New Skincare

 My rosacea decided to act up suddenly once I started wearing my usual sunscreen again for several days.. my skin is all dried out and breaking out in weird places, and the burning feeling came back 〴⋋_⋌〵 I honestly haven’t had my skin burn so frequently in about a year. I’ve been really stressed at work, so I’m sure that doesn’t help. Some of my friends said that maybe my sunscreen expired even though it should last about a year, and that maybe it was sitting on the shelf for a really long time before I bought it. I also took a look at the ingredients and it has fragrances and phenoxyethanol which my skin can’t handle much of, so I decided to go look for a new one. The annoying thing about my skin is that a lot of sunscreens irritate it, but it seemed like last year my skin also got irritated just from taking a short walk outside without sunscreen (it’s pretty cloudy here) so I have to work something out. 

This is what I ended up buying. I tried it in the store and it’s a super thin consistency, almost like a serum. I wasn’t expecting that from the bottle, but I really liked it. I was able to try it on one of my cheeks and then wander around the store for a while, and it actually stopped the burning feeling in that cheek which I was really happy about. It was pretty expensive, but with my skin being sensitive to both phenoxyethanol and zinc, my options are pretty limited. I looked at the bottle this morning though and saw that it has an expiration date of June?! I don’t think that’s normal, so I might have to go back to the store and ask to exchange it… it’s a pretty huge bottle so I don’t think I can use the entire thing in only 2.5 months. Hopefully they have another bottle that’s newer, especially since I didn’t use it yet. Otherwise, idk what I’ll do. Maybe just return it? I probably won’t reapply during the day since I’d be wearing it under makeup if I leave the house, and otherwise I’m inside all day xD 

I’m hoping that since this formula doesn’t have any irritating ingredients and is really thin it won’t aggravate my skin. My previous sunscreen was the regular lotion type and it felt kind of thick going on, which I think is sometimes also an aggravating feeling for my rosacea. I’ve heard thick products can trap heat and make rosacea feel worse, so maybe that was part of it. 

On a similar note, I’m really sad but I think I might also be sensitive to this super expensive Dior skin tint/highlight I’ve been using. It also has a fragrance, and I am worried that since I’ve worn it a lot my skin eventually got irritated. It seems fine for me to use something that has a fragrance a couple times a month, but the repeated use seems to build up and irritate my skin o(╥﹏╥)o I’ve tried looking for a replacement but everything I can find has some ingredient I can’t use in it. I loved the Dior one because it is very shiny but it’s not glittery at all, and it does have a skin tone pigment that evens out the bit of redness I still have in my cheeks. The shininess and tiny bit of tint is enough to distract from my redness and spots, it gives my skin a sort of blurred effect.

Tbh I wish companies still used parabens because I think that I’m not sensitive to those, I’m only sensitive to phenoxyethanol which is what replaced parabens. :| I didn’t even believe that it hurt my eyes and skin for a long time because everything I read just told me how safe and harmless it was, and that barely anyone had a sensitivity to it. But as soon as I cut it out, my eyes and skin stopped burning o(╥﹏╥)o Oh well… maybe I can try to mix my own version of the Dior product by combining another liquid highlight and a skin tint or foundation. Right now I’m just letting my skin calm down for a while and not touching it until the burning sensation hasn’t happened for a few days. Hopefully once April rolls around I can find another skin tint/highlight at the Sephora sale to try out!