Our expert, practicing psychologist and writer Tatiana Ogneva-Salvoni tells whether this is so.
My friend said that in one program they said that acne appears because the person was not loved. This hurt me very much, I cannot get rid of acne, which started at 13 years old, and although now I am already 23, they do not go away. Is that really true?
Alina, Moscow
“From the point of view of psychosomatics, any rash on the skin is in the literal sense of the word“ rash ”of some kind of suppressed into the unconscious, unprocessed feelings, emotions, irritations from the psyche outside onto the skin. In this case, the skin is viewed as a kind of screen that immediately shows what is in the soul, roughly speaking. You can’t talk about “didn’t love”, because we are talking about the feelings of the one who developed the rash. He may have this feeling of dislike, but even this explanation is too general. In fact, the psychosomatic basis of acne is much deeper and more complex.
First of all, acne often occurs in a person who has experienced in childhood forms of violence associated with imposed shame. If the child is beaten and shamed for being in pain. If the child was the object of humiliating jokes and he was also ashamed for something that he has no power to influence. If the child was considered by someone from the adults as a sexual object, and even if there was no direct sexual influence and violence, but there was an obvious sexualization and shaming of the child for the appearance. And in this case, acne is not about love, but about this toxic imposed shame, which over the years seems to inflame and grow more and more. Despite the fact that the person is not guilty of anything, and those who behaved this way with him are guilty, but his wounded children’s part does not know about it. Therefore, it is also a form of auto-aggression.
Secondly, acne can appear as a form of defense against external bullying and rejection. Thus, a person seems to defend himself and isolate himself from communication with others. Acne has a large secondary benefit. For example, you can say that “they don’t like me because I have acne,” “acne is to blame for not going anywhere,” and so on. In this case, the rash is a consequence of low self-esteem, while it serves as a strengthening of the low self-esteem. A person who was once pecked, then begins to peck himself, for various reasons. And the rash appears as a response to this “self-poisoning”.
Thirdly, the rash sometimes reflects suicidal moods, which also appear in response to some deep internal conflicts born in early childhood. For example, a person grew up in a family with very toxic parents, at the same time they could love the child very much, but did not know how to show it. They wanted good, but used some strange methods like a belt and a shout. Then their toxic effect on the psyche of the child one day “spills out” on the skin of the maturing child by inflammatory processes.
What to do?
Of course, this always goes together, our body and psyche are interconnected – behind the psychological negative impact there are some physiological disorders, hormonal and endocrinological. Therefore, you need to act in a complex way – and go to a psychologist, work out your childhood traumas, release your “inflammatory” feelings from the soul, and go to a dermatologist with all the analyzes.