[Personal] Hindsight... Overexfoliation

Beauty Tips For Body Care
So, a bit of backstory. I have some cystic hormonal acne, with texture issues and hyperpigmentation. I'm on prescription tret, 0.025%, it's never caused me any problems before this episode. In fact I was thinking of asking my dermatologist to up the %. They also give me a basic aqueous cream to use with it when I was dry and flaking a bit longer back. The derm insisted that these two products were all I'd need. Basically I was using these two products every night and just the aqueous cream + sunscreen in the morning. I'm also using BC (Estelle-35) for acne.Then a few months ago (around June/July), I started flaking REALLY bad. Like if touch my fake and realise my foundation was pilling up and gross af. I didn't know what to do and used a peeling gel. All was okay, even better since my skin was smoother, and makeup went on better. A few weeks later, my face started to tingle whenever I put the products on. ??? Meh, figured it was normal. My face started to get shiny, but it would always be dry to touch. Confusing, used even more mattifying products. A few more weeks later, my face would sting, sometimes so bad that I'd tear up from the burn. At this point I got even more cysts in places I don't usually have them - jawline, spreading to the neck. (Which was horrible for my self esteem especially since it was a high stress period for me and I got into a new relationship lol) So I thought, the tret must be losing its efficacy. I would put even MORE on. And I'd get more cysts, burning, shininess and flakiness. Rinse and repeat. Finally, my tube of tret ran out with how much I was using it. I panicked but thought, okay, I'll just hold on and wait until my next appointment. In the meantime I searched and searched about what to do. Somehow someone was giving a lecture about water hydration vs oil moisture and it suddenly clicked. Wtf have I been doing to my skin?????? The moment I was able to, I got myself hydrating products, threw the god awful aqueous cream to a dark corner and used less tret when I got my next prescription. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking before!TLDR: don't blindly listen to your dermatologist. You know your skin/self better.
Girls Blog 2015
Submitted by Ichiigan