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HI all, this is my first post. I have been lurking on here for a while now trying to pluck up the courage to post and after dropping to the lowest I have ever felt I decided now is the time.
I have never had any form of severe acne, more like a few zits here and there and plenty of blackheads. I used to always squeeze them. Every week I would look in the mirror close up and attack my face. 15 years on and I don't know exactly how/when I realised but my face is plastered in scars. I don't just mean some on my cheeks I mean literally my whole face. Looking head on I can see a few but if I angle the mirror correctly I can see what looks like thousands, My self esteem has gone from ok to suddenly plummeting. I can't figure out why I hadn't noticed the extent of the damage I had caused sooner.
I went to a place called the skin clinic about 2 months ago and have been advised to start off with microdermabrasion not for the scarring but for the 101 blackheads that seem to be spreading more and more each day. I have also been advised to go with the dermapen treatment once the blackheads are under control and wondered if anyone has any good results with this treatment?
My scars are not deep if I tilt my head into the right light they kind of look like I have nicked my skin everywhere with a razor if that makes sense? my skin texture looks and feels terrible almost like im wrinkly in certain places.
Sorry for the long post im suffering terribly with depression and anxiety over it at the moment that I just need somewhere where I can let it all out.
I am in the same boat in a lot of ways. I have terrible texture from years of being not-so-nice to my skin. For the last 20 years I've had the same few pretty major icepick scars from picking at acne (on my nose of all places) so I've always been insecure about those but in 2014 I started having a major hormonal imbalance and my skin got so bad and it seemed like everything was scarring and leaving scarred pores all over my face. Also looking wrinkly looking in places. I had just a total meltdown about it. Complete dysmorphia. It was the worst anxiety I'd ever had and then times 100. Paranoia around other people that made being around other people so unbearable. All of it felt like a living hell. Since then, my skin texture looks a bit worse than it did 2 years ago, I'm still unhappy with it but I don't freak out about it. When I come out of a public bathroom and look in the mirror I don't run back into the stall crying and spend a half an hour looking in my compact trying to cover up all the terrible texture while everyone wonders "Where did she go??". Not totally sure what's changed but I have some acceptance of looking in the mirror and my flaws not causing the end of the world in my head. Eventually it sank in, nobody cares about my face like I do. People aren't laying in bed at night thinking "OMG HER FACE". Yeah, superficial people do exist but there's a whole lot less of them than you actually think. Nobody is perfect and even the ones that do look perfect are dealing with some kind of shit on some level or another.
Honestly, I've never found anything to fix it or really help it. I tried dermarolling and found it to be such a pain and made things worse with it. I used a dermaroller not the pen and focused on my nose, which the skin on the nose is different and that's not really recommended. But I think the pen if for much smaller jobs. From what you are describing it sounds like you would want a dermaroller. I don't think I will try anything else, at least for now. I've done research on all the lasers and peels out there and they are not fool proof and acne.org is filled with so many stories of procedures gone wrong or treatments making things worse. Personally, I want to wait for something better which something has to be available eventually, some cutting edge new technology. For a while I had my hopes up about Recell but now am not sure. I'm not trying to crush hope for you but I think everyone should at least be aware and cautious. Don't do anything until you've invested hours and hours of research and are really comfortable it's right for you. I really think it's important focus on fixing the emotional scars and depression/anxiety. Easier said than done, I know.
First of all, call 988 if you need to. They give instant crisis support.
Next, when it comes to skin picking, there are meds and psychotherapy that might help. https://www.acne.org/skin-picking
And finally, my gut tells me that disorders like skin picking and other things like it might be the cause of us just being human and not having what humans need around us. This guy sums it up best so far as I have found. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you surrounded someone who picked with lots of people, connection, activity, etc. they might find themselves feeling less of an urge to pick.