Posted : 11/26/2014 4:33 am
Hello everyone,
I just want to share with you all my seemingly life-long battle with mild-moderate acne & obssesive skin-picking..How I finally 'beat' it, and why even after, things weren't as grand as I expected it to be. *I'll try and keep this short.
It all started when I was 15 years old. I started getting a few pimples here and there. Nothing major. At the time, it wasn't actually the pimples themselves that were bothering me. I can deal with a red/pink mark on my face for a few days. What got me was having hyperpigmentation, even after a pimple was gone, it would leave a mark on my face that would like 4 to 5 times the amount of time the original pimple was actually there.
Believe it or not, but as a teenage boy at the time, looks matter very much to me, and I wasn't about to have my face turned into a battlefield. I started using products. I could literally go in any convenience store and go to the aisle with all the facial cleansing/acne products and chances are, I've used it. And in hindsight, this is what made everything worse for me. I never had to go to the accutane route because my acne was never really severe.
Fast forward 9 years;
Externally, things only got worse, and to top it of, somewhere along the way I developed a skin picking disorder. So every little pimple I got I picked. The pimples persisted. In times it wouldn't be much at all, other times, I'd get a mild breakout. Regardless, once the pimples were gone, I'd be left a mark to remind me for weeks that it was there..and since I regularly got pimples, my face was full of these reminders.
Internally, it was horrible. My confidence was crashing hard. Even past high school and into college, I started to become more hollow as a person. My entire life started to revolve around my acne and I would constantly let it affect me and what I would do. I would bail out on trips with friends because I happen to get a crappy pimple prior. I'd constantly skip out on the gym because I'd pick my face right before and not want to go once my face is red all over. At work, I would avoid eye-to-eye contact with my coworkers and always try to hide areas of my face that were worse and it wrecked my focus directly affecting my output at work. Just things like that..
Finally I came across a website that explained the Acid Mantle of our skin and how products are destroying our skin's natural defense against bacteria. This led me to the caveman regimen, but early on, it only dried out my face and I couldn't go to work like that, so I instead of no products/no washing. I opted to only wash my face with water every morning, every other day.
It took about 6 solid months, but it worked. It wasn't a smooth road. Especially the first few weeks, and in times when my face got too dry during winter, I 'cheated' and used some petroleum jelly on my face.
Now with my acid mantle completely back to normal, I rarely get pimples anymore. Which ultimately means, no more hyperpigmentation marks on my face.
"Hooray!! Finally I can start living my life again!!"
So I was happy right? Of course I was, but soon I realized something...my life revolved around my acne so much that I was blinded to many other aspects of my life.
Without going into too much detail, my acne disappearing wasn't a magical switch that suddenly made everything in my life 1000% better. With acne gone, I was able to finally focus and realize things that also mattered. Here I am now, acne-free, but with a somewhat worse situation than I have ever been in my life. Right now, getting acne back would be the least of my problems.
So there you have it. Ive been through and survived this vicious cycle for the better part of 10 years. I beat acne, but I ignored so many other aspects of my life that it came back to bite me after all was said and done. I want you all to realize now that yes, having acne is terrible, but it is definitely not the end of the world.
Thank you for reading and I hope you guys got something out of this.
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