u/DangerousCattle7399

before 12 hours:

ten years of skincare trial and error and i feel like i finally actually understand my skin for the first time and i want to share what changed bc i think it might help people who are earlier in the journey.

the things that actually helped me understand my skin:

stopping and observing before adding anything i spent a month with just a gentle cleanser and plain moisturiser and actually paid attention to what my skin did on its own without anything else influencing it, i learned more about my actual skin in that month than in the previous nine years of adding things

understanding that products reveal ur skin they do not fix it a product cannot give u healthy skin it can only support skin that is capable of being healthy, most of my decade of frustration came from expecting products to fix things that were about barrier health, hydration, and consistency rather than ingredients

correlation is not causation but logging helps find it i used to assume i knew what was causing reactions or improvements but i was almost always wrong, actually writing things down revealed patterns i never wouldve identified otherwise

ur skin changes and what worked last year might not work this year stopped treating my routine as something to optimise once and leave forever, now i reassess every few months and adjust rather than assuming what is working now will keep working

most skin problems come down to a compromised barrier or inadequate hydration genuinley almost every skin issue i have had in ten years traces back to one of these two things, fixing the foundation before adding anything else should be the default approach

what changed ur understanding of ur own skin the most?

okay so this is specifically for uk people bc i think the british weather creates some very specific skin problems that general skincare advice doesnt address properly.

the central heating situation is genuinley serious uk homes in winter run central heating that absolutely destroys indoor humidity levels, ur skin is being dehydrated from the inside of ur house all winter and most people do not account for this, a humidifier in ur bedroom is genuinley one of the best things u can do for ur skin from november to march

the hard water issue is real in most of england hard water leaves mineral deposits on the skin that can disrupt the skin barrier over time, if ur in london or the southeast and ur skin is reactive and sensitive the water is probably a significant contributing factor, a filter shower head genuinley helps

uv still matters even in winter in the uk this is the one i see people dismiss most often, yes it is grey and rainy and depressing, the uva rays that cause ageing and pigmentation still penetrate cloud cover and still hit ur skin every single day, spf in december matters as much as spf in july for skin ageing purposes

the cold wind barrier damage is real going from cold wind outside to central heating inside repeatedly throughout winter is genuinley harsh on the skin barrier, a slightly richer moisturiser in winter is not vanity its just practical

the lack of sunlight affects skin differently than the lack of uv low light in winter can make skin look dull and grey bc of reduced circulation and vitamin d, getting outside even on overcast days genuinley helps

anyone else feel like their skin completely changes personality between summer and winter?

okay so i want to write the post i wish i had found when i was researching tret before i started bc most of what i found was either really scary or unrealistically positive and i want to give an honest middle ground.

the bad stuff that is real and u should prepare for:

purging is real and mine lasted about ten weeks, it was not subtle, my skin looked genuinley worse for two and a half months and i almost quit four separate times

the dryness around my mouth and nose was relentless for the first four months, aquaphor became my best friend and i applied it approximately constantly

my skin was visibly peeling in certain lighting for months three and four and i had to change how i applied my makeup to work around it

i could not use any other actives for the first six months without my skin reacting, had to completely strip my routine down to the basics

the good stuff that nobody really captures properly:

the texture improvement is real and it is gradual and then suddenly obvious, like u look at a photo from eight months ago and ur face looks completely different

the skin clarity is different from anything i achieved with other actives, not just clearer but genuinley more even in a structural way

the way my skin responds to other products changed, hydration actually seems to absorb properly now in a way it didnt before

my skin at one year looks better than it did at any point in my twenties and i am now 34

the honest summary: months one to four are hard, months five to eight things shift, month twelve u look back and genuinley cannot believe the difference.

what does ur one year skin look like compared to where u started?

quick breakdown of my tret journey bc i wish someone had laid it out this clearly before i started:

• month one: skin freaking out, dry patches everywhere, a few new spots, convinced i was doing it wrong
• month two: purge hit properly, chin and cheeks, looked worse than before i started, almost quit
• month three: purge slowing down but skin looking rough and uneven in this weird texture way, second guessing everything
• month four: something shifted, texture started smoothing, skin clearing properly for the first time
• month five: genuinely different skin, not perfect but clearer and smoother than it had been in years
• month six: where i am now, just maintaining, barely think about it anymore

the thing nobody tells u clearly enough is that months two and three are the hardest and most people quit right before it starts working, my derm warned me but i still almost quit at month two bc i couldnt see past how bad my skin looked on video calls every day.

what kept me going was just setting a three month rule, no quitting decisions before three months, just commit and reassess then.

routine that got me through it was dead simple, cerave hydrating cleanser, the ordinary hyaluronic acid 2% b5 on damp skin, cerave moisturising cream, tret on top three nights a week building up slowly, spf every morning, nothing else at all.

if ur in the hard months just set a date and dont make any decisions before that date.

what month did things actually start looking better for u?