23F took me way too long to figure out what my skin actually needed, progress with before and after pic included?

The before photo is from about 8 months ago and I remember exactly how I felt that day. I took it because I wanted to document how bad things had gotten and I couldn't even look at it for weeks after. Inflammatory breakouts across both cheeks, constant redness that never fully calmed down, texture that made me feel like I needed full coverage makeup just to feel okay going outside.

I'd been dealing with adult acne since I was about 19 but this was genuinely the worst it had ever been. I'd already tried so many things by this point. Multiple cleansers, vitamin C serums, retinol, different moisturizers, a prescription that just made everything drier and more irritated. I was spending money every month on something new thinking the next thing would be the one and it never was. Looking back I was probably spending close to 80 to $100 a month on products that were collectively making my skin worse not better.

The turning point was when I finally accepted that the problem wasn't that I hadn't found the right product yet like it was that my routine was actively working against itself. I had acids in my toner, my serum and my cleanser and was using them all at the same time without realizing what I was doing to my barrier. Everything was inflamed because my skin had no chance to recover between all the actives hitting it constantly.

I stripped everything back completely. Just a gentle cleanser and a basic moisturizer for about six weeks. Nothing else. It was hard because it felt like doing nothing but my skin genuinely needed that time to just calm down without being bombarded. After that I started introducing things back one at a time as azelaic acid was the first thing I added because it's gentle enough for compromised skin and addresses both active breakouts and redness.

During the rebuilding phase I started using thea too to check products before adding anything new because I genuinely didn't trust my own judgment anymore after making such a mess of things. It helped me see what was compatible with my skin and flag anything that could be causing issues like more of a sanity check than anything else at that point.

I was so paranoid about accidentally overloading my skin again that having something to cross reference gave me more confidence about what I was introducing.

SPF every single morning without exception was the other non negotiable. I'd been skipping it on days I wasn't going out which was slowing down any fading significantly.

The right photo is from this week. Still have marks to fade and my skin isn't perfect but the active inflammation is completely gone and my skin feels stable for the first time in years. If you're in the before photo stage right now I promise it's not permanent, it just takes figuring out what your skin actually needs rather than what the internet tells you to buy.