Hi everyone,

I started having a skincare routine since I was about 12/13 about 6ish years now. I have always had fairly decent skin if I keep up on it but this past year its been BAD. I felt into a depressive state and rarely took good care of my skin which I don't think helped. But when I started taking care of it again my forehead was extremely textured, red, pimply as well as the sides of my temple down to my cheekbones as well as red texture under my eyes.

my mom bought me proactiv cleanser/exfoliator a toner and their healing cream or whatever, I started using it sept 1 2023 and after about 2-3 weeks my skin cleared up great, aside from a few hormonal pimples it looked the best it had in a long time. Smooth, no weird texture redness and bumps.

But, I ran out, and I would much rather use a more gentle and inexpensive cleanser that would fit my routine as well. Proactiv also did not do a good job with removing my makeup, it severely dried out my skin and my skin felt really tight? My moms esthetician friend said proactiv is super terrible (which I kinda guessed) because it strips your skin.

Okay so now I am using a cerave acne cleanser, the rest of the proctiv toner, and a nightly cream exfoliator by cerave and in the morning and Tulla cleanser which I just got and the basic cerave moisturizer and the cerave acne gel. My redness returned back to my forehead and my skin seems to be softer, but slightly on the oily side. Dry skin seems to be a hereditary thing from my moms side and Proactiv severely dried me out but I felt like it actually did something for my skin.

SOOO what do I do!!!!! Will my skin breakout until it gets used to the cereva?? Should I buy some type of textured exfoliant to mimic proctiv without being as harmful??

How do I keep the red pimples/ texture away while still keeping my skin moisturized and healthy??