Is acne holding you back from living your life? Part 2

We’ve now established that acne alone can’t actually hold you back from living your life.

(If you haven’t read Part 1, please go back and read that post first before you continue.)

So why then, do you cancel plans with friends, skip workout classes, and close yourself off from the world?

👉 Because in doing so, you feel relief.

When you don’t have to put yourself out there, you’re a little bit more comfortable. It feels a little bit safer and a little more secure.

It’s certainly better than feeling embarrassed about your skin at brunch, or feeling anxious and worried that your sweat might make you break out at the gym.

But let’s look at what’s really going on here.

When you put your life on hold like this, what you’re actually doing is temporarily pushing aside the negative emotions and choosing to look the other way.

I get it. Because who wants to feel embarrassed, insecure and anxious? Who wants to feel naked and vulnerable when you can sweep these feelings under the rug?

But here’s the thing.

When these feelings go unprocessed, they only come back stronger.

And when they do come back, they bring an entourage of other negative emotions with them.

Let’s look at an example:

You might temporarily feel better in the moment for having chosen to stay home and scroll through IG and Tiktok so you can avoid feeling uncomfortable by being seen.

But soon, you might feel guilty that you canceled on your friends. You might feel ashamed. You might even feel lonely that you can’t even tell them about what’s really going on. And you might feel a big wave of sadness come through.

Now, you have anxiety and insecurity PLUS guilt, shame, loneliness and sadness to deal with.

That’s what happens when you let acne hold you back.

That’s what happens when you avoid or resist feeling negative emotions vs. processing through them head on.

If you want to stop letting acne hold you back from living your life, you gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable.

You gotta learn how to process through these negative emotions rather than avoiding them and resisting them.

You gotta acknowledge them, let yourself feel them without making them “bad”, and ultimately thrive beyond them.

Because then and only then can you truly free yourself from the shackles of acne.