Recently a young reader expressed her feelings about feeling ugly and less worthy than her friends who have better skin or are acne-free. She wanted to know if it’s at all possible to still be beautiful with acne. After reading her email, I was left feeling deeply saddened because I personally don’t feel beautiful when my skin looks bad. After years of battling with bad skin my self-esteem is quite battered.
As I’ve written before, suffering with acne whether you’re a teen or an adult can have serious effects on how you view yourself. I personally know that there are times when my skin isn’t at it’s best and those are the times in which I become depressed, cry and basically want to withdraw from the world – I feel ugly and flawed. I also suffer from guilt because there are times when I see others who have a serious case of acne and I hate myself for complaining about the condition of my skin. Of course the flip side of that is that I envy those who have perfect skin without a single blemish, scar or enlarged pore to mar the beauty of their face – and I feel guilty about that too.
There is no doubt that feeling good about yourself is quite difficult when you feel that you don’t look so well. I personally am obsessed with the condition of my skin. Each morning I wake and feel for any new bumps – if I find one I start to stress and get depressed. When there are none I feel elated for all of five seconds because my next immediate thought is “so how long is my skin going to stay clear”. So I personally don’t feel beautiful when my skin is in chaos – I know that there are others out there who have acne and also have a strong sense of who they are – I wish I could say the same about me.
My advice to this young reader is to find a dermatologist who will take your acne seriously. Mine has always been mild and non-predictable (a lot of it hinged on my hormonal/ovarian issues) so whenever I went to a dermatologist many of them shrugged my skin concerns off as simple vanity. They would show me photos of “real” acne sufferers and of course I would feel terrible that I was concerned with a few cystic bumps, large pores and ugly blackheads. I finally found one that was sympathetic and would work with me to address my skin concerns. I truly believe the less time one suffers from acne the better off their self-esteem will be so the key is to get the acne under control as soon as possible.
Submitted by Ms. distressedDERMA on Friday, 28 September 2007