r/AcneScars

Posting this because I genuinely couldn't figure out what was happening to my skin for months and I think others might be in the same situation without knowing it. I wasn't using any dedicated exfoliant every day like just a gentle AHA two or three times a week. I thought I was being responsible. But my skin started getting that weird rough texture that almost looks worse than before, tight and sensitive at the same time.

What I didn't realize was that my toner had mild exfoliating properties. And the serum I was layering after also has AHA in it. So even on nights I wasn't doing a real exfoliant step, I was still hitting my skin with it from two different products. I only figured it out after I ran my routine through on Thea like I'd been meaning to just sit down and cross check every ingredient list myself but honestly never got around to it, so I just used that instead. It flagged the overlap straight away which made it pretty obvious once I saw it laid out.

Pulled back on the exfoliating steps, gave my skin two weeks to recover and it calmed down a lot. I only figured it out when I sat down and went through every single ingredient list properly and mapped it all out something I honestly should have done from the start but never took the time to do. Once I saw it laid out it was obvious.

I feel like this is such a specific AB trap because the formulations are so sophisticated like actives are woven into toners, essences, serums, even things marketed as just hydrating. It doesn't feel like you're over exfoliating because you're not doing anything that looks aggressive on the surface.Has anyone else run into this? Would love to know how others keep track of overlapping ingredients across a longer routine?

i see a lot of posts asking if PIH actually fades. from my exp, yes it does… but the timeline is way longer and honestly less linear than anything i had read before. this is what it actually looked like for me

month 1-3: nothing changed. like literally nothing. i almost quit here tbh month 4-6: lighter marks started fading a bit, the ones that were already faint. the obvious ones looked exactly the same

month 7-10: this is where i finally saw real progress. medium marks maybe 50-60% lighter. deeper red ones still very visible tho

month 11-15: the stubborn marks finally started moving. slow, but noticeable if i compared properly

month 16-18: at this point most of my PIH is either gone or faint enough you wouldn’t notice unless you’re rlly looking for it. still have like 2 marks on my left cheek tho

what i used: tret 0.025% the whole time. no other actives. SPF every single morning, no skipping. that’s literally it

what didn’t help (for me): vitamin c irritated my skin and honestly slowed things down. niacinamide was fine but didn’t seem to do much. keeping things simple worked way better than anything else i tried

the part ppl don’t say clearly enough: month 3 is where most ppl quit. month 4 is when things start to move. that gap is where consistency actually matters

how far into PIH treatment are you and what does your progress look like?

Hello everybody ! I have scars from acne and decide to try CO2 Laser.I know it need 3 to 4 sessions but I am after the first one its been 2 months and the effect is ABSOLUTELY ZERO.Is it true all this a f*ckin scam and in 2026 Year we have nothing to improve this silly acne scars ? Please give me your advice, what do you do for them to dissapea? Thank you in advance!

I've been trying to fade acne scars and improve my skin texture for a while now and I thought the answer was just using more stuff. I was layering glycolic acid retinol,vitamin c, exfoliating masks basically anything I heard was good for scars but my skin just kept looking more red and uneven which was so frustrating because I was actually putting in effort and it felt like nothing was working or like my skin was just broken.

Turns out I was over exfoliating and not giving my skin any time to recover. Some of my products were also just not right for my skin type and were probably irritating it more than helping.

A dermatologist I follow recommended a skinanalzyer to keep track and log products and I downloaded it. It scans your skin and looks at your whole routine together. It basically told me I was overdoing it, that some of my steps were doing the same thing and were redundant, a few products I logged on Thea weren't even targeting what I thought they were targeting.

Once I cut my routine down and stuck to fewer things that actually made sense together my skin started calming down like way less redness and much more even

I think a lot of us assume the more the better when it comes to actives but sometimes your skin just needs less and the right combination not more products thrown at it

Has anyone else gone through this or something similar?

I have recently lost 60 lb and my OLD acne scars are becoming more pronounced. I have one spot on my cheek that I would really like to try filler in/on.

In the past I have done rounds of laser, microneedling with RF, sculptra with incision in the cheekbones. I think those all help a little but as the scars are losing the fat from my weight loss, I think I want to try a hyaluronic filler.

Exactly what kind of filler is good for this to try out? Its a small area about the size of a thrumb print of rolling scars.

which procedure actually helps acne scars?