Im so confused
Hi everyone. I’m posting this because I honestly feel pretty hopeless.
I recently went to a very well-known and very expensive dermatologist in my area, but she basically just gave me facials and didn’t really look into the root cause of my skin issues.
So, some backstory:
I had pretty much perfect skin throughout my teenage years and never really struggled with acne. But now that I’m in my thirties, I’ve started getting whiteheads on my cheeks and chin — always in the same areas. Sometimes they turn into really painful pimples.
I’m quite obsessed with skincare. I use retinol, azelaic acid, vitamin C, double cleanse, sunscreen, etc. I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself about skincare.
But when I first started getting these bumps, I thought I wasn’t cleansing enough or that I needed to “dry them out,” so I started over-exfoliating.
Later, I realized that all the over-exfoliation was probably making things worse and damaging my skin barrier.
Now I have these deep pimple marks/blemishes, and no matter what I do, I feel like they just won’t fade.
I’m currently looking into different treatments, including the CO2 laser treatment I posted the picture about. Do you think CO2 laser could actually help with these types of blemishes, or would it potentially make things worse if my skin barrier is still compromised?
Also, I hope sharing this might help someone else. Sometimes you think your skin is problematic because you’re not exfoliating enough, when in reality, you might be damaging your skin by doing too much.
I learned this the hard way. Please don’t make the same mistake I did. 😭