Ep 10 - Living With Bad Acne

"Beauty is only skin deep"... said no one who ever had severe acne.

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Transcript

(00:00): Intro music

Kayla (00:07):

Hello and welcome to another episode of Routine Drama, a podcast that I created to help myself and you continue improving ourselves, working on personal development, in spite of the many dramas of everyday life.

(00:26):

I don't know if you've seen that meme that keeps popping up in my Instagram feed, but it's like the little hamster in the car and it says, "The horrors persist but so do I." I think that's kind of a good representation of how I feel about life in general most of the time. It can just be kind of a shit show, but that is no reason to just give up on improving ourselves and making our lives the best they can be.

(00:52):

So, with that in mind, today the routinely dramatic topic that I want to be talking about is having acne. And, specifically, living with chronic acne.

(01:06):

I know if you're someone who has never experienced very bad acne or prolonged chronic acne, having a couple pimples can seem kind of not a big deal. It might seem like kind of a trivial or even vain thing for someone to be concerned about.

(01:26):

But as someone who had severe acne for many years, I can say that having chronic acne, it can really get to you. And so I just wanted to make an episode about that today and give some support to people who are maybe struggling with their skin. I think it's a very unique challenge, and again, people who haven't felt what that feels like don't really understand.

(01:58):

I started getting pretty bad acne when I was about 13, like many of us. You start going through puberty, your hormones change, you get pimples. But, unlike my friends, I kind of got acne over my whole face. And they would be pretty big pimples, whereas my friends seem to get just smaller zits here and there.

(02:19):

I remember getting my first pimple when I was five or six years old, and I know I was that young because I remember getting it in the very first house that my family and I lived in, and we moved when I was six.

(02:33):

So I was five or six at the time, and I remember I got just a little pimple on my chin, but I didn't know what it was. I'd never had one before, it hurt, and it just showed up out of nowhere. And I went to my mom and she was like, "Oh, I think you have a pimple. That's weird. You wouldn't usually be getting those at this age." But she popped it and it hurt, but then it felt okay and after a little while it went away.

(02:57):

But now looking back, I think that's kind of interesting. I think it's a little bit of foreshadowing as to just how much acne I was going to have to deal with in my life and just the weird kind of age ranges that I would have to experience it versus other people that I knew, who only really had to deal with acne when they were in their teenage years.

(03:19):

As I continued to get older, they just didn't go away. In fact, they got much, much worse. So when I was getting into college, I was still having acne and I was like, "All right, I'm getting into my early 20s. This should be going away soon." And I kept just kind of trying to wait out whatever hormone situation was happening. And I got to be like 23, 25, 28... and I still had acne and I had it worse than I've ever had it in my entire life.

(03:54):

For anyone who's watching on YouTube, I'm going to be inserting photos of what my skin looked like at 27, 28 here. If you are listening to this on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other audio streaming service, you can go to YouTube and see how terrible my skin looked at my channel, which is @routinedrama.

(04:17):

I feel like the photos don't even do it justice because it was so painful and so bad. It hurt to put my face on a pillow when I would go to sleep. I just had these cystic acne pustules—sorry if that's a gross word—just all under my skin.

(04:38):

They would be huge, deep, under-the-skin, wide pimples, almost like cysts, hence "cystic acne". But they wouldn't really get a head on them, and I would get just other small ones all over the place. They would be all along my jawline, I would get them on my back, I would get them on my neck, I would get them in my nose. Just so not fun.

(05:06):

And just nothing seemed to work. I tried probably every over-the-counter product that there is. I even went on Proactive. I tried Curology. I tried over-the-counter, little more hippie dippy treatments.

(05:22):

I tried using some of the harsher over-the-counter products, things that had a higher concentration of salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide, stuff like that. And I think I went a bit overboard on those actually in my younger years because I just wanted this acne to be gone so bad and I would just scrub and scrub my skin with these products and probably did more damage to my skin than anything.

(05:48):

But still, I had the acne. I just kept trying to find ways to deal with this and also just hoping that eventually it would resolve itself. But even when I finally got to the point where I was like, "I think I need a dermatologist," which no one else in my family had a need for. My sisters all had great skin, my mom had good skin, and it took kind of a while for us, I guess to come to the conclusion that I needed a professional to look at why my skin was so bad.

(06:21):

But even when I went to the dermatologist, all they would ever really do was prescribe me with antibiotics and then some kind of topical treatment like Trentinoin or something like that.

