Acne: The Biggest Struggle of My Life
And How It Turned Into My Biggest Lesson
I’ve never publicly opened up about my severe battle with acne before.
While I tend to be quite open and honest about my trials, challenges, and shortcomings, this is one area of life I have always steered clear of — always suppressed and tried to pretend simply didn’t exist.
Probably because this is the part of myself I’ve desperately tried to hide for so long.
Probably because it’s still an extremely touchy topic for me.
And writing this now feels like the biggest and scariest confession I’ve ever made… (primarily to myself)
But I can’t let this shit rule my life forever.
I can’t continue to live behind this stifling shame and anxiety anymore.
I want to get this off my chest once and for all.
And my hope is that, by driving these words out from the dungeon of my psyche to the light of the page, it will take some of my inner tension and emotional inertia away with it.
All I want is to be free from this. All I want is to MOVE ON.
I think part of the reason I’ve shied away from this topic for so long is because I sometimes feel “guilty” or “vain” for regarding this as “the biggest struggle of my life.”
While people are out there dying of starvation, living with extreme disabilities and trauma, facing terminal illnesses, losing a child, and more, I’m over here fretting over some blemishes on my skin as if life itself depended on it!
Since acne is such a common and perhaps relatively harmless issue, isn’t it rather a luxury to have acne as my biggest problem in life? Maybe I’m just being overly dramatic and sensitive. Maybe I need to reevaluate my priorities…
After much mental oscillation, I’ve decided it’s finally time to speak my truth regardless, because comparing my struggles to others doesn’t invalidate my own experiences and emotions.
Acne has undeniably been one of the most traumatic and life-changing experiences of my life.
And I sincerely want anyone out there facing the same silent battle against insecurity and self-doubt to know
- I see you.
- I understand.
- You are not alone in this experience.
This is my story.
My 10+ Year Battle With Acne
Humble Beginnings
Like most preteens, I started getting my first acne flare ups when puberty hit — nothing too major, fortunately. Mainly those little bumps around my nose and hairline.
Though, around 12 years old, something unusual started to emerge — these large, painful cysts around my earlobes. Oddly enough, I’d get them on the front and back side of my earlobes, and on both ears.
I know right… what?!?
It was extremely frustrating because, as soon as one would go away, another would come up. Sometimes, I couldn’t even sleep on the infected side of my head because it’d be too sore to put pressure on. Occasionally, I’d actually wake up with blood all over my pillow — an incident which *conveniently* happened while I was sleeping in a cabin full of fellow dance team members for our competition weekend my 6th grade year (we all concluded that someone started her period).
I eventually started to feel insecure about wearing my hair up, pushing it behind my ears, or, worst of all, having someone else doing my hair.
And for the first time in my life, I got a taste of that paralyzing self-consciousness that comes with cosmetic flaws — a self-consciousness that would gradually expand and go on to inhibit my life in every way.
The Cysts Spread
A couple years later, around age 14–15, those dreadful cysts hit my shoulders and upper back. Bad.
I suddenly found myself taking extra precautions to hide and conceal my shoulders as much as possible, which was extra difficult considering I was on the dance team and had to wear backless tops often.
I painfully recall this one occasion — I was a sophomore in high school, having this particularly bad breakout on my shoulders. It was a pep rally day and we had to wear these white, sequined halter tops for our performance. Trying to hide my visibly bumpy and irritated shoulders from my teammates, I discreetly lingered in the bathroom stall, trying to cake on the concealer without any light or mirror — an attempt that obviously didn’t pan out well.
When I emerged from hiding to check my progress in the mirror, you could clearly see these two unblended blobs of color, at least 2 shades off from my natural skin tone. At that point, I had to accept it was better than no makeup at all, and went on to struggle through a performance amongst a crowd of teenagers as close as 20 feet away from me on all sides.
I also vividly remember the agony I’d feel having to get ready for a pool, lake, or beach day. These were the worst, honestly.
Growing up as a regular lake-goer and taking annual trips to the gulf, being in the sun and water was certainly one of my favorite pastimes.
