My skin is unhappy. Like I-hate-life-and-therefore-will-act-out unhappy. I have sensitive skin — but not so sensitive that I have dramatic reactions on an everyday basis etc. It’s just a latent sensitivity and slight redness on the apples of my cheek. On the average day, most people would not realize I have sensitive skin.
The things I have to be very careful about, though, are any deep intense treatments — I learned a long time ago to stay away from facials. Extractions seriously freak my skin out. As do any acid-based treatments — I have had some ugly burning from those. My skin also does not like cold wind. But, knowing those three things, I had managed to find a regimen that worked, and I was happy with my skin, although not thrilled. It never was quite as glowing as I wanted it to be.
Then came Project All Natural Beauty — I knew that parabens and silicones did not always make my skin happy, but until last year, was not as assiduous about avoiding them. Well — now, I have also learnt that the skin on my face is kind of an organic-I-like-all-natural-ingredients type of gal. Once I cut out parabens and silicones completely (as opposed to most of the time) my skin really started glowing. Exfoliation (always a problem as it made me red) was not that necessary, and when it was a product containing strawberry or goat’s milk did the trick — most recently I had been using a strawberry soap I found through an online seller or the Goat Milk, Oatmeal and Honey Soap from Chagrin Valley. I also learnt to listen to my skin – if it felt a little dry, I would add an oil-serum to my routine, such as this, or this, or a dab of a shea butter product— or if it felt oily would exfoliate a little more. Mostly, though, it was happy glowy skin.
Lately though, my skin has not been happy. The really cold weather in New York combined with the dry air at my office has made it angry. But those are not new conditions, so I thought I knew I what to do. To respond to the dryness I did the usual — a little more oil in my routine, a dab of Weleda Skin Food (the back-up for when a shea butter product fails).
BUT my skin felt drier and drier instead of righting its balance as it usually does (and has this whole winter, yet lately is not responding) . I was philosophical, gave it a couple of days — and then after Monday’s really cold spell, my face got all congested. It was like it was overproducing oils and going in starvation mode and holding them in to protect itself from the cold. But I still had dry patches.
Then came the thing that really pushed it over the edge — I got a cold. On top of the fact that when one is sick one’s skin take a hit, my skin does not like tissues and frequent sneezing and nose blowing. But this time, it really hated it, and it also really did not like the new Seventh Generation tissues I have started purchasing recently. I told myself I was not going back to non-recycled tissues, though — plus my skin usually likes green beauty, so it’s going to have to get over the Seventh Generation tissue issue.
Right now, my skin is not feeling good after use of any of my usual products for any of the issues it has — I have not overloaded or anything. It’s just angry and cranky. I am off tomorrow from the holiday. I will figure something new out.
P.S. Just realized that some of my redness is caused by tiny broken capillaries from all the violent sneezing and coughing I have had. Lovely.
General Disclosures & Disclaimers
