The Results! 60 days!

I am 60 days into my healing process from skin picking and I am going to try and remember all the phases I've gone through in these 2 months and relate them here. It has been an incredibly trying time and I just wish I had had someone who was on my side telling me how much better it was going to get and how long it was going to take for me to heal and let go of the habit. So I'll try and be that person to someone else out there.



First off I just want to say that one thing that has kept me going on this path is knowing that nothing in this world is permanent. "This too, shall pass!" The human body regenerates itself completely pretty much every 7 days. Your skin cells slough and regrow on a minute by minute basis and no illness, disease, ailment or habit will punish you your entire life if you believe it can change and are willing to allow it to change. I've read on a lot of websites that excoriated acne will result in PERMANENT SCARS! Oh my! I just want to say here, that I absolutely one hundred percent JUST DO NOT BELIEVE THAT TO BE TRUE! Your body has the capability of healing from Cancer, it will heal from a few scars that your fingernails created. I promise!



Now I'm also going to say here, that this may take a long time! How long, I'm not sure, because I am still on the path to discovering that myself, but I can honestly say that in 60 days my skin has drastically improved and that I have 100% faith that it will only continue to improve until it is ultimately completely healed!



I'll break this down as best I can remember.



Recovery Log:

1-10 days no picking: Dramatic healing of open sores, scabs and a fading of the redness around picked areas. New minor breakouts and under grounders, but overall much improved.



11-20 days no picking: Original open sores and scabs have faded to a deep purple color. In areas all around my face, huge areas of mass breakouts. By my mouth and jawline, my neck, my upper cheeks and temples. All areas were former hot spots for picking. The breakouts seem to alternate from the right side of my face to the left side and when one area seems to improve the other area seems to get worse. This is a torturous period for me. Another thing I notice in this time period is that skin that was formally indented, areas where I picked breakouts flat or to a point of deflation of the skin are now puffing up and are very three dimensional. Very large cystic type breakouts are present and my skin throbs and itches a lot. Often in areas where there is itching around under grounders, I wake in the morning to find a patch of white heads where the skin has released what was plugging it. Now on the positive side, the skin between the breakouts is much, much improved. It is white and almost luminescent. A glow is coming back all over my face to skin that was formally dull and dead looking. And the breakouts themselves are contained. It is easy to see definition to each pimple and the skin around the pimples is healthy and bright. Overall redness is much improved.



20-30 days no picking: A general draining down and out of my breakouts. My forehead is completely clear and looks like I never picked it. My temples have a few small individual spots, but is much improved. The skin around my nose and upper checks is clear of breakouts. It is as if the breakouts have moved out of the upper portion of my face and are now centrally located around my mouth and jawline and neck. An amazing thing is happening. Instead of big white heads and cystic pimples, of which I still have a few, but not as many as previously, I am noticing instead individual pores are pushing up hard black heads. I continue to not touch these and usually within about 4 days, they come up and out on their own or with very gentle rubbing with my aloe juice cotton ball. Now that the breakouts are clearing, I am starting to see the true underlying damage I've caused. There are purple colored pockets and grooves and lines in my cheeks. There are purple divots by the corners of my mouth, there is a group of about 4 icepick scars on my right cheek and another further back on the same cheek. My skin is rough in areas and large clumps of hard black heads are coming up at once. As I stretch my face open in front of the mirror I see an overall rough texture to my skin, as if underneath it a whole series of breakouts await me. But there is again an overall glow of newness, aliveness and luminescence.



30-40 days no picking: The breakouts around my jawline and mouth continue, but are much more contained. They cover a much smaller area and I am usually able to predict where they will erupt based on the texture of my underlying skin when I stretch my face (by opening my mouth and eyes wide) in the mirror. I am also now experiencing some new breakouts in my cheek areas that had previously cleared. This time however they are individual pimples, one or two or three rather than 9 or 10 at a time. The divots and dents and craters have faded in color, they are now light colored and less obvious. Depending on the way the light hits them, they can be invisible. The icepick scars are still pronounced, but seem to be shrinking in circumference and filling from underneath with new skin. I still have areas where there are dark colored purple scars that are even with my skin level. Some I have kept track of have been present since the beginning of my healing. Overall texture and brightness much improved!



40-50 days no picking: Some new breakouts on my forehead, but a completely different experience. Since they are on new healthy skin, they are far less pronounced and look like anyone else's healthy skin. My mouth and jawline are much more contained. I wish I could say they were clear, but they aren't yet. New breakouts continue to erupt, but seem to clear much quicker than before. Neck breakouts are level with my skin, but dark purple scars remain. The scarring seems to have lessened in depth and numbers on my cheeks. The deep divots by my mouth are less pronounced and there appear to be fewer of them, but the texture there remains uneven, indented and slightly purple.



50-60 days no picking: The overall texture of my skin is much brighter, smoother, and luminescent. Scars are much faded and improving. Breakouts around my mouth area continue to erupt and heal and occasional breakouts further up on cheeks. Big difference in quality of breakouts. They are mostly red and quickly go through their cycle... as opposed to the breakouts that lasted 20 days in the beginning, the cycle is now about 4 days for a breakout to go through it's whole process. The individual pimples are much smaller in size and don't leave purple scarring when they leave. I can still get incredibly frustrated with the breakouts continuing, but I find fighting it's process with my frustration only increases anxiety and delays healing. I try to continue to surrender to the process and accept each day I am given as an opportunity.

I will continue to document my healing and process! But I wanted others to know that even though I've stopped picking for 2 months, the journey to healing is a long road and I'm just on the path. I also wanted to share the symptoms of the healing process to let others know that the breakouts are to be expected and that the emotions accompanying them are normal! Hopefully 6 months in I can share that the scars are gone and that the breakouts are forever gone!!