Are You In Denial About Your Rosacea?
Denial can protect us in our lowest moments, but when does that denial begin to cause harm?
"However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back" - George Orwell
I appreciate that accusing people of being in denial is a fairly aggressive way to start an essay, and I really don’t want to upset people, or cause offence, with this post. But when I think about the things that I want to share here, I always think about what I most needed to hear when I was lost in the weeds of my rosacea: when I didn’t have anyone to talk to, when doctors dismissed me, and I decided that sticking my fingers in my ears and singing lalalalala was the easiest option. So I’ve written this article as though I am talking to my sister, or my friend, or 20 year old Lex.
Because sometimes tough love is what we need.
So let’s start with the facts. Rosacea is a chronic skin condition. If someone is trying to sell you a product or a routine that ‘cured’ their rosacea, they are lying to you. There might be anecdotal stories of ‘cured’ skin, but the science simply does not back it up. I see so many charlatans online, selling hope to desperate people and it makes me furious. I have actually banned the word ‘cure’ in my Rosacea Facebook group because I genuinely believe that false hope is dangerous.
That’s not to say that there is no hope, that is not what I’m saying.
I actually do believe that many people can get their rosacea under control with a lot of work, patience, and acceptance. I would say that I have flare ups on average twice a month now, and these are usually a result of something unavoidable like stress. I have underlying redness from broken veins, which means my skin is more pink than other people’s on a day to day basis, but the actual burning, itching, pulsing flare ups are few and far between now.
And when I tell people this, they always ask me how I’ve got to this point.
I think a lot of people focus on getting rid of rosacea and returning to their ‘normal’ life, which in itself causes a lot of issues. They spend so much time and energy dreaming about their old skin, how they didn’t appreciate it at the time, and so their ultimate goal is getting back to that point.
Many people come to me wanting a silver-bullet-cure and they are often upset when I tell them that my rosacea is under control because I continue to live every single day with my rosacea in mind. I spent years finding my triggers, I changed almost every aspect of my life (thinking about diet, temperature, skincare, alcohol, work, psychological effects… the list goes on and on).
I truly wish that I could give you one skincare routine to copy, or one supplement, or one item of food to cut out, and you would be healed. But it’s just not that simple.
Denial is a completely natural (and sometimes essential) way in which our minds protect us from painful and traumatic experiences, but it’s only ever meant to be a short-term state while we get used to something new.
Over the last 12 years, I have received thousands and thousands of emails, messages, and comments from people who have just been diagnosed with rosacea and are overwhelmed, upset, and lost. They’ve seen a huge list of potential triggers and their first reaction is ‘my life is over, this list has everything I love on it, it’s too hard, I’m not doing it.’ And I had the exact same reaction. I was a 21 year-old at university and I refused to accept that drinking, diet, sleep, stress, skincare all had an impact on my skin. I wanted to enjoy my youth and I saw rosacea as something that I could just ignore until it went away.
(SPOILER: It didn’t go away)
Over the years, I’ve spoken often about the psychological aspects of rosacea and the effects they have on us. Even after years of working on my triggers and lifestyle changes, I still had a mental block when it came to my rosacea. I still had those moments of ‘why me?’ I would still look at old photos of myself and cry, I still had a small voice in the back of my head saying ‘imagine if you woke up tomorrow with a clear face…’
This is nothing short of torture. I was actively injuring myself by continuing with this mentality. How could I begin to heal my face, if my mind was stuck in the past?
There was a certain freedom in drawing a line under the face I had as a teenager and accepting that I will never have perfect skin again. I am now 41 years old - even if by some miracle my rosacea completely disappeared, I am never going to have the skin I had at 17 ever again. That’s just not realistic.
I want to be really clear, I’m not telling you to just accept your skin and give up trying to change it. But instead of working against chronic skin issues, time, and genetics, I was able to start fresh from where I was: I looked at my skin in its current state and tried to work out how to get better from there. As with most things in life, you cannot control what happens to you but you can control how you deal with it.
I think when it comes to rosacea, denial can be our way of trying to take away its control (‘I don’t care if white wine makes my face purple, I’m drinking it anyway. You’re not the boss of me!’) But really, that’s a false sense of control. The only way to take control of your rosacea is to befriend it, learn everything you can about it, and then take it down from the inside.
Mindset is such an enormous part of any kind of chronic illness, and especially one that affects your appearance. It sounds really trite and clichéd to say that healing is an inside job, but it is true.
One of the main things I’ve learned over the last 20 years is that your skin is always changing and you need to learn to roll with the punches. My rosacea has mostly been under control for the past 5 years - after a lot of work! - but, as I slide into perimenopause, I can already see the changes happening. I have to be prepared for my skin to react differently, to be more easily irritated, to be more dry, to experience hot flushes (on top of rosacea flushes? Gee thanks mother nature!), to react to the inevitable and unavoidable shifts in my hormone levels.
This is why I preach skin neutrality: the idea that our skin is just skin, that it’s an organ doing its best to protect and help us. The state of our skin doesn’t make us more loveable, worthy of respect, or kindness. So it’s really important to try to separate your worth from your appearance: we are all ageing, we are all changing, we have no control over that. Embracing that can be freeing.
Having said all of this, I think it’s important to acknowledge that I had to reach a point where my skin was so sore, and my rosacea was affecting me so much, that I had no choice but to put it on a tipping scale with my lifestyle.
I was in denial for many years, but I eventually realised that I had to look at the impact of my rosacea and decide which upset me more: my skin, or the thought of overhauling my life? When I was 21, my lifestyle won hands down, but as I got older and as my rosacea progressed, those scales began to tip. I realised that I had reached a point where the negatives of my skin (feeling uncomfortable, sad, and stressed) had more of an impact that any lifestyle choices I was clinging to.
At some point that balance will tip for you as well, if it hasn’t already. When it does, every post that I write here, and every photo I post, and every story I share from others is here to help support you.
I’m so glad you’re here.
If this post resonated with you, I would love to hear from you in the comments, even if it’s just to let me know you’re out there!
This is a great post, really enjoyed reading this and its most helpful, best thing I done was accept that this is now my skin and I need to deal with the cards that I have been dealt….. I wonder, when you say that your rosacea is under control and barely any flare ups with sore, burning skin etc, did you managed this through diet or do you use medication? I am really trying to “heal my gut” as I don’t want to use medication all the time as apparently everyone that has rosacea has a gut issue, do you believe this to be true?? Xx