So, my Acne Story starts from about 18 years old.
I would have had what you describe as. Severe acne. At the time my lifestyle was like, any other 18 year old.
I did the usual teenager stuff, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, eat junk food, consume fast food, and having a zero to none skincare routine.
I didn't really understand what impact that might have had on the skin, but as any teenager who battles with acne at any age, it's very impacting on self-confidence. Now when I say impacting on confidence, that doesn’t mean I became sheltered in my everyday life, I was still outgoing, I was still active among friends and it technically never stopped me from doing anything, which you could say was lucky, as I still went out to social events, still hit the clubs up at the weekend etc, but here’s the thing, even though I was still outgoing and had confidence, I still had a confidence issue, for example I knew each and every day that my skin was bad, that my face was either full of spots or clustered with spots, I knew this and for me personally I had the attitude of if I let it control my decision making, it will stop me being me…and that is definitely not who I am as a person.
But and yes there is always a but, it still use to crop up in my mind from time to time, like when I would hit it off with a girl, we would talk and chat and I could be me, and that’s all she saw at the time, but when it came to meeting for the first time, that’s when crippling confidence would rear up in my head and start me questioning, yeah she might like me now, but what is she going to think when we meet up and my face is full of breakouts, will she just shut down emotionally and be put off by it, and that’s how acne use to affect my confidence as I still had the confidence to talk to girls and try the old chat ups, but at the same time my inner mind would be in a battle of let me do what I want to do against the voice of yeah but you’ve got Acne and she’s not going to be interested, least to say the battles never stopped and I won some and I lost some and sometimes I look back on the past and wonder, the ones I didn’t pursue because I felt I would be judge by my acne, how could that have actually turned out, if I hadn’t bottled it and ran.
And the confidence knocks never really came from me, they were often built up on the experience I got from outside sources from idiots of ridicule or observation I saw with my own eyes when interacting with people in social settings or even professional settings, as I always conducted myself in a sense that I didn’t have any issue at all.
Ok I guess that covers some of the confidence issues relating to Acne in modern times, but it’s that what I feel affects most people with acne, the person with acne knows they have it and they pretty quickly come to terms with it, I mean “hello” it’s their face it’s on every minute of the day, so they come to live with it quick, the main damage in terms of confidence is the interaction we have with others in the world and maybe if people where a little less judgey and just accept people for who they are, and not what’s on the face, maybe people wouldn’t feel as bad when they have breakouts,
That being said, the recent Acne Positive movement which started on Instagram around 2016 has moved the stigma so far from what I use to experience to a more understanding nature, as those who would have judged are now aware of the impact it can cause, so maybe my era was the last of idiots who use to make comments or ridicule people with Acne or Spots.