(06:31):

And that would work for a little bit. It would clear it up. But of course, I'm looking up these products online and trying to be informed about the medicines I'm taking, and of course, learned that you are not supposed to be on antibiotics for an extended period of time.

(06:50):

So inevitably when I would get off of the antibiotics, the acne would come back. So that didn't work.

(06:58):

I tried changing my diet. I would stop eating cheese. I stopped drinking coffee, which I loved. I would stop eating sugar. I went raw vegan for a month and a half when I was in my later twenties; that didn't do anything. I would stop drinking alcohol. I tried an alkaline diet; that didn't help. I tried everything. I tried being on hormonal birth control to help control the hormones. I tried getting off of all birth control to just let my body reset... nothing. It was always awful.

(07:37):

And I say all this not to stress out people who have some acne and are worried it's not going to get better. I don't want to make you think that your experience is going to be as complicated as mine. I really hope it isn't. But I think it's important for people who don't have chronic acne and who see people with acne and think that we are somehow not doing enough, that that is usually not the case.

(08:04):

Anyone with severe acne does not want to look like that. Even if we are able to put on a front and act very confident and be comfortable in our skin or whatever, we don't want to look like that. We don't want to have sores all over our faces. It's extremely uncomfortable. It doesn't do anything great for your mental health. It makes you feel very self-conscious about where people are looking when they're speaking to you. If we could fix it, we would.

(08:34):

Many of us have tried everything. So when people tell other people who have acne like, "Oh, beauty's only skin deep, at least it's just your skin. It's not a big deal. At least you're still are healthy otherwise," yes, those things are true. But all you're really doing in saying that is then making us feel guilty that we care, which of course we do.

(09:00):

Would you care if you couldn't see a clear spot of skin on your face because you had so many pimples? I think you would. It is one thing to be like, "Oh, beauty's only skin deep," but it is another thing to look at your skin and not even recognize yourself because you have so many pimples and sores all over your face. It's really not fun.

(09:23):

So I also just want to let anyone who does have severe acne know that, if you do feel like you want to make a change and you don't feel confident and you don't like your skin, that also doesn't mean that you're somehow failing this idea that we need to be super confident all the time and just love the skin you're in and accept it and whatever. Yes, it's great to have that mentality and if you can do that, do that. Fabulous. But for a lot of people, it's not that simple.

(09:58):

So after trying all of these different over-the-counter products, nothing working, I eventually did go to my dermatologist and see if I was a candidate for a more intense prescription treatment. And turned out I was, and it was a really intense process, but it did ultimately clear up my acne.

(10:20):

And I could probably do a whole other video on that. I don't know how much I want to get into that right now, so I'll just say it's a pretty popular, well-known yet highly controversial acne medication. It rhymes with schmasmackutane. But yeah, I went on that, had a good experience and my skin just does not produce much oil anymore.

(10:48):

I believe it's sebum? Is the specific kind of oil that they attribute to causing pimples? So yeah, I just don't really get that anymore. And now that I am a couple years off of it, my skin has kind of balanced out a little bit more. I do get some light oiliness depending on what other kinds of products I'm using, but I don't get acne. I don't get pimples anymore.

(11:13):

Occasionally if I change skincare products—I do still have sensitive skin—I may get like a little pimple here or there. But it's only one or two and it's gone within a day or two, which is just the complete opposite of what I experienced when I was younger and up until my late 20s.

(11:32):

Having clear skin now and then looking back at the amount of acne I was dealing with a couple years ago... Not having acne does make a huge difference in your life.

(11:49):

I am so much more open to going out of the house without makeup now. I don't feel super self-conscious. I am not walking around trying to not be noticed. I feel like a real person and I feel like when people look at me, they can focus on what I'm saying and they can just pay attention to whatever conversation we're having because they're not looking at all these massive bumps on my skin.

(12:17):

I have a lot of empathy for anyone dealing with acne or any kind of really externally noticeable skin condition because, even though someone who doesn't deal with that might trivialize it a little bit or make it out to be not a big deal, it really feels like a big deal to us, and it really impacts how you experience the world around you. And it is just not fun.

(12:41):

So if you're going through that, I really do feel for you. I don't know anything about other skin conditions, but for acne, I know that there are generally some ways to treat it. It's just a matter of finding what works for you.