However, my relationship to water venues unsurprisingly took a nosedive when those cysts took over my shoulders and mind. It got to the point where I downright dreaded any occasion that required a swimsuit, which unfortunately made me dread lake and beach days altogether.
Instead of letting my sister or cousins lather the sunscreen on my back like we used to, I started disappearing into the bathroom to try and put my own sunscreen on OVER some blotchy concealer. I absolutely detested the way this felt on my skin and was sure the cheap, oily sunscreen was making it worse, but what was I going to do? Not go the beach?!
When you’re too ashamed not to hide your skin yet too embarrassed to say why, what other option do you have than to withdraw?
In fact, withdrawal became my default coping mechanism for everything, essentially — which of course only created a negative feedback loop because more isolation = more negative thoughts = more stress = more acne (didn’t realize it at the time, but hindsight is 20/20).
It wasn’t just swimsuit-wearing activities that I grew to despise because of my condition; it was also *deep sigh of dismay* clothes shopping.
Anytime I’d go shopping (basically all throughout high school and college), there was this rigorous voice in my head constantly snapping about all the things I “couldn’t wear” — tank tops, halter tops, strapless tops, off-the-shoulder tops, spaghetti straps, open back dresses, etc., etc..
Thus, my wardrobe options as a young female grew quite slim, particularly in the summer, and my modest, boxy, boyish style actually emerged as a result.
While my friends would insist that I try on or buy something that had an open back, I’d insist that it just “wasn’t my style” or that I simply “didn’t like it.”
At one point, my chest started breaking out as well, and you can imagine how limited my wardrobe selection became then (for almost a year!).
While my shoulders are much better, there’s still a lot of scarring left over. Thus, even to this day, I rarely wear open back clothes — only on occasions where it’s absolutely necessary (it took 2 chemical peels and a spray tan for prom).
And this is something that people blessed with consistently clear skin will never understand:
Acne causes one to make decision after decision, first and foremost, as a protective mechanism. And over time, these decisions actually alter one’s personality and direction in life.
I could list so many more ways acne has specifically changed my personality and direction in life, but let’s save that for another article.
The Lost Years
While I experienced mild to moderate acne on my face throughout my pre- and teenage years, the real strike to my confidence came soon after I graduated high school — roughly ages 18 through 21. In fact, I call these “the lost years,” for my acne got so bad, I practically disappeared off the face of the planet.
This period is when those inflamed cysts unfortunately migrated to my face, in addition to my shoulders, which had been one of my biggest fears leading up to that point. (*go figure*)
It was primarily the lower half of my face that suffered the most, which led me to believe it was hormonal — especially considering I became extremely neurotic about my health during this time.
Though I haven’t mentioned it yet, I was seeking skincare solutions almost ceaselessly up to this point, jumping from one “miracle” product to the next with little to no avail. However, these “lost years” unlocked a level of obsession I never knew I had in me.
My WHOLE LIFE revolved around trying to “fix” my skin. The only thing I cared about, desired, and pursued was clear skin. From the moment I woke up till the moment I fell asleep (or cried myself to sleep), all I could think about was my skin.
These 3–4 years of my life are honestly kind of a blur. There were some good memories scattered here and there, of course, but much of the time I could not allow myself to relax and have fun knowing how bad my skin was.
I couldn’t even bring myself to look in the mirror, much less go out and see people or do things.
And, as a result, my perception of self seemed to wane into oblivion. Not only was my self-esteem weak, but my actual self-image. I avoided myself so much that I didn’t have a clear image of what I looked like, sounded like, acted like, or even felt like sometimes. Essentially, I dissociated for most of this period.
This inevitably led to a major identity/existential crisis coming out of those years that I’m still recovering from, but that’s also a story for another day.
The most frustrating thing about this time was that, the harder I tried to heal my skin, the worse it seemed to get. I’d watch in utter torment as family members and friends would recklessly down the dairy and sugar, pay no mind to what touched their face, which ingredients were in their moisturizer, how much sleep they got, etc., yet exhibit effortlessly flawless complexions.
