I remember having this intense frustration when my skin was bad in my late twenties about my age and how a “normal” late twenties something should not have a severe acne condition like I had. I guess over time we’ve just learned to associate acne with teenagers so it’s become one of those things that doesn’t seem to fit with those of us that are a little (or a lot) older. But when you really think about what acne is, it’s perfectly normal for it to happen to anyone of any age.

Acne can of course be induced by fluctuating hormones which is why a large majority of teenagers get it. But it can also be just physical and emotional toxins coming out of the body which makes it so easy for any of us at any age to experience it.

It’s also so incredibly common for adults between the ages of 20 and 50 to “all of a sudden” break out with acne of any severity after something big has happened in their lives. From the years of writing this blog and talking to people with acne, the two most common big things to lead to an acne condition are relationship breakups and moving to a new city or country.

I realize this article may all seem like old news because I have blogged about this stuff a lot before, but I’ve been talking to a few women inside my coaching program who are feeling somewhat down about their age and their acne condition and feeling as though they’re too old for this problem. So I wanted to let ALL of us out there who are over 25 and perhaps feeling a bit like an odd one out with acne, that it is definitely not abnormal and there are in fact a lot of us out there who are experiencing the problem too.

In fact, I’m quite sure that there would be a lot more women over the age of 25 with acne if it weren’t for the high use of the contraceptive pill. The pill which is just so commonly used also often does a great job at temporarily keeping the skin clear. I’ve seen this time and time again with friends who’ve gone off the pill and experienced a breakout 3-5 months down the track.

So please do not feel that you’re too old for acne. Of course none of us want it at any age, but it should not be considered a “teenage” problem. Think of your acne as what it is - just your body releasing toxic stuff. Which you know what, is kind of a great thing because it means your body is doing an awesome job at getting those toxins out because we don’t want them inside out body!

But I still feel so embarrassed about my skin …

Yeah, we all do. Embarrassment about our skin condition is a really tough emotion to avoid. There is a reason why I’ve become really good at applying mineral makeup - months of covering up spots and scars.

Unfortunately we can’t change how others see us or how others feel about us, but we CAN change how we feel about ourselves. So stop resisting it and let yourself really feel that emotion. REALLY feel it. Then do something that makes you feel absolutely amazingly beautiful. It sounds quite superficial but I used to curl my hair, put makeup on and wear a pretty dress. It just always made me feel really beautiful and good about myself even though I had acne on my face. I took the focus of my mind off my skin and instead celebrated the feminine goddess that I am and it actually really did work at making me feel more confident and less embrassed.

If you’re a 30 or 40 something then I’d love to hear from you. Hey, by tomorrow I’ll be a 30 something too! So let us know what your experiences are with your condition, where your emotions are at and what has or hasn’t worked for you.

I avoid onion and garlic as much as I can because it gives me a funny belly, a yucky taste in my mouth that usually lasts about a day, and it increases the heat in my body so I often get redness and inflammation in my skin after eating it.

It’s unfortunate because I know how healing both onion and garlic can be to the body. I wrote an article about garlic over a year ago now and it’s an article that’s referred to a lot from the readers of this blog. Check it out if you want to learn more about why I don’t like to eat garlic - Is Garlic A Friend Or Foe For Your Skin?

Either way I’m going to keep avoiding it because it doesn’t feel right in my body and I don’t like how it makes my skin look.

So if you’re in the same boat as me and don’t like eating onion and garlic, then get your hands on some asafoetida. It’s an Indian herb so you’re most likely to find it at an Indian grocery store. If you can’t find it at any of your local grocery stores then you can buy it online.

Asafoetida comes in a powdered form so you use it just like any other powdered spice or herb. Apparently it has a really bad smell before it’s cooked which I actually didn’t notice at all when my friend was showing me so I can’t comment on that. We were making up some raw food together so we added it to a dip type thing that was uncooked and it didn’t have a strong flavor but still tasted good. You’re supposed to use it in cooking because it really brings out the flavor.

When I was researching asafoetida last night I came across a heap of information about the healing properties of the spice which is just awesome. I don’t particularly like using any food or flavoring that doesn’t provide any nutrients so this was like the icing on the cake.

Apparently asafoetida has been used as a medicine in India and China for a long time. In Indian it’s most commonly known to help reduce flatulence which is a bit weird but hey, at least you won’t have to worry about THAT problem. It’s also known to help heal respiratory disorders, influenza, toothache, impotency, and is great for women after child birth. It also helps balance out the vata dosha. I think I may have found one of my most favorite herbs of all time!!

