I have had extreme acne breaks out before. You know, the one that comes out of nowhere? And being ‘the girl with clear skin’ over the years, everywhere I turned people kept asking me ‘what happened to your face’?

Every day, I felt self-conscious, insecure and my anxiety was through the roof.  I consoled myself by focusing on treating my acne but when nothing worked for months, I was forced to face my fear and be confident with my acne.

My acne cleared after 8 months.

 

How To Overcome Social Anxiety About Your Acne

1. Recognize its just acne:

What is acne?

Acne

/ˈakni/

Noun

A skin condition characterized by red pimples on the skin, especially on the face, due to inflamed or infected sebaceous glands and prevalent chiefly among adolescents.

That’s just what it is. It’s not meant to show the beauty or lack of it. At most it’s a reaction so why should you feel insecure about your hands if you reacted to a hand wash?

Acne is just a pimple, recognize it for what it is and what is not. Besides feeling insecure about it is mostly thinking about people making fun of you or thinking you’re less beautiful than you already are.

2.       Have a reason for it:

You know when someone insults you and you have a comeback? Feels good right? And having a comeback causes that person to back off and not bother you again.

That’s the case with acne.

What has caused your acne? Often times, unless you’re in middle school, when someone reacts to your acne and starts calling you things like pizza face, instead of just staring down or saying ‘hey don’t call me that’ (which will often cause more attention), saying:

‘’Oh yeah I had a reaction to this new product’’ or ‘’ my allergies are acting up’’ or ‘’I’m on my period’’, ‘’or my hormones are all over the place’’, seems to rationalize it and often the conversation turns to one filled with skincare tips and similar stories because EVERYONE GETS ACNE.

3.       Don’t put on makeup:

Sure we all like makeup because its art yada yada, but some of the time we use makeup to hide features or improve them. Cue concealer. Besides the fact that putting on makeup makes your skin a lot worse, wearing makeup also makes you insecure (if done for the wrong reasons).

In a world where media standards rule our body image, and makeup makes us look better than we are, without it, we feel inadequate. Because in our heads there is a prettier version of ourselves who we can’t be unless we put on makeup.

Also, wearing your acne and being yourself, not caring about what other people think is brave. And most who people fun of you is because they don’t have the courage to own who they are.

Imagine people’s reaction if you had to take the makeup off and turns out you have a lot of acne, vs., if you went out like that and people, knew you just had acne.

4.       Don’t panic:

Let me put this scene in your head

Imagine you get 1 pimple on the day of your presentation, terrible right? You, however, put an acne solution so it magically disappears.

A while later they become five and your presentation is in an hour so you decide the first product is not working and you clean it and put another one of greater quantity.

It still doesn’t go away quickly, so you decide to put on make-up and your eyes are red by then. It’s also not completely covered and you obviously look like you just cried.

Your presentation is in 30 minutes, you start to think of something but seeing the time you get filled with frustration and hurriedly clean it all off and you’re left with more pimples that are super red and itchy because of all you’ve done and you look red and are teary-eyed.

Just imagine how awful your presentation will go. I mean a presentation is more about how you carry yourself and communicate than what you actually say.

Panic makes things a lot worse. Just breathe and take it easy.

5.       Do something about it:

Don’t just live it if it bothers you.

There’s nothing wrong with having acne but there’s also no reason to have it either.

Find a skincare routine. It’s going to be hard, exhausting, and expensive but you’ll eventually find what works for you and finally feel confident with acne.

On a final note:

Acne is normal!

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