Meanwhile, I’d be forcing down the green juice, spending thousands of dollars on fancy facials and products, scouring the market for the best vitamins and supplements, getting my bloodwork done to see if I was deficient in anything (I was optimal in everything!?!?!), turning down plans that’d prevent me from getting at least 8 hours of sleep, obsessively changing my pillow cases, cutting “inflammatory” foods out of my diet left and right, and spending nearly an hour every day doing my makeup (which ultimately made the breakouts worse), and here I am experiencing the worst acne of my life.
How the f*ck could this be happening to me?!?
This dilemma drove me deeper and deeper into the darkest, dreariest, most depressing void in my psyche — the darkest days of my life, honestly.
Eventually, there came a breaking point.
I was mentally and emotionally exhausted.
Even if my combined efforts worked, there was no way I could maintain that level of sheer psychological pressure and intensity.
I had no choice but to give up.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Soon after, something magical happened — a profound truth started to dawn.
And I’m sure nearly everyone reading this has experienced this revelation at some point in their lives after throwing in the towel on a struggle that felt insurmountable.
As soon as I decided I was over the battle — that I didn’t care about my skin anymore and couldn’t be bothered to keep urgently seeking solutions — it actually started to get better.
This was the first time I had genuinely grasped the causal relationship between our inner and outer realities — specifically, my obsessive thoughts and the condition of my skin.
It almost seems like common knowledge now that “energy flows where attention goes” — given the popularization of the Law of Attraction and the ever-expanding world of self-help — but 5–6 years ago, this was major news to me.
I started to wake up to how my thoughts were directly impacting every area of my life (and I’m still constantly awakening/reawakening to this every day).
It started to become blatantly obvious that, if I based all my efforts on this “problem,” then I was basically dependent on this problem — I was looking for the problem, relating everything in my experience to the problem, and affirming the problem over and over again. (sound familiar, anyone?)
And if I were the problem, I’d interpret all that attention as wanting more of me too!! I’d think, “Damn, this gal must really want every bit of me she can get! Here I am!”
Thus, “the biggest struggle of my life” turned out to be my biggest lesson (as it often does).
The Cure
I’ve seen countless videos, articles, and testimonies over the years of people disclosing how they “finally” cured their acne — believe me, I used to binge watch these constantly in search of my own solution.
However, I don’t think I saw one person (at the time, at least; now, of course, I see them everywhere) reveal that their “cure” was to stop caring.
It was always some chemical, some diet, some drug to fix their hormonal imbalance, that seemed to do the trick (and maybe they got the placebo effect moving in the right direction for them).
But for me, TO THIS DAY, I have yet to find any correlation between ANYTHING except my thoughts/attitudes.
I’ve observed times where I’d be eating worse and having better skin.
I’ve observed times where I’d have no skincare routine outside of my regular bar soap in the shower and having better skin.
Perhaps since I had already gotten to such a defeated state of mind while I was trying everything, nothing I was doing externally was potent enough to override my mind. In other words, the negative momentum of my thoughts plowed through every superficial skincare attempt in the books.
Though, this certainly provided me with the strongest understanding possible of the power of our thoughts and the underlying, vibrational nature of reality.
It tends to be those things that strike the deepest cord within us (as a perfectionist, acne can strike an abysmal cord) that catalyze our most transformative breakdowns and drive home the deepest truths.
And I honestly don’t think anything else would have garnered the level of hopelessness and desperation, ultimately leading to liberation, that having severe acne at this point in my life did for me.
In the beginning of this article, I talked about how I just want to be free from this, because the truth is that, despite knowing the power of my thoughts, I still struggle sometimes with getting hyper-fixated on my skin. And I suppose this last week was one of those times, which is why I’ve chosen to divulge all of this now.
But it’s also nice to have this direct mode of feedback to signal when my mind has strayed too far into the negative.
So for that, I am grateful.
And suppose it was all worth it.
And if you’re one of those people out there who has tried everything under the sun for your acne, try this.
Or, rather, don’t try anything.
Just sit back, relax, drink some water, and do something you love, and watch as your skin starts to reflect a calmer, purer, more balanced state of mind, for this is why we wanted clear skin all along.
