it is actually fairly common, up to 20% of men have it, but I have never seen anyone with it other than me.

It's relatively mild looking at those pictures. If surgery is an absolute no no have you thought about maybe asking for some sort of counselling or support like that to help you instead?

I have a chest deformity called pectus excavatum where there is an inwards 'hole' in the middle of my chest and a rib flare on my bottom ribs. I feel self conscious about this because -to me- you can see that I have a chest abnormality through clothing. My friends don't seem to notice it but I can't help being conscious of the fact my body is different to other peoples and there is nothing I can do about it - apart from major surgery (that requires being on morphine for a month post-surgery simply to prevent passing out from the pain) which I'm not at all inclined to even consider.

Lately I've been thinking that it probably doesn't looks as bad as I think it does and just want to see how people react when they see it or whether they'd notice it at all

Images below


It doesn't look anywhere near as bad as I thought it would in those photos, which is great

Same here, it sucks because you feel so self conscious about something other people probably wont notice, or even care about if they do notice.

I've always been told it was something that 1 in every 1000 men have and around 1 in every 3000 women

Its not something i feel depressed about, so I'd rather find a way to tackle it personally rather than going to a counsellor. I've read that working out can improve the appearance of it quite significantly by doing specific exercises and stretches, so I think that's the best option The only problem is i seem to build muscle very slowly so it'll take time but ill be feeling better about it all the time

I just rechecked my figures and it is 1-150 of men by some studies, and vastly different in others.

But my point stands, I have seen at least 1000 men topless and never seen it, which sucks. I feel like I am the only one with it. The protruding ribs are the worst bit, I could deal with the sunk chest, just not the ribs.

Yeah, realistically, nobody gives a **** about it, but I know that if I was so inclined to want a nice chest or beautiful abs, without that operation I couldn't do it. And I don't want an operation, even though it is relatively simple. I would just rather have a normal chest, you get me?