I don’t know when it started. Gradually, I suppose: I wouldn’t feel the need to wear foundation all the time. Because, you know, I’ve been always that person who’d stay over at a friend’s and get up early to apply foundation before breakfast, and who would hate to put pictures of her online that showed her skin au naturelle. But then, that changed and I stopped asking myself does my skin look bad? How can I get flawless skin? The secret how to get better skin might not even lie in a skincare product or even in the perfect routine.
Was my skin objectively bad? No, I guess not. But from my teens onward, I’ve never been a person with good skin. And that shaped me. Especially in later years, when I started to be interested in makeup and skincare and then worked in the beauty business. I started to research. I spend more money than I could afford on skincare. Good makeup meant covering up for the longest time, and also hiding perceived flaws. At times, it drove me to desperation: I did all this, and why did it not work as it did on other people?!
Why doesn’t my skincare routine work?
And that is because skincare, and figuring out the best skincare routine for your own skin, is hellishly difficult: you’re an individual with your own set of hormones, dietary requirements, sleep cycle and skintype. You’re your own test subject and control group at the same time, and there’re about one thousand different parameters to tweak. No wonder the things that easily work for others don’t work for you!
A few years ago, I finally started to understand. I’ve written about getting better skin before, and these posts still hold up. In my experience, the best you can do (if you don’t have a medical condition like rosacea and serious cases of acne that should be treated by a dermatologist) is to do – less.
Outbreaks, uneven skintone, hyperpigmentation: my issues
My skin. Maybe I should tell you about my skin first? I’d characterize it as combination skin, with an oilier t-zone, although that’s getting better as I get older. I used to break out a lot, especially before my period. From that, I’ve got some scarring, a general uneven skintone and some hyperpigmentation.
While we’re there, here’s when I finally realized what I was doing wrong.
The culprits: Stress and using too many products
When I moved to China, it wasn’t really a surprise that I was incredibly stressed. Moving to another country is always stressful, moving to another continent where you neither can read nor understand the language takes it to another level entirely. I was lonely, totally out of my depth and struggling, while all the time wanting to make a good impression on the various new people I met.
I had the worst breakouts in my life, and, panicky, I started to throw everything I had in my arsenal at my skin. Vitamin C, Retinol, AHA, BHA, BPO – I mean it when I said EVERYTHING. But my skin got worse, I got even more stressed because I was so self-conscious, then my skin got worse – and finally I read a blogpost somewhere on compromised skin barriers, and I saw the light.
Maybe the way to go forward would be – using less?
My year of using less
So, this is what I did. Because I used so many products, I decided to stop using actives at all, and then reintroduce them slowly, one by one to see if they actually did make my skin better, or worse. I started with retinol (great!), dabbled with various acids (AHA/BHA make my skin worse and not better, while Azelaic Acid is a win), and finally landed on Vitamin C, which also works for me.
At the beginning of that journey, and still when I feel it’s getting a bit much, I always STOP using products instead of using more, and it has been working rather well for me. Strengthening my skin barrier and having a very gentle but thorough cleanse proved to be the secret (in a way).
Products to fight outbreaks
Here’s what I do today if I get outbreaks (and usually, I get these deep reaching types of cystic acne that really hurt and take ages to heal): A combo of spot treating with BPO and pimple patches have proved to be a winning combo. If you want to know more about it, here’s the long version post on that, and Michelle’s pimple SOS vid I found helpful.
Stress
I generally get hormonal outbreaks, but recently, I have gotten stress-related ones – just like in China. That should really not surprising – after one year and a half of the pandemic, elections and some personal reasons make a really volatile and stress-inducing mix.
(If you want to know if outbreaks are stress-induced or not: dermatologists think that while hormonal outbreaks are singular, stress-induced ones come in clusters.) And sure, if you search the internet for combatting stress acne, tips tend to run along the lines of using BHAs, a light moisturizer, not to pick your skin and consider your diet. (Michelle from Labmuffin on how stress fucks up your skin.)
While I absolutely think that those reflect state-of-the-art acne treatments right now, I do think that they fall short on one thing: they’ll very likely make you more stressed, because you’re having to choose products (which BHA? Which moisturizer?) that might not work immediately or not at all. Skin is, after all, a very individual thing.
The joy of not giving a damn
Everyone who has skin that’s not perfect will realise after a while that the journey is not a short haul, but rather a long-haul flight. And I realise that telling someone with an acute fear of flying to “just relax!1111” does make as much sense as telling a tadpole not to turn into a frog. So, telling you not to stress about the state of your skin will very likely be as useful as that.
But consider the following: the internet and also (mainly) Instagram purports that view of an ideal face (especially if you’re interested in beauty and makeup) that’s spotless, poreless and wrinkle-less (and white). Now look around you – how many people do you know look like that?
I feel very strongly that I should show my less than perfect skin on the internet to represent that. (That’s also why that nowadays, you see much more of my face on the blog and insta for exactly that reason.)
And finally, how I look hasn’t any connection to my self-worth. People having a problem with how I look? It’s not MY problem. It’s theirs. This is something I feel very strongly as I’m getting older: I actually don’t care very much what other people think. It’s incredibly freeing. I recommend it.
And you know what? I actually don’t think that my skin changed very much at all. I’m just better at living in it.
Please note that this post is not sponsored in any way. We buy products ourselves, with our own money, and don’t accept exchanging goods or money for reviews. We are completely independent, and our reviews reflect that.
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