In this month’s column, Louise Thomas-Minns gets underneath the psychology of skin health and shares her personal experience of living with a skin issue
I know only too well the psychological impact of having a skin issue. I was plagued with acne from the age of 18 up until well into my thirties. That time crossed with the start of my career into the beauty and skin industry when I should be (or so perceived as) looking perfect since I was in the ‘business of skin’. Instead, I was covered with red, painful spots, inflammation, and scarring – and yet treating others for their own skin concerns or, later, teaching other professionals in (ironically) skin care products that had been designed and developed to target acne.
Because I had all these products literally at my fingertips, I totally over-treated my skin to within an inch of its life in desperation to be free of this bane – only to now understand I was making the whole situation much worse.
The reason for telling you that personal back story is to highlight the strong connection between skin and mental health. I have treated thousands of faces over my 26 years and there are very few who come to me and say: ‘I am happy in my own skin; I just want to look after it’.
There is usually always some sort of hang up, however minor, that is impacting their self-confidence. I can truly empathise with this and consider this a huge part of the way I treat clients for any skin concern since my goal is to partner with my client to achieve skin health and that means they have to be on board physically and mentally to tackle it together. The best results come when that happens.
My perception of skin health is, therefore, just that. It is treating the health of that person’s skin which encompasses the psychological connotations too.
As a skin health therapist (the clue is in the title) you are given the privilege of entering people’s worlds in confidence and are often seen as a confidant. It is in these confidential conversations that you usually get to the root of what is showing quite literally on their faces.
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