(12:56):

And I think the hardest part of that is just being patient because we don't want to go another day having these painful pimples on our face and we don't want to have to keep spending all this time trying to manage our skin or try to cover up our acne. So it can be a frustrating thing to have to live with, but it is treatable. It can get better, and I think just try to do what you can to keep dealing with it.

(13:30):

Keep working on your self-esteem and trying to not worry about what people think, but at the same time understand that it's completely normal to want to improve your skin so that you don't have to deal with all that anymore.

(13:46):

The amount of time that I save not having acne is astounding to me. Not only do I not have to do this crazy skincare routine of washing my face and applying all these topical treatments and taking whatever oral medication I'm taking to treat it—and then when I would be getting ready for work in the mornings, I would go through this whole process of, "Okay, I've got to cleanse my skin. I have to moisturize it. I have to put on whatever acne treatment medication I'm using. Then I'm going to go in and try to color-correct all of the red spots on my face. Then I'm going to try to take a full coverage foundation or concealer and I'm going to try to cover all those spots up." And then I'm just wearing this super heavy face of makeup because at the very least, that can cover up some of the redness.

(14:38):

But it would take hours and it never really looks like your skin if you are wearing very heavy makeup. So it was always just a lot of work. It's a lot money to spend that much time and spend the money on those products.

(14:57):

And to go from dealing with that every day to now just being able to wake up, put on some CC cream, do whatever kind of eyebrow/eyeshadow stuff I want to do, throw on some blush, and I'm good. It is so much less work. It's so much lower maintenance, and because I can wear lighter CC and BB creams, it's really not stressful, and it doesn't look super cakey.

(15:25):

And I know I don't have perfect skin. I definitely have a lot of scarring from the time that I had acne, but I would so much rather have the acne scarring and have just smooth skin and no pain that I don't really care if the scars are always there or not. I am looking into micro-needling and seeing if that does anything to fade some of the acne scars, just because I figure if I'm going to do it at some point, I might as well do it now while I'm still in my early 30s because eventually there's just not going to be a lot I can do. So I'll let you know how that goes.

(16:06):

But yeah, otherwise, I don't mind not having perfect skin. I don't think that people who have severe acne have some unrealistic expectation of having perfect glass skin. In reality, that's not going to happen for a lot of us because we have scars and we've done damage to our skin. But I think we just want to have normal skin. Not having an active breakout and to not have to feel the pain of touching your face and, "Oh, there's 10 pimples right there." It hurts.

(16:42):

I think, also, as you get older, something that a lot of people don't really think about is when you have a career and you have chronic acne, I think it does make people take you a little bit less seriously. Or at the very least, makes you look younger than you are and not necessarily in a good way.

(17:02):

I think people associate acne with teenagers and immaturity and, even though that might not be true, if you are in a professional setting, you're trying to move up the corporate ladder, whatever, it's going to be difficult for you to get the same kind of respect and confidence from your boss as someone who doesn't have acne and looks very put together and very professional.

(17:28):

You could look exactly like them in every other regard, but if you have acne, I think that does subconsciously send some kind of message to employers that somehow you are younger or you are not taking care of yourself or you're dirty or you're not managing something in your life as well as you could be. Again, even though that's not really true, I think it does still kind of make it difficult to advance in your career when you're older and you're still dealing with this.

(18:01):

I think a really common misconception is also that people who have acne are somehow responsible for it. We're either not washing our faces enough or we're dirty, we're eating bad foods, it's something like that. But in a lot of cases, no, it's just—it's something we can't control. Whether it's just hormones, which in my case, that was it, and I needed some deep intervention to deal with that. We are doing everything we can to manage this and get rid of this and just have a normal-looking face, and we can't. And it's really hard.

(18:41):

I did just want to share some quick, very general acne treatment, skincare tips that I wish I had found or followed sooner when I was going through this 15-year-long experience of having really severe acne.

(18:58):

Let's just brush through the basics real quick: drink water and don't pick your skin. Alright? Super common advice. Trust me, just do those two things.

(19:07):

It will not fix your acne, I guarantee it. If you have really bad acne, those little changes are not going to fix it, but it will put you in a position to have the other treatments that you try be as effective as they can be. So drink water, don't pick your skin.

(19:25):

I really, really liked to pick my skin for a long time. I think it kind of gave me a sense of control over having such bad acne, and I would just sit there and pop pimples for like an hour in the bathroom at a time. Obviously it did not do my skin any favors, and I have the scarring today to prove it.

