The Years I Did Not Want to Be Seen Because of My Skin

I was so insecure about my skin

My skin was painful, uncomfortable and impossible to hide, no matter how many layers of makeup or clothes I put on.

Cystic hormonal acne. Guttate psoriasis all over my body. Pigmentation and discolouration. Cellulite on my legs, my belly and my arms. Scalp psoriasis, which felt like having ants constantly crawling on my head. And I burned so easily in the sun.

I had grown up with skin I never thought about. Going from that to this was a massive change and it was very hard to accept.

Both of those photographs are me

The first is from the worst of it. The second is after a great deal of hard work.

When I was in the middle of it, the thing I most wanted was to see that somebody had come out the other side. That is why they are up there.

I felt so unattractive & I was ashamed to be out in public

My confidence became almost non-existent. I did not want to leave the house, and for years I rarely did. I said no to almost everything and told people I was busy. I stopped being in photographs. I got very good at angles and at leaving early.

It blocked me from relationships and from friendships, and it stopped me doing things I badly wanted to do.

I tried so many different supplements, herbs, treatments and diets, and my skin kept getting worse. I spent so much money to see no result.

I felt hopeless. I did not see a way out and I felt like I was falling into the abyss. It hurt, physically and emotionally.

I almost gave up. I thought I would be single forever.

I was eating healthy and I thought I was doing all the right things, and nothing seemed to work for me.

What helped my skin

I tried so much, and it was never one thing. Many things contributed, and I think they worked on me together.

Consistency, more than any one thing

This is the part I would most want you to hear. Skin takes time. It is not one detox and then it is gone, and it is not one product or one appointment either. What changed things for me was doing the same small things over and over, for a long time, long after I had stopped expecting to wake up one morning and find it fixed.

Getting my hormones looked at & properly tested

I worked on getting my hormones balanced, which is a subject of its own and one I have written about separately.

I also stopped guessing. I had testing done with a naturopath, including a look at my gut microbiome, and having something real in front of me changed what I did next.

Eating with my cycle

Eating cyclically was a big part of it. My body is not the same woman every week, and once I started eating for the phase I was actually in rather than the same way all month, everything felt less like a fight.

Learning what my body actually wanted

Alongside that, I learned to listen. Really understanding which foods were good for me, which ones made me feel well and which ones did not, is the whole of what I mean by intuitive eating. Nobody could tell me that from the outside.

Detoxing & what I stopped

I did a lot of detoxing. Not one round of something. Years of it, as a practice.

I also stopped partying. That one was less about any single night and more about what I was asking my body to recover from while it was already struggling.

Slowing down & breathing properly

Deep, deep breathing into my diaphragm was profound for me. So was slowing down generally, which sounds like the softest item on this list and was one of the hardest.

I moved more, and I sweated more. That mattered too.

The emotional work

This was the biggest part of all of it. I detoxed for years and made real changes, but it was not until I went deep into actually feeling things that I saw the biggest shifts.

Crying. Letting myself be angry. Getting support for the things I had been carrying instead of holding them. And reducing the stress I could actually do something about, including the frantic searching, which had become its own kind of stress.

Underneath all of it was learning to take care of myself, and to love myself, while I still looked the way I looked.

What my skin was in contact with

I went through everything my skin actually touched. The products I was using. My bedding, and how often I changed my sheets. I put filters on my showers. I started washing my fruit and vegetables properly, and drinking better quality water. I brought the chemicals around me down wherever I could.

Realising I was sensitive everywhere

This was the thing that tied it together. I have sensitive skin, sensitive emotions and a sensitive gut, and they are not three separate facts about me. Once I stopped treating them separately, I stopped looking for the one thing that would fix the one problem, and started building my resilience instead.

Where my skin is now

I very rarely get a pimple now. Maybe one around my cycle, occasionally one on my back, and that is it. Nothing like it used to be.

The guttate psoriasis cleared from my body completely. The scalp psoriasis I am still working on, and it is still difficult. That one has not gone.

There is barely any pigment left since I balanced my hormones, and I have no scarring from the acne. Honestly, I think my skin looks better now than it did when I was younger.

The parts I am still in

My gut has been the long one. It is still something I work on, but it is nowhere near as sensitive as it was, and I know a great deal of the change came from there.

I am still doing the emotional work too, which I believe is connected to my scalp. Stress, relaxing, trying to be less busy. That is the part I am in now.

The cellulite comes and goes if I get lazy about it. I had it completely gone, and some of it is back now that perimenopause is here. I am in a slower phase of life, I have let myself gain a little weight, and I am surrendering into that. It is the nature of being a woman, and I do not need to be perfect.

I feel much healthier than I did.

My skin was a messenger

That is how I think about all of it now. My skin was telling me that something was not right, and when I finally listened it led me to everything else. My emotions. My gut. Things I would never have gone looking for otherwise.

If you are in it now

If your skin has changed and it is not settling, please have someone look at it properly. And if you can, ask for testing rather than only treating what shows on the surface.

I was offered the pill more than once. For some women that is the right answer. It was not mine.

What moved things for me was working with a naturopath who tested deeper, at my gut and at my hormones, so that I was working from information instead of guessing. Having something real in front of me is what let me stop throwing money at the outside of the problem.

You know your body better than anyone else does. If what you are offered does not feel like enough, it is fair to ask for more.

Other things that might support you

• •What to ask yourself before any cleanse, if that is the direction you are considering
• •Emotions you do not process, on the part of this that was not physical
• •How to track your cycle, if you want to see your own month written down

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