I'm 27 and have bad acne now. I think i started getting acne when I was 15. At that time, it never bothered me much. I honestly think the reason for this was b/c back then i was a nerd in school. I wore glasses and had the nerdy look and always cared about grades in school. I remembered when i went to a dermatologist at the time, they just give me some cream to put it on my face. I remembered the only reason I went to the dermatologist was b/c those pimples were hurting my face and it was painful. I honestly didn't think about my looks much. I was the kid who did very good in school then come home and then watch tv and on computer etc. There were many times where i wouldn't even put the cream on my face b/c i was lazy. I remembered once the pimples wasn't painful anymore, but it was still there, I didn't care at all. I didn't care about my looks or image. I think my acne was bad at that time, I don't remember fully but it was definitely moderate. Its been a while since i was in high school but i honestly cannot remember me worrying about acne. I ate horribly as a kid ate junkfood everyday etc. I remembered i had pimples but i never had a care in the world. Only when it was painful then it bothered me but i never thought about it.
This all changed when i started college. At around that time, i had a big change. I no longer wore glasses anymore and i changed my whole look. I went from looking like a nerd kid with glasses to someone with a complete makeover. I remembered i would then start looking at my face so much b/c i couldn't believe how i looked at that time. I then wondered, why was i such a nerd and wear glasses and had the worst nerd hair style ever. Then when i started college, my face started to break out a lot. I remembered it was just 1 month into my first semester all the way back in 2004 when my face was breaking out everywhere. I had cystic area in many of my face. It was at that time i got very self conscious. Brought proactive at the time and i didn't work.
My acne then cleared a few years later and now it has came back again. I had actually visited this site a ton back from 2005 to 2009 when my acne was at its very worst before it got better. I had thought finally i didn't have to visit this site anymore. Then now my acne has erupted back again.
Anyways, i see so many ppl upset about acne and how it affects them emotionally. And many of these are o are like as young as 12. Of course there are many young people in high school and college who acne affects them so much.
I'm curious is there anyone here who had bad acne when they were younger and didn't care about it until later on? Such as you had bad acne at 16 but never cared about it until you started college? I was never self conscious of my face or even cared until i was 18.
The thing is if i had that same type of acne at 18 when i was 15, i honestly dont think i would have cared at all. I would say my acne when i was 15 was moderate but when i was 18, it was moderate and a bit close to severe so not severe.
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Yes! I didn't get bad acne until 18-19 and when I got it I for some reason didn't care much. I wasn't brought up to care about my looks and in high school I too was a nerd/geek that always needed a haircut and over all didnt take care of myself. I was completely uneducated about acne (due to a shitty upbringing my parents suck) so when I had it I just thought it would go away eventually. I would pop every pimple I had ( I thought it was what you had to do) and scrub my face with bath soap and a wash cloth because I thought dirt was the problem. Not until my late 20's after years of torment from my peers (that made me a total recluse and gave me severe social anxiety) did I finally decide to do a little research. By then it was too late because once it cleared I noticed all the disfiguring pock marks I have on my face now. I hate myself everyday now and am full of regret. FML
all it took was 2.5% BP and some patience for my cystic acne to go away. now I wonder if I was a little smarter or had people around me that cared enough to help me instead of put me down , that I would of cleared up a lot sooner and not have these scars on my face. maybe life would be so much better. or not.
Same here. I started getting acne at 14 or 15, but my mom was more concerned about it than me. She told me that at one point my forehead was so infected that it looked purple! I have no recollection of it, and thankfully now my forehead rarely breaks out. When I was in highschool and had acne, I never obsessed about it and never let it prevent me from socializing. I never even looked in the mirror closely. I just didn't care. When I turned 16 and my face started clearing up, I started covering up the redness with makeup. I would put on some makeup and then go about my day, no big deal. I wish I could do that everyday now but for some reason even one pimple can ruin my mood sometimes.
I only wish I could remember what type(s) of acne I had back then, to see if there was a pattern of some sort.
I think I was around 12 or 13 when I started getting acne - it was much milder then and didn't bother me really. It started to bother me a little as I got a bit older - some girl at school made a rude comment about my skin to me in front of a class of people and that made me more self-conscious of it (about 15 yrs old then I think) but it still never bothered me as much as it has in recent years. Only since finishing school and starting uni has acne really bothered me. I'm 20 now. I think it's just that you get to the point where you are SO sick and tired of dealing with it for years and years consistently and without break (for me anyway mostly) and also that society thinks / teaches you that acne is just a teenage issue, even though we know it's not, so that gets to you too...