(19:43):

I don't know if you can tell by looking at me with the quality of camera I have, but I do have a decent bit of acne scarring on my face still, mostly on my cheek area. It's pretty faint, especially if I'm wearing makeup, which I am now, but it's mostly just like a bunch of small, flat, hyperpigmented scars.

(20:08):

But if you are someone who finds yourself picking, a couple different things I would do to not pick would be I would just do something with my hands or something that would immobilize my hands. I would paint my nails so that I then had to just sit there and couldn't pick at my skin for a while. I also really got into the YouTube rabbit hole of pimple-popping videos. If I couldn't pop my own pimples, I was going to watch someone else pop their pimples, and that actually worked really well.

(20:42):

The other thing that I learned after going to several dermatologists is that going with really intense skincare products does not necessarily mean that they're doing a better job of fighting your acne. Like I said, when I was younger, I used a lot of products with salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide in them. Those ultimately were pretty harsh for my skin and, according to my dermatologist at the time, what they did was it would actually kind of destroy your skin barrier, so then your skin isn't retaining as much moisture, it's more dried out. Like yes, it's drying out the acne, but it's also drying out all the rest of your skin so then your skin isn't healthy.

(21:24):

Some of the best advice I've ever gotten from dermatologists was to use products that were gentler for my skin. So yeah, don't use super harsh products. The more intense the product does not mean the quicker it's going to fight your acne. Sometimes gentler products actually work better overall. It just is kind of that thing of, "Oh, the burn says it's working," but in the case of skincare, burning is probably not actually that great and something gentler might be better for you in the long term.

(21:56):

Obviously though I'm not a dermatologist, so please talk to your dermatologist or some kind of health professional about this before you just go slapping things on your face.

(22:07):

One of the other things I learned is that you should be kind of wary of any sort of herbal remedy solutions that you might come across online. I know there were different articles that I read when I was just desperate and trying to find something to help my acne that suggested taking different herbal supplements or drinking certain kinds of teas.

(22:30):

I know using tea tree oil is often recommended online, but I actually also know someone who used tea tree oil on her skin—and she had beautiful skin—but she put tea tree oil on it and it completely made her breakout, and I think it took her a while to fully heal her skin from that experience. Because if you are going to use tea tree oil, I believe you are supposed to dilute it in something first. You are not supposed to just apply it to your skin. It can be really, really harsh. And actually tea tree oil is used as a cleaning product, so putting that directly on your skin can be really intense and I don't think any dermatologist would recommend it.

(23:13):

One that I have a particular grievance with is saw palmetto. This is an herbal supplement that I saw different bloggers recommending back in 2018, 2017, something like that. And like anything else, I was like, "Yeah, sure, I'll try it. Maybe it'll help my skin." It inflamed my acne even more. I mean, it completely blew my face up with terrible, terrible pimples. And even after I stopped taking this supplement, my skin continued to just be completely out of control for, I mean, the rest of the time that I had acne, which was, it was a couple months after that that I went to the dermatologist and got on the final product that I was on.

(24:00):

But yeah, just be careful when you are trying non-FDA approved herbal supplements online, whether they're topical or if it's some kind of vitamin pill. Just be careful.

(24:13):

With all that said, I am going to close this episode by saying that this is the 10th episode I have filmed and recorded. And considering that I did not want to be a podcast host and still find it kind of odd, I do really enjoy this. I really like getting to just talk about whatever kind of little life dramas I want to talk about each week and seeing that some people can relate to them.

(24:44):

And for those of you who, like me, either have bad acne or you have had it in the past, I completely understand what you are going through. It is not fun, but I promise it can get better and it just takes some patience. So I feel for you and just hang in there and it will get better.

(25:05):

If you found today's episode helpful or relatable in any way, please go ahead and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or wherever you are listening. If you're watching on YouTube, please leave a comment. You can tell me how gross my skin looked when I was younger. You can tell me how bad it looks now. I don't really care. Please interact with the video or the episode in some way. It lets me know that you are listening and also just sends some signals to the platform you're listening on to let them know that, hey, people are actually paying attention to this. So great thing to do for any creator that you like, whether it's me, whether it's another smaller podcast or YouTube channel. It really means a lot to the more independent and solo creator projects when we see interactions from people like you.

(25:58):

So please do that, and thank you for being here today, and I will see you next week.