Before we get into this, I’d like to clear something up, something that I feel very passionate about. Getting the regular very angry, very red, very large spot is, in my opinion, totally different to being ‘prone to breakouts’. When I am having a ‘breakout’ I experience multiple spots (some angry, some not) in various areas of my face, and I’m lucky that my breakouts are rare. However, when it comes to getting the odd whopper of a zit, I take the biscuit.
I’m sporting one right now, in fact. Perching all-too-comfortably on top of my eyebrow, it started off big. It was red, raised and extremely painful (the sort that gives you a headache when you nod your head). Luckily though, thanks to years of experience in dealing with such facial peaks, within 12 hours it was manageable and could be easily covered with some heavy-duty concealer.
But it hasn’t always been this simple for me to cope with my zits. I have spent years attempting to deal with lonely, aggressive spots, and it’s only through hard work and determination that I have discovered what works for me. And, while I’m sure my popping technique has come on leaps and bounds as I’ve picked up tips and tricks from the best poppers in the business, I put a huge amount of my success down to the products I use – and I’ve trialled a lot.
My obsession with blitzing my spots started off with a single pot of Sudocrem in my early teens. And, while it worked to help heal any post-squeezing trauma, I soon discovered its abilities in actually treating spots were limited. I moved onto pure tea tree oil and, soon enough, my entire skincare regime, from cleanser to moisturiser, was targeted at dealing with my spots and ‘breakouts’. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realised just how damaged my skin had become as a result of the harsh products I’d been using all over my entire face to help treat just one single spot.
Years older (and much wiser), I understood that tea tree wasn’t going to cut the mustard – I needed ingredients that meant business. So, I started researching various targeted spot treatments. Housing various powerhouse ingredients such as salicylic acid, sulphur and niacinamide, targeted spot treatments are applied only to the problem area and work to beat pesky blemishes once and for all. Subsequently, I bought them all. In fact, I’d go as far to say that trying out spot treatments became a bit of an obsession. Every targeted spot product I stumbled across had to be purchased and tried out, and there’s no doubt my skin improved.
However, I do have a small disclaimer. Just because my overall complexion improved, that’s not to say that loads of them don’t work. In fact, I’d go as far to say the majority did absolutely nothing. Of course the sort of spot your dealing with and how far along it is in its life will affect how well the product works, but that’s not to say you can’t tell the difference between a good and bad product. So, to save you the let down, these are the spot treatments that genuinely do help to reduce the appearance of an angry spot (you have my word)…
