No one wants to have acne control his or her life. When you pour time and money into creams, supplements, and pharmaceuticals that aren't helping your skin, you may wonder what you're doing wrong. It's not you---it's the panic and fear that drives our skincare culture and promises a "miracle cure" that never shows up. What's missing from this picture is the mind-body connection, which is a strong factor behind acne. Now there is a book to help you harness the power you have to take back your turf from those insulting and annoying pimples. Don't revolve your life around them. Learn how to separate your identity from acne and reclaim not only your skin, but also your life.
This is a fantastic book. Sometimes acne seems resistant to everything we try against it, whether external or internal. Dr. Patel noticed that the only thing her patients who beat acne had in common was a mental shift: towards getting to know who they are and what they want in life, towards standing up to acne and anyone else in their lives who was pushing them around (even subtly) and trying to get them to be a certain way, rather than themselves. When people get clear on what they want and who they are, and when they can appreciate subtle improvements rather than be blind to them because of perfectionistic all-or-nothing thinking, then things like diet and skincare can be allowed to make a difference.
In my work (as the "Stop Skin Picking Coach") I have also noticed that people who struggle most with acne and / or recovery from skin picking do commonly have these type of "bullying" interpersonal relationships that they haven't stood up to.
Acne is a bully and you have to take your life back from it and anything in your life resembling it.
Thank you Aarti for such a great guide for reclaiming your life! I have struggled with adult acne for a few years and I always find that approaching it from diet, exercise, topical treatments, etc work great up to a point, but there is a psychological and emotional element to acne that is, for me, always at the root. This book will help you address that.
This book helped me change my mentality towards having acne which has made a huge difference in my skin. Before I used to think it was normal to have acne and unusual to have clear skin, now when acne does show up I feel like it is not supposed to be there. This shift in my thinking has made acne breakouts much less common, and when I do get some acne, it goes away much more quickly now. This book is well worth reading if you feel acne has taken too much control over your life like it was doing for me.