Before I started working on the coaching program I remember sitting around with my best friend chatting about it. She asked me what I was going to do if I started to breakout with severe acne … because obviously I can’t be on camera telling people how to clear their acne when I’ve got severe acne myself!

While this did instill a certain level of fear in me on the possibility of that happening, of course I’m quite confident that I will not get severe acne again because I know how to deal with it. However, acne REALLY IS just our body trying to release yucky stuff, either physical or emotional toxins. And sometimes I have some of those so sometimes I’ll get a breakout.

In fact, I just had one!

These past few weeks have been incredibly stressful for me. The lead up to the launch of the coaching program meant that I was working on my macbook all of the time. And as a consequence my diet suffered, partly because I started eating “stress help” food, and partly because I didn’t have much time to be creative with the food I was preparing (lame excuse I know).

So the stress and the toxic food built up a little bit in my system. I ended up with not very nice headaches, fatigue, funky digestive stuff, a thicker than usual coating on my tongue in the morning, and a few spots. All of this just showed me that my body was trying to get rid of some physical and emotional toxins that had built up in my system. My digestive system was working towards getting rid of it THAT way, but my body is always trying to get rid of toxins as fast as possible which means they often come out of my skin as well.

The thing is, when you learn to be intuitive with your body and really read the signs and symptoms that you’re having, then you can’t get stressed about a breakout. Because you know exactly why you’re getting it. I could have totally freakout out when I saw a big spot on my jawline yesterday afternoon. But instead I just thought, oh that’s interesting .. at least that stuff is making its way out!

So, if you experience other bodily functions that lean so heavily towards your body just trying to get rid of toxins AND you know that you’ve been trough either extra emotional stuff or bad eating over the past few weeks, then you’ll know that your breakout is just your body getting rid of those toxins.

It really is very simple when you think about it. And even simpler to treat - the less toxic stuff we put into our body (both physically and emotionally) then the less toxic stuff has to come out!

AND just a reminder, my coaching program does close its doors in just over 24 hours so you’ll need to get in quick if you want to be part of the program. I won’t be opening again for quite some time so now’s your change Click here to sign up …

Interestingly, this dream gave me a deeper understanding of skin picking and the emotions behind “getting acne”. It showed me a new level of awareness of why a lot of us have acne, and this skin picking habit and why some of us are having so much of a difficult time kicking it.

I dreamt that I had a huge blackhead in my left cheek, which kind of looked like a thorn. This blackhead however wasn’t any ordinary blackhead, it had a strong energy around it. The energy it was holding was a current insecurity that I have in my life at the moment. In my dream I then grabbed some tweezers and pulled the blackhead thorn out, and out came my insecurity!

There are two little lessons I got from this dream, and felt them as soon as I woke up. The first was a validation of the toxic emotions we feel that create acne. I’ve read in countless books by very beautiful energetic healers that acne is created by low self esteem, insecurity and feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. The insecurity feeling in the thorny blackhead was so strong and so significant in my dream. It was like a little ball of toxic energy that was busting to get out of my body.

The second lesson was the reason why we pick. It’s almost like we are unconsciously aware that this toxic stuff in our skin holds this energy so we want to pull it all out. This makes me feel that the skin picking habit that a lot of us have goes a lot deeper than what I originally thought.

At the conscious level we can be aware that we’re actually doing it, and acknowledge the significant issues or problems in our life that create the habit. However, perhaps we also know at some level that these are just emotional toxins trying to come out of our body and we therefore want to help force them to come out even faster!!

I had a bit of a reflection today over this dream and how I feel this new level of awareness could help myself and others kick this habit. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure just yet. But I do feel that just by becoming more in tune with our body and seeing these little blackheads, whiteheads and inflammations as energy pockets of emotional toxins coming out our body can be incredibly healing. It’s also a wonderful way to become more in tune with our body and to therefore acknowledge and become aware that perhaps some emotional work needs to be done.

I’ve been getting such a beautiful insight into the acne of my readers through my coaching program. Reading through everyone’s stories and seeing pics of their skin has been an incredible learning experience for me. It’s also made me realize that the issues of skin picking and the emotional connection of acne is poorly discussed on and off the net. It’s this HUGE gap in acne treatment that is very often overlooked.

I’m going to be working a lot more on these two issues both inside my coaching program and inside this blog because I feel that nobody else is really doing it. It may seem a bit hippy-trippy at times, but I feel that’s okay because I just know that this is going to lead to some significant healing.