Embracing Self-Love on the Road to Clear Skin with Dr. Stacey Shillington ND

The scars of acne run far deeper than the surface, a truth I know all too well from my own turbulent journey to self-acceptance. Join me, Dr. Stacey Shillington, as I bear my soul, sharing the intimately intertwined paths of battling acne and cultivating self-love. In a society that magnifies every imperfection, this episode is a much-needed friend, offering empathy and a guiding light to those walking the tightrope between self-criticism and the quest for clear skin. From personal revelations to the pressures of beauty standards, I open up about how we can rebuild our self-perception and embrace the healing power of self-love.

This is more than just heart-to-heart; it's a roadmap to empowerment. Discover how to harness your breath and embrace meditation, transitioning your body into a state primed for healing. I will guide you through my Clear Skin Masterclass, a sanctuary of strategies for those seeking solace from hormonal acne's relentless storm. It's a detailed blueprint, from tests to treatments, to help you navigate toward clearer skin with clarity and confidence. As we conclude this episode, take my hand, and let's step together onto the path of well-being, armed with knowledge, and enveloped in the warmth of a community that understands.

Interested in my new Clear Skin Group Program? Click here to learn more!

Click here to watch my FREE Clear Skin Masterclass and learn more about the 4 pillars of clear skin and my top tips to heal acne for good.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions, where we heal your acne from the inside out. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Dr Stacey Shillington. I'm a naturopathic doctor, and this podcast is designed to help you on your clear skin journey. For the last 18 years, I've been helping women clear their skin, heal their acne from the inside out, and I know it is not easy to do that it's overwhelming because there's so much information out there and this podcast is designed to help guide you on your clear skin journey. In my 18 years of practice, I have learned a lot about acne. I've definitely learned a lot about people. I've learned a lot about myself, and I can only hope to share something that is going to help you, that's going to maybe give you that aha moment that's really going to shift things and help you take the path to clear skin. And this podcast is all about self love, because that is one thing that I find many of my patients are lacking, something that they need help cultivating. And I'm going to be honest, this has been a massive journey for me as well.

Speaker 1: 1:12

When I had very bad acne, which now is probably about 20 years ago, I was not doing very good in the self-love department at all. In fact, I think my self-confidence was so shaky and the way that I truly felt about myself was so negative that acne just completely destroyed me. I really didn't have a foundation of self-love to keep me lifted up to really help me through it confidently. It was something that just destroyed my life and, honestly, I went from being a very outgoing person, a very successful person. I had a great career. I worked at the largest ad agency in Canada. I was the youngest account supervisor to ever work there. I had a ton of friends, I was going out all the time. I had a really cool husband, even though we didn't really get along that well and once acne came into my life, everything else just crashed down around me.

Speaker 1: 2:13

Because acne destroyed my self-confidence. I didn't want to see anybody. I didn't want to do my job anymore. I honestly felt that if I couldn't look pretty, then I just wasn't worthy and I did not deserve to live the life that I had, and so I quit my job. I basically curled up in a fetal position and didn't want to see anybody or do anything until I cleared my acne. It was that bad. It had such tremendous power over me.

Speaker 1: 2:40

And when I look back now at how it affected me, I'm kind of shocked that I wasn't strong enough to really deal with acne a little bit better. But I'm also not shocked because that's the way that we are brought up in our culture. It's just a reflection of the values of our culture, and I think when we are dealing with acne it is a sign that it's time to dig deeper. It's time to start to cultivate some true love towards ourselves and really understand what we're doing here on this earth, what our journey is all about. And so that's what this podcast is about a little bit about sharing my story and a little bit about sharing some of the skills that I've learned over the years that's helped me so much to heal and to truly start to love myself.

Speaker 1: 3:30

I have to admit I'm not fully there. I think that's part of the journey Just bit by bit starting to heal ourselves and seeing the traps that we fall into, and once we're aware of them it's easier to correct our course. But that's our journey. This is our life's journey to heal, to cultivate self-love, to just share love with more people, and we are in a situation that does not make that easy. There's so many different variables around us that are constantly drawing us in another direction. So it really it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of effort to really cultivate self-love. So acne, it really is traumatic. It's mentally, it's emotionally, it's physically traumatic. It changed my personality and working with so many patients over the years, I know acne has the ability to disrupt our lives and the way that we perceive ourselves.

Speaker 1: 4:24

We may think that we love ourselves and when I was younger, before my face really broke out in acne, I thought I really loved myself. I was flying high, things were like working out for me, but underneath it all there wasn't a lot of self-love, because when all of a sudden, things didn't go well for me and I didn't look the way that I wanted to look, everything else just crashed around me. I didn't have any foundation to hold me up. And I think this is common for so many women out there, because acne really can bring a woman down. And if acne can bring a woman down, then it's a sure sign that we need to build that foundation of self-love, because in our culture, how we look matters.

Speaker 1: 5:11

Historically, our culture has placed a large emphasis on how we look and I feel it's even more prevalent today with the use of social media. When I grew up, we didn't have social media and we were concerned about how we looked, and how we looked absolutely matters. But I think it's even more so today. I mean, we weren't taking pictures all the time, so I wasn't worried about having to be perfectly photogenic and having my photos plastered all over the world. That was not my concern, and I can't even imagine how that must feel growing up today Just the pressure to always look so good, with social media surrounding us.

