This is my first time posting here so please bear with me if I'm not doing this properly. To give a little context about me and my skin, I am currently 18(M) turning 19 this year and I've been struggling with barrier damage for almost 7 months now. This all started when I decided to try skin care out around summer of last year and completely wrecked my barrier in doing so. I never had acne as a teenager and would barely even get pimples at all (at most I would have 1 or two pimples on my cheeks but never anywhere on my forehead or jawline). I honestly had great skin for 18 years but decided it wasnt good enough and this decision unfortunately ruined my acid mantle.

The main culprit was tea tree oil which I used at too high of a concentration and it burned my skin like crazy. After that incident I left skincare alone for a while until I left for University in September. Upon beginning post-secondary, I decided to use azelaic acid to get rid of the acne I had but this ended up just irritating my skin even more. I didn't even know what a skin barrier was at this time and I thought I just had acne so in my mind skincare would be the fix to my issues. From September-December 2025, I tried various skincare products in an attempt to salvage my situation but to no avail. It kept getting worse and worse so I threw away everything in favour of a simple cleanser and moisturizer. When I went back home during winter break I focused on barrier repair for those two weeks and I only used aquaphor and aloe vera. This was way more calming than my previous routine, but I would get so many keratin plugs and breakouts so I knew this wasn't a long term solution.

From the beginning of January to the first Week of March, the only product I would use would be a gentle moisturizer after the shower and to be honest, my skin looked way calmer however I knew this wouldn't be a permanent solution either because I would still break out like crazy either way and my PIE and stubborn spots refused to go away. Eventually I got to a point where I reflected on my entire journey since September and realized if I truly wanted to heal my skin, I needed to let it breath by dropping all skincare products and going back to only washing my face with water like the past 18 years of my life. So from the 4th of March to today, I've been only washing my face in the shower and using no products at all on my face. For the first 3-4 weeks, this actually seemed to work in my favour as my old PIE was starting to fade rapidly. Some things I noticed was that I still occasionally get a few painful bumps here and there and my skin was very dry. But besides that I genuinely thought I was moving in the right direction and headed to clearer skin in time for the summer.

It wasn't until about sometime last week where I got a crazy round of breakouts on my cheeks and jawline areas (previously affected areas only). These breakouts aren't painful at all but they are extremely red and honestly it looks like I lost a lot of progress from past weeks. I would say my texture has improved a bit overall but I still have 3 very red dry patches near my nose where my skin is the driest. My forehead no longer breaks out in painful pimples anymore but I still get small bumps here and there (overall my forehead is a lot better than before). I made this forum to ask if anyone else with a similar history of barrier damage from harsh ingredients has gone caveman and experienced a sudden flare-up like this around the 4 to 5 week mark. Do you think my theory makes sense that this is just congestion finally clearing after one full skin cycle or should I be rethinking my approach? In my mind, caveman has to work because everything else failed me so if this genuinely isn't right for me then Im really bummed out.