Mirror, mirror, on the wall

On caring too much

Photo by Михаил Секацкий on Unsplash

Do I think too much about my skin? Do I care too much? These are questions I’ve asked myself countless times over the last 20 years. But a recent post from the wonderful Angèle on her Substack, Skin Issues, prompted me to think a bit more deeply about the topic:

“Am I too self-involved when it comes to skin problems? Can some people really brush it off? Do I listen to myself too much? Can I let it go?”

As I was pondering these questions, I read a post from another fantastic Substack-er (is that the term we’re going with?), Anita Bagwandas, which alerted me to a shocking-but-not-really statistic that the average woman checks her appearance in a mirror 38 times a day (by comparison, men apparently averaged 18 times a day).

My dad has (what I suspect to be) psoriasis but he is completely unbothered by it. I find myself buying him products, nagging him to apply them, asking him how he feels about it, and then feeling guilty that my own trauma and self-consciousness about my skin condition is overflowing onto him. In the past I found myself wondering why he doesn't care, why it doesn't consume every minute of his day, why he isn’t constantly mirror-checking to monitor its fluctuations and analysing anything that may have helped or hindered.

Why are our reactions so different? Is it because he's a man, and therefore not as scrutinised as a women in our society? Is it because he's 60-odd? Is it because he's a Yorkshireman who was brought up with a very rigid sense of masculinity (which definitely doesn't include such frivolous things as ‘skincare’ and 'worrying about your appearance')?

I find myself quite jealous of him. So much of my brain is taken up with my skin, so much of my day.

I have had rosacea for 20 years. For the entirety of my adult life I have been preoccupied with my skin: how it looks, how it feels, what I’ve done right, what I’ve done wrong, and what I can do in this moment to alter it. When my skin was completely out of control and I could think of little else, I monitored my skin obsessively. If I made a conservative guess, I would say I probably checked my skin upwards of 60 times a day. Often, the panic I felt if I wasn’t able to check my skin would trigger a flare up that would far eclipse how my skin looked before my brain prompted these checks.

Shall we add up those hours? We’ll average it out, because both my skin and my feelings about it have shifted in a more positive direction over the years, and say I’ve checked my skin 50 times a day for 20 years. Let’s say an average mirror session over those two decades would be 2 minutes: some checks were a 1-second-pocket-mirror-in-a-bar glimpse to see if my make up was intact (sometimes followed by a bathroom trip for a more indepth analysis if necessary), some were 40 minute flaggelations where I muttered horrible criticisms and sobbed until my skin burned and throbbed. If we add those minutes up, that’s 12,166 hours.

Or 507 days.

Or 72 weeks.

Or 16 and a half months.

Or 1 year and 4+ months.

Over a year of my life spent staring into reflective surfaces with horror, anxiety, hopelessness, anger, dread, apathy, sadness, or guilt.

Obviously my situation is a little bit different than most because of the job I do. For the last 12 years, I’ve been sharing my skin and my experiences with the internet. I’ve taken thousands and thousands of photos of my skin, watched hundreds of hours of video, staring at my skin in HD. I suppose over time this has replaced the mirror as my way of monitoring and scrutinising my skin. I try to capture the detail of my skin, to show the reality of my flare ups, to showcase every pore, hair, scar, line, and vein to show people that real skin is textured and imperfect.

But is it perverse to make this hyper-fixation my job, in order to tell others not to hyper-fixate? Is there a way to do this work without constantly presenting my face on a platter for others to stare at? Am I just giving them another face to obsess over?

My mantra, which you’ve probably heard me say many times, is that your skin does not define you, in fact it’s the least interesting thing about you. I wish that I could go back in time and say that to younger Lex, reaching for the mirror with a churning stomach and panic fluttering through her chest. The Lex that lost a year of her life to her reflection. But instead, I’ll say it to you. I hope that reading this post helps you to break the cycle, to realise that checking the mirror isn’t going to fix anything, it’s not going to calm your fear or make you feel better. Yes, it scratches an itch but every scratch inflames the skin and, before you know it, you’re stuck in a loop. I hope that this post can interrupt that loop, at least for a moment.

FURTHER READING:

• This article about Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD (which, looking back, was definitely what was going on but unfortunately, when I first sought help, medical professionals didn’t ask any questions about the psychological impact of my rosacea…)

• If you recognise yourself in this post, I would highly recommend talking to your doctor, or self-referring to a therapist for support. These are behaviours that are hard to stop and if you need help it is not shameful or vain. If you’re in the UK, please have a look at this website for more help.

• For general rosacea information, check out my blog HERE. I've been sharing rosacea advice for over a decade and the bulk of my work can be found there.

• You can also follow me on Instagram HERE.