Healthy Skin is More Than Products
There's more to skincare than just products
I was talking to a client recently about her skincare and about 10 minutes into the conversation she stopped me and said: "you haven't mentioned one single product, how is this skincare?"
She was right. But skincare for me is not just products. Anything we do to care for our skin IS skincare. And I guess this is not something that's obvious to most people, so let me explain what I think about when I'm talking about skincare.
Up until a few years ago, I thought that to manage my acne all I could do was use the cosmetic products I was either prescribed by my dermatologist or recommended by my esthetician. And get regular facials. If I was doing all of that, how come my skin wasn't what I wanted it to be?
It's very well documented by now how many factors contribute to the health of our skin. Certain habits can be quite taxing on our skin*:
Lack of sleep: there's a lot of evidence demonstrating that lack of sleep can make individuals look less healthy, less attractive, and more tired (duh). Not enough sleep also directly affects our skin cells' own internal clock. And thus, impair their function (skin hydration and water loss, oil or sebum production, blood flow, skin cell division, and barrier function). Ensuring good and enough sleep nightly then is clearly very important.
Smoking: there are many reasons why this is not a good habit to cultivate. In terms to skincare, it’s basically associated with fine lines and wrinkles, thinning of the skin, facial redness, reduces collagen and elastin, and obviously cancer.
Diet: there's A LOT to be said about this, but I'll make it simple. Unless you have an identified food sensitivity or allergy, there's no reason to avoid any food. With regards to acne, there's some evidence to suggest that certain foods may be linked to it, but it's not something you can generalize for everyone. So investigate how your skin reacts to certain foods if this is a concern for you. But more importantly, focus on having a healthy diet that's full of antioxidants and minerals that reduce inflammation and free radicals from the body.
Stress: also has an immense effect on the health of our skin. Increased cortisol levels has been linked to acne due to the overproduction of oil. It's also associated with breakage of collagen and a reduced production of hyaluronic acid. And as if not enough, stress also causes inflammation **
Exercise: movement in our body will help bring oxygen and important nutrients to our skin cells. It will also reduce stress.
Prolonged sun exposure: not wearing SPF daily is one of the biggest factors to poor skin health. You can be doing everything else, but if you ignore this, you won't have any positive results. Besides the potential for serious illnesses like cancer, sun exposure leads to premature aging and a skin that looks dull and rough.
So I tweaked my lifestyle as well and made sure to improve my regular habits. Started prioritizing sleep, improved my diet to include a lot of nourishing foods, and started focusing on reducing stress. And all of these changes made a difference, but I have to admit, I realized there was another additional layer to this process that I hadn't thought about which helped me immensely.
Because even as my skin was doing and feeling much better, I was still quite insecure about it. Has this happened to you? Feeling like you're doing everything you should be doing and yet the results are nothing but average? That's how I felt. I was frustrated but worse, I was constantly putting myself and my skin down for failing. Whenever there was a small step back, I placed all the blame on myself.
If I’m doing all of the above, how come my skin is still not perfect?
Three years ago I also started to go deeper into personal-development work. I know this sounds cliche, but I was going through several things in my personal life and I got more serious about my well-being. This included my physical health, but most noticeably, my emotional health.
As I was building my emotional toolbox and working through many limiting beliefs I had, something unexpected also happened. I noticed how much better my skin was getting.
Since then, I've also worked on strengthening my relationship with my skin. My skin isn't flawless (no one's is), but when I again breakout, or when I notice a new imperfection, I approach this differently than before.
But I've also noticed an additional layer to healthy skin, and this is related to the personal relationship we each have with our own. The preconceived ideas and beliefs we have about our skin and ourselves play quite a big role as well.
How did I improve my relationship with my skin?
I'll first clarify: It's not a perfect relationship (again, perfection is not real, in any scenario). I work on it constantly, and I have better days than others. But I can proudly say that right now, I feel pretty good about my skin. Even when it breaks out. Even when I can see the crows feet (my biggest insecurity at the moment). Even when I can see my pores in the mirror (this is normal too!)
We've been consistently programmed to believe specific ideas about what skin should look like. So we have these thoughts in our minds all the time that we have to continuously be mindful of and basically shut down.
This is for everything in our life, right? That inner critic, as many people call it, creeps up on us and loves to compare, berate, reduce us, and make us feel like we're not enough, or we're less than, or [insert what your personal inner critic loves to do]. Mine personally loves to place the blame of my skin issues on things I'm doing wrong, and loves conditioning my beauty and self worth to how good my skin is looking. And on some days my inner critic pops out and reminds me that I'm not a good esthetician. But none of that is true.
I recently read something by Sebane Selassie, a meditation teacher, explaining how many of our thoughts are not really ours. They're our culture's. She offered a solution of simply noticing these thoughts and kindly asking yourself where those thoughts come from.
I can tell you that for skin and general image issues, many of our collective thoughts come from the portrayal of beauty in the media. We're constantly consuming images of altered faces. And yes, photoshop can do wonders to someone's skin, but it's unrealistic. And it shouldn't be the goal either.
I also stopped pretending to be perfect (or that my skin is perfect) sinceI realized that this wasn't getting me the support I needed. And attempting to getting perfect skin was also setting me up for failure because it's a not a realistic goal. Despite what I thought, or more accurately, what our culture had conditioned me to think.
Uncover deep beliefs about your skin
Strengthening the relationship with yourself involves a lot of moving pieces. I'll go on a limb and assume that for most that struggle with skin issues, there's other body image concerns or additional insecurities about your worth. At least that's the case for me.
In my experience, working on one thing helped me in many other aspects of my life, since they were closely knit together. We'll focus mostly on the skin, but know that these questions can be applicable for other things about your life right now and can be used as reference at any time or as individual journal prompts whenever you need additional support.
For a deeper dive, download this FREE Uncovering Skin Beliefs Guide
Then, work on developing coping skills that will help you manage these beliefs. In the guide I share some tips on how to do this, but here are some suggestions that can help strengthen the relationship with yourself:
Meditation to calm the nervous system and reducing stress
Positive affirmations to shift the negative beliefs that you have in conversations with yourself
Invest in developing a better skincare routine
I'm not saying that products don't work or that if you just focus on strengthening the relationship with yourself and your skin then you will heal whatever skin concern you have. It's a team effort and I do believe that one aspect strengthens the other. Products will give amazing results, but if the underlying cause of your skin issue is not addressed or the expectations are not realistic, then you won't be satisfied and will become frustrated and unhappy about your skin
P.S.
Skincare is more than just products
The negative thoughts we have about ourselves and our skin play a huge role in the prevention of achieving healthy skin, so it's important to identify what these are and work on addressing them
It's very valuable to develop a tool kit with coping mechanisms that will help you navigate the above emotions, so find what works for you (think meditation, positive affirmations, exercise, etc)
Sources
*The skincare bible by Anjali Mahto
** Glow from Within by Joanna Vargas