Heal emotionally from fear of acneAs a continuation of the last post, where I shared with you the major ways in which I repaired my unhealthy relationship with food, we’re going to discuss more ways in which you can work on healing the fearful emotions that go along with acne.

After all, the reason people end up with such fearful relationships with food, is not so much the food itself, but because of the fear of how acne makes us feel. And we feel like we can control those feelings if we control the food.

So the key to happy life is not controlling the food, but healing the fear and emotions.

Become Your Authentic Self (Let Go of Your “Image”)

I should have put this in the last post about how I healed my relationship with food, but the post was getting too long, so it’s in this one instead.

One of the biggest reasons acne has been so painful for me is because I have always had this image in my mind of how I wanted to be…. and well… part of that is that I wanted people (and men) to think I was beautiful and sexy!

I’m sure I’m not the only one, considering how bombarded we are these days with images of “perfect” people everywhere, making us feel like our looks are our only worth.

And that’s why acne makes us feel like such garbage, because it’s in direct opposition to that image.

Something to consider is all the other little ways that we try to live up to this “image” in our mind of how we want others to see us. The more we push away our authentic selves to try and feed this image, the more acne is going to hurt us emotionally.

Surprisingly the thing that helped me the absolute most with this was writing a particular post here on the Love Vitamin, called ‘Top 6 Insecurities I Have About My “Image” & How to Stop Caring What People Think‘.

In that article I listed and described all the little things I do (did) to keep up this image I have of myself; the image of how I want other people to perceive me.

When I wrote that, I had NO idea what an impact it would have on me. I mean, I was mentally aware of all these things, but when I saw them all written down like that, suddenly it was like ‘WOAH! How ridiculous is all this stuff!’.

After that, it was so much easier to just let go of those things (soon after, I cut off my dreadlocks), and I really do feel more like my authentic self now. And the fear about acne is no where near as strong too.

I would highly suggest spending some time and making a list of your little “image” things, and then work on letting go of them!! It’s truly eye opening.

Along with this, I would also start putting effort into developing all your talents and hobbies and projects that align with your authentic self – stuff that you can be proud of that has nothing to do with how you look. If your looks are the only thing you are proud of, then of course acne is going to hurt!

Learn to Accept Yourself Just As You Are

Love yourself

Along a similar line as the point above, a key to acne not being so emotionally painful is learning to love and accept yourself no matter what. And that means accepting yourself whether you have acne or not.

For those of you who believe in energetic or spiritual reasons for disease, acne is apparently caused by “not accepting or disliking yourself” (from Louise Hay)… which doesn’t surprise me. Most of you can relate to that in that you probably feel like you dislike yourself because of acne … but what if it was in reverse? What if you have acne because you don’t accept or like yourself?

Either way, the answer is to learn to be kinder to yourself. Treating yourself with compassion, love, acceptance, and respect – exactly the same way that you would treat a friend. If you treat yourself this way, acne isn’t going to sting so badly.

You can read more about learning to love yourself here. You also may need to work on your self awareness techniques, as I talked about in the last article (meditation can help). If you aren’t aware of your thoughts, you can’t stop yourself when you begin to put yourself down.

Another technique you can try is affirmations. Saying positive affirmations work to change the story in your head to a more positive one. Even if you don’t believe it at first, over time, the affirmation will indeed have an impact on you.

For acne, Louise Hay suggests the affirmation “The love and acceptance I have for myself is reflected in my outer appearance”… but you can definitely come up with your own if that sounds too corny for you.

Try Other Energy Healing Techniques like EFT

I already mentioned in the last article that I went and got some reiki sessions done which I believe really helped me get rid of that resonate, icky, stuck fear and pain over acne. At least it definitely coincided with when I no longer felt so fearful about it.

Supposedly when you go through a traumatic event, the emotions get imprinted into your energetic body (often referred to in terms of the body’s meridian system – a map of energetic electrical flow throughout your body), and can continue to cause you quite a bit of grief until you manage to “unstick” them. Energy healing can help you do this.

Reiki is definitely not the only energy healing option out there. Another one which is incredibly popular and apparently has one of the best track records as far as getting results is something called EFT (emotional freedom technique), sometimes just referred to as ‘tapping’.

I wrote an article about it here, and you can also read more in depth at the official EFT website (there’s about a billion different videos on youtube about it as well).

It’s a simple technique that you can do at home, although I tend to think it would be a lot easier and more effective to work with an EFT practitioner to guide you through it. I never managed to keep up with it much, but next time I’m going through something traumatic, I’m planning to try out working with an EFT practitioner.

Also, check out this guest post from Luke Sawyer, who is actually an EFT practitioner who specializes in acne.

In the comments below, share your tips and experiences with healing emotionally from acne!