Life with chronic acne can feel like it’s filled with many land mines, so to speak. If you take a so-called wrong turn with diet, make the wrong decision with your bedtime, use the wrong product, or touch your skin the wrong way, then the fear arises that there will be an explosion down the road involving some type of uncanny breakout. Instead of encouraging a healthy and balanced lifestyle, for many this level of fear can actually lead to: the “You’re doing everything wrong” lifestyle.
While it may seem like the best approach on the surface, the “You’re doing everything wrong” lifestyle doesn’t always improve acne symptoms or overall health. It can become very stressful to doubt every action and decision, and the anxiety that comes up can spread to other areas of life beyond just acne care and treatment. All of a sudden, we end up watching ourselves too closely for what we may be doing wrong. And everything can start to seem wrong.
Limiting one’s life for acne, sometimes severely, has unfortunately become part of the overall culture of acne treatment. We are encouraged to think this way, to constantly worry about how something we did one or two days ago probably caused the latest breakout. Or how our routines in diet and skincare need a complete overhaul to match what others are saying or doing. It’s no wonder that people feel frustrated when such earnest effort is met with worsening acne and a fear of living life freely.
At the end of the day, it may not even be clear what the exact causes of acne are, sometimes even after careful experimentation with possible triggers. Or specific triggers may show up, like gluten and dairy, but reducing or eliminating these foods leads to only slight changes in improving acne. You may end up dedicating much of your life to making changes for acne, and your acne may end up as stubborn as ever.
The point here isn’t to give up hope that your acne can clear up and that some of the changes you’re making can help with that. The point is to take yourself out from under the microscope and shift your perspective about acne care so that it can be more supportive of health and less punishing. Acne care should also equate to taking care of yourself as a person.
It makes sense that if we’re mentally punishing ourselves for doing everything wrong and watching every little thing we do like a hawk, then the body will endure more of a stress response rather than a healing response. No one likes feeling like they’re in trouble all the time. While you’re already dealing with the daily struggles of acne, it’d be nice to have the space and freedom to do things your way. Don’t make yourself feel always in trouble, because that’s not helping your skin. You’re the only one who can help ease the pressure so that while you take care of your skin, acne isn’t taking over your life in the process.
You’re not going to get a huge backlash from loosening the reins on your approach, and in fact you may be refreshingly surprised to notice that your efforts start working better for you. Instead of thinking about the situation as “all the rules that need to be followed for acne,” try and think about your overall health and the larger picture too. In other words, step back. Step back from excessive research about acne, from headache-inducing product searches, from zoom-ins toward the mirror. While these may seem like justified tendencies, these habits can also start to feel panicky.
As best you can, try not to drive your health and your skin’s health using fear and superstition. Acne is hard enough. If your efforts to clear it are starting to feel more like punishment than anything else, it might be time to try a new, more understanding (toward yourself) approach. Brainstorm on the following points:
- How much of your day is spent thinking about acne, and is there any way to reduce that?
- What do you feel most “in trouble” about regarding your habits, and is the strictness helping to calm your skin?
- Which foods do you wish you could test out eating again that, while you’ve eliminated, have not led to improvements in acne?
- Could any acne triggers be exerting an indirect superstitious effect rather than a direct effect on your skin?
- Does the feeling of doing everything wrong, especially in regards to skin, get worse during stress?
- In what ways can you help yourself feel less “in trouble” about your actions and habits while still supporting your overall health and skin?
- How do you think making changes for acne might be contributing to a perfectionist mindset that could be hurting just as much (if not more) than helping?