Let’s talk: Acne and self-love advice

I’ve ‘suffered’ with acne ever since I remember and I’ve put suffered in quote marks because I feel bad for using it in this context as I know that there are people seriously suffering in the world but nevertheless I’ve experienced it first hand and I know how much impact it can have on your life and most of all on your confidence, and I wanna share with you guys my story of it to help people suffering realise that most people experienced it at some point in their lives and that it does get really better even when you don’t feel like it will.

It started when I hit puberty at the age of 13;sounds so cliche I know but at the time everyone was going through the same thing so it seemed normal to me and I didn’t make much of it plus when you’re 13 you’re not really self-concious about your looks yet it only hits you when people start pointing it out to you and you realise that it’s not the norm and it’s not considered as attractive. A few years later when everyone else’s skin was clearing up and glowy except for mine it started bothering me and I started feeling really self-concious about myself and I started being jealous about every girl that I came across with with clear skin which looking back at it now seems so silly since I can gurantee that every girl and even every person is self-consious about something in their looks that they would gladly change for with someone else.

I have tried probably all products that state to help acne, I tried eating healthy, not eating chocolate or sweets at all as some people say that it causes acne,had face treatments, saw doctors about it etc but nothing really helped to solve the problem long term and then comes the moment of desperation when you start thinking that it’ll never go away and you’ll always feel self-conscious about yourself but there’s nothing more wrong than thinking that as sometimes the problem can solve itself within few days. From my experience over all those years I found two major big factors that definitely had an effect on my skin and you’re probably not surprised to hear that those two are water and stress. We don’t really realise how important drinking 2 litres of water a day is and it’s not only to have perfect skin as it also increases energy and relives fatigue, flushes out toxins, boots immune system and many other benefits so what are you waiting for go and grab yourself a glass water! The other major factor is stress which is definitely much harder to avoid stress than to drink water as sometimes things happen in life which you can’t avoid which will cause you stress but if you can’t do anything about it then try not to stress about it, and yes I know it’s easier said than done. But try not to stress about trivial things in life like being late, dropping your phone or loosing things because most of them can be easily sorted and won’t matter in a week or two , so when something like that does happen just take a deep breath or listen to some music.

So for all acne suffers and everyone else feeling self conscious about themselves, I have one last piece of advice; love yourself! And I don’t mean it lightly literally love yourself, next time you look in the mirror be like ‘wow you look great today’ or write down a list of things that you like yourself. Because in this and age with everyone just showing just their altered, filtered, edited pictures it’s easy to start feeling low about yourself and start telling yourself that you’re not as good as other people.