Sensitive skin skincare

I've been wanting to show you my favorite skincare products for a while and I'm finally sitting down to do it. The past few years I’ve really focused on getting my skin under control and I feel like I finally have a good routine. These are my personal skin concerns, so if you are similar you may like what I use! 

- Mild rosacea 

- Sensitive skin 

- Combination type, can be oily or dry or normal depending on season and area of my face 

- Sensitivity to Phenoxyethanol and Hyaluronic Acid in all forms and amounts. I might try HA again in the future in small amounts, but I have to completely avoid Phenoxyethanol. I'll go into how I discovered this later. 

- Recently, more oily skin and breakouts due to coming off a medication about 6 months ago

How to Find Products

Before I go on to my products I want to explain how I chose them, because a lot of people think it was as easy as a dermatologist or allergist but it was actually a lot of trial and error. 

At first I thought that choosing products labeled for sensitive skin would be enough, but I found out that this is mostly just marketing. Everyone’s body is different and you can be sensitive to literally any ingredient, or not sensitive to something that bothers a lot of other people. This is still true even if you have the same skin concerns as someone else, so even products that others with rosacea like I might not like. 

My symptoms were dry skin, burning, and occasional breakouts. My eyes also burned a lot when I wore makeup. I had already discontinued HA years beforehand after hearing from a friend that her dry skin got worse when she used it, but I knew something else had to be bothering my skin. 

Here were my steps: 

1. What I did was first cut out everything except bare necessities like a cleanser and moisturizer.
2. Then, I bought new cleanser and moisturizer with the least amount of ingredients possible. This makes the next step easier. 
3. Ingredient tracking is super important. I wrote down each ingredient my products in a spreadsheet, and as I tried each one individually I took a note of if the product was safe or irritating. This gave me a list of which makeup and skincare products were safe and which ones were not. 
4.  I compared the ingredients in the safe products to the ingredients in the irritating products, and put an x on each ingredient that was only found in the irritating products. This gave me a list of ingredients that were potentially irritating to me specifically, instead of a general list from somewhere online. 
5. For me, it became pretty obvious that phenoxyethanol was the culprit because it was in almost every product that made my skin burn. When I did more research, I found out that this ingredient is a preservative that replaced parabens and that more evidence is coming out that it triggers dry eye and rosacea symptoms. The funny thing is, I think I have no issue with parabens. My symptoms actually coincided with the whole paraben scare and companies removing those ingredients. This is why I said before not to be drawn in by marketing that something is "safer" because it just depends on your body specifically. For example any kind of apple extract makes me break out, even though that's mostly non-irritating for others.
6. Now that I know my sensitivity, I can use pretty much any product without it! I still am very cautious and patch test on a part of my cheek for several days with anything new, since there are still some things I've come across that will irritate my skin. 

Products 

Okay now that I've explained how I found them, here are the products I use every day! I have used most of these for at least a year. Some of them are unfortunately discontinued. I do not try many products and I prefer to stick with what I know won't irritate me. 

Cleanser - Beekman 1802 Milk Bar

I only cleanse at night to remove my makeup. I cleanse twice with this facial bar soap. It's super gentle and doesn't do anything other than cleanse your skin, which is perfect for me. Unfortunately it looks like this may have been discontinued and was only available on one site, so I stocked up on several bars for the last time. A bar does last me FOREVER though, so I should be good for another year or two. 

Cleanser- Philosophy Clear Days Ahead 

About once or twice a month, I will use this acne cleanser focusing on my chin and nose. It's still very gentle despite being an acne cleanser, and I can tell my skin is also a lot smoother after using it especially on my nose. I don't struggle with deep cystic acne anymore (knock on wood..), just clogged pores, so this is enough to clear those. I'm careful not to overuse it because I don't want to irritate my skin and make it breakout more. I also use acne patches when I need to. 

Makeup Remover- Garnier Micellar water Blue/Pink

My eye makeup doesn't come all the way off with just the cleanser, so I use one of these depending on if I'm wearing lashes or not. The blue one will remove lash glue but the pink one won't. I always always rinse my face again after using these, especially the blue one, so that no residue is left. 

Facial Spray- Tower 28 SOS Spray

This spray really helped as I was still flaring up. I still use it twice a day or whenever my rosacea feels flared up from stress. It has Hypochlorous acid, which is supposed to calm down irritated skin. I buy the jumbo size during the Black Friday sale and it lasts me an entire year! 

Moisturizer- Peach Slices Redness Relief

I can't even tell you how many of these I've gone through! I buy them when there is a sale at Ulta. This is a gel moisturizer which I find is easier on my skin and doesn't suffocate it. Sometimes thicker creams can make my skin feel too hot or break out. 

Night Cream- Laneige Cica Sleeping Mask

This is too thick for me to use all over my face, but my friend told me that cica was able to calm down her deep acne spots before they came to the surface so I decided to try it! I use it as a spot treatment over any cystic spots, which doesn't happen much anymore. I also use it after an acne spot clears up and the area is flakey and dry. Unfortunately, I just found out this was reformulated so I don't know if I'll rebuy it or just make do without since the new formula seems to be thinner/lighter which would defeat part of the purpose for me. 

Eye Cream- REM Beauty Energizing Undereye Balm

I only got this a few weeks ago as a Christmas present, so I'm not sure how well it works yet. I can't say I have much of a concern for my undereye areas but it was a free gift with the other REM products I asked for so I will use it up! So far no irritation which is great. 

Sunscreen- Kopari Sun Shield On the Glow 

I used to really hate SPF because it always gave me massive, painful acne. I realized I just couldn't use mineral sunscreen (again always marketed as "safer"), specifically any kind of zinc sunscreen. My rosacea is much better when I wear a daily sunscreen, and I think this also makes my skin smooth for my makeup over top of it. I was worried about the sparkles in this stick but they aren't noticeable. 

Acne Patches- Good Molecules 

This has to be the best spot patch I've ever used. They are super sticky and secure so they don't roll off overnight or during the day. 

Acne Patches- Rael Miracle Patch 

I use these retinol spot patches only when I get a cystic acne spot, which has been decently rare now. I bought them several months ago on a whim, but I can say that I think they do actually work. I alternate nights between this patch and the cica mask I mentioned earlier, and this seems to flatten the cystic patches before they come to the surface. 

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That's all for today!! Thanks for reading!