Coming off the pill does this. It completely messes with your hormones. If I had known how bad it was for your body I would never have taken it. I would google how to balance your hormones after the pill. There are tons of articles with stuff that will help. You can take supplements and avoid endocrine disruptors and estrogen mimicking foods like soy. Make sure you are getting the right kinds of fats. Maybe add coconut oil to your diet. I would take probiotics, too. I noticed when it's hormonal that acne cleansers and topical stuff do make it so much worse so I use gentle natural stuff. And to make it all worse, stressing out about it messes with your adrenal glands and does make it worse. If you can, go to a doctor. Get your hormones tested. Test your thyroid function. Test for candida to make sure your gut is healthy. All that kind of stuff.

I am 20 years old. I have never had a problem with my skin until about four months ago. I was on birth control since I was 16 and went off of it some time in late spring/early summer of 2014. While I was on the pill and up until about September of last year, my skin was very clear with an occasional blemish. Then my skin started getting really bad. I had an extremely stressful semester of college and maybe this had something to do with it, not sure if it's stress or hormones or a combination of both, but either way having my skin as bad as it is is giving me even more stress.

My acne is mainly localized to both sides of my face now (before it was just the right), and it is all cystic and very painful. I attached a picture which hopefully worked. I went to the dermatologist about a month ago and have been taking doxycycline and washing my face with the benzoyl peroxide and applying the clindamycin lotion afterwards as was prescribed to me. I started off doing this once a day and then moved to twice a day. I have cut out dairy and am trying to eat better overall and started taking a lot of vitamins. Honestly my skin after I went to the dermatologist has gotten worse I believe. I am so self-conscious and embarrassed of my skin, any advice would be really appreciated.

I agree with psychokitty. I didn't realize how badly going off the pill would mess me up skin-wise. My acne looked very similarly to yours and neither going back on the pill or taking spironolactone really calmed things down. I eventually went on isotretinoin (accutane), and have been clear since (clearer even then I was before going off the pill, actually).

Psychokitty is right, going off the pill can cause a huge imbalance in your hormones which can take some time to balance out. I know that is hard not to worry about your skin but stress can exacerbate the situation. The topicals you are using will help somewhat but you need to address internal issues as well to balance out your hormones.

If you google 'going off birth control' you will see that the number one issue is getting acne afterwards. There are several sites and blogs devoted to just this subject ('how to go off birth control pills without getting acne') with many suggestions of what to try/do eg. supplements and herbs such as vitex (chasteberry), DIM, inositol, saw palmetto etc. Some of these have worked for people so might be worth researching! Unfortunately dermatologists generally don't seem to concerned with internal/hormonal issues. A homeopath may help you or like most of us it may just mean doing your own research and trying different things to see what works.

I am in no way an expert, so this is just my opinion.

Good luck!