I’m going to highlight first that this isn’t an article that’s going to suggest beauty products. There are plenty of articles online to suggest hundreds of products to help deal with acne. My purpose for writing this is to remind myself and others who may may be dealing with bad acne, that there are a few things that could be helpful to keep in mind.
So a bit of context, I started having an acne problem at around 14 years of age. Not only do I deal with bad hormonal breakouts, my skin scars easy so I’m always left with dark spots. At the age of 15 my mum, who also dealt with the same problem, started me on needling. I would see a lady about once a month, and she would extract all the impurities in my face. After that, she would press a bundle of needles into my face to bruise my face to promote the regeneration of new skin. The process of extraction and needling meant your face would be bruised quite bad, it was basically one of those things that got worse before it got better. It was effective, but to say it was extremely painful was an understatement. I remember hearing a woman screaming in pain my first time round. I myself have shed tears, as I clenched my fists and tried to calm myself down. I would tell myself “you’ll be beautiful now. This is just the price you have to pay for it.” However, because my acne was hormonal, it would always come back. It got increasingly demotivating to sit through the pain knowing my face would temporarily be alright.
This whole experience has sucked to say the least. As I sat in that chair, I would think about all the people I know who have perfect skin without having to do anything. Here I am trying to monitor everything I’m doing, trying my best to not trigger further breakouts. I had friends who would complain about “breakouts” that involved one or two tiny pimples that would disappear within days. It became a habit to explain to everyone who saw me after my facials, why my face looked like that because they’d just stare, afraid to ask. You become increasingly self conscious and nothing about it is fun. I got to the point where I began to avoid socialising with people because I felt like they were going to be uncomfortable with the way my face looked.
However, there are a few things that I’ve discovered in my five years of dealing with bad acne. Hopefully it helps anyone who may be having similar insecure thoughts.
Firstly, most of the time it is not as bad as it seems. And even if it is, people don’t care as much as you think. I tend to think that when I’m talking to someone, the only thing their thinking is “what is wrong with her face.” I became my most confident when I had a coat of foundation over, but that would only further my breakouts and really, it was not a healthy long term solution. In this situation, talking to friends actually helped. More specifically, my friends who are brutally honest with me. They are the ones I count on to snap me out of my bad thoughts when I start to feel like my face was better off hidden. People have better things to do then to sit around and judge your complexion. And if they do, you’ll have to learn how to brush it off.
That leads me to my second part. It can be a mental workout that makes you stronger. Every time you allow yourself to feel inferior in public solely because of your face, you’re attacking yourself. Instead we can turn that around and try to flex that muscle of confidence. Let’s say someone does make a comment about your face, you’d have to take it with a pinch of salt. What’s most important is for you to not allow outside opinions as well as your inside voice, tear you down over something that is beyond your control. As hard as it is, you have to look at yourself in a mirror and find other parts of yourself you can compliment, instead of just focusing on this one bad thing. Think about it, what do you gain from insulting yourself? What do you get from allowing comments to get to you? This one imperfection should never define you. As cliche as it is, you really are all you have and it’s so important to try and love yourself and accept your insecurities. Our flaws help make us who we are at the end of the day, and everyone has got them.
My final point is to think about gratitude. This is something that tends to work for me the most. Remind yourself that of all the misfortunes you could have endured to your physical body, perhaps it is a blessing that it is just acne. When you look at it on that scale, it suddenly becomes miniscule in comparison to having major health problems. Even better, thanks to the million articles out there, there are so many ways for you to eventually fix the problem. It is not something you’ll have to deal with forever and at our age, is so much more common than we think. You are more than the spots on your face.