Speaker 1: 5:50

And even at my age I'm 50 and you know I use social media for my business all the time and I feel the pressure at 50 and I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't want to post today because I feel like I don't look that great. I look a little tired. There's these lines underneath my eyes. I don't want anybody to see them, and I feel that pressure all the time. And I see some women that are so brave and they're just going out there on social media. They look great. But even if they don't look great, they don't care, they're still out there spreading their message and I really look up to those women. I'm like, wow, I wish that I had the confidence to just go out there all the time, no matter what I look like. But the truth is how we look matters to us and part of it is just natural. As human beings, we've always cared about how we look, from the beginning of time. But I think the goal is to care about how we look, but not let it hold us back at the same time.

Speaker 1: 6:48

And acne is super difficult because it's right in the center of our face. Often it's big, it's red, it's cystic, it's pulsating, it's painful and it's right there for the whole world to see. So in a culture where how we look matters, when you have acne, this can be absolutely devastating. It's like it. It leaves us so vulnerable. We're so vulnerable when we have acne and it's so uncomfortable and it's so painful and it does create this emotion of desperation and hopelessness and fear. And it's real, it's palpable and it shifts us. And the truth is that when people look at us, they will see our blemishes and this makes us feel so insecure. It goes deep into the heart of our greatest fear and that is the fear that we're not good enough, that we're not lovable. And we're more susceptible to this when we are perfectionists, and I mean over the last 18 years dealing with acne patients.

Speaker 1: 7:56

I would say so many of us are perfectionists. We're so similar, we have so many of the same personality traits. Perfectionists we're so similar. We have so many of the same personality traits. We tend to be type A, ambitious and hardworking. And I even see this. I do a lot of organic acid testing, test neurotransmitters and I see a lot of the very same neurotransmitter patterns in people that have acne. And it's this, it's this being prone to anxiety, being prone to overwhelm, being ambitious, being hardworking and deeply.

Speaker 1: 8:30

This is a symptom of feeling as though we need to prove ourselves to be loved, that we're not enough on our own, and I think that's when we really drill down to the key belief that is actually leading us to acne it's that we're not enough on our own. I think that that's really what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to for me personally, and I think with most of the patients that I've worked with over the years, this is how they feel as well If their skin does not look beautiful, if their skin does not look beautiful, they're not worth love. You know they're not worthy of love and you know this is such a very sad, empty, hopeless feeling and it's easy to see how acne can just bring us down so easily when we look at all of these pieces together. When we look at all of these pieces together and for this type of person who doesn't feel as though they are enough, acne is incredibly difficult because it amplifies this feeling and it can be paralyzing.

Speaker 1: 9:35

So we start avoiding situations where this feeling of not being enough is amplified, because it's painful to feel this. We don't want to feel it. It's completely understandable that when you have a huge breakout, you don't want to see anybody because it's just too painful to be put in that situation where you feel as though you're not enough and I've been there and it's something that you do not want to experience. I completely understand why my patients avoid social situations when they have acne, because it brings up our deepest insecurities. And the other thing is that many women that are suffering with acne are already in a state of distress and potentially long-term distress. Acne patients have higher levels of stress and anxiety and we've seen this in the research because they're literally fighting to feel worthy as human beings and this is an incredibly painful state and it's also an incredible opportunity.

Speaker 1: 10:36

It's kind of like acne is is opening the doors and making something very clear to us. Acne is saying look at how you're feeling about yourself. I'm going to amplify this, I'm going to make it so painful that you have no choice but to look at it and address it. And this is how I've found this is what my acne journey brought me. It brought me to such a painful place that I had no choice but to take action, because I did not want to live in that pain anymore. I did not want to feel that way about my life. I did not want to feel that way about my skin. I didn't want to feel that way about me. So it forced me to take action and it forced me to take a hard look at what was really going on.

Speaker 1: 11:25

And of course, we take. We're going to start by looking at acne on a physical level. We're going to be like oh, what skin cream can I use to help solve this? Or what diet can I try to help solve this? Or maybe medications that I can take? What can I do to solve this problem? And the truth is that acne is a complex medical condition. There's not one magical cure that's going to make it go away forever. I mean even the harshest acne medication, such as Accutane. I see acne come back even after multiple rounds of Accutane, again and again, and again, because we are not addressing the root problem.

Speaker 1: 12:07

We have to look deeply when it comes to acne, because acne really is showing us something, it's telling us something, it is communicating with us that we need to look deep into our souls and understand why we're not loving ourselves and how we can learn how to love ourselves. And this is incredibly difficult because many of our beliefs have become hardwired into our brains and nervous systems. And this was really apparent to me, because in my life people would often say, oh, stacy, you just have to relax, or you're being silly, or nobody's really noticing your acne. But when people would say these things to me, I actually wouldn't even understand it. Somebody would say, stacey, you just have to relax, and I'd be like, how do I relax? Like I actually don't know how to relax, and so I would sit down and I would try to relax, but then I'd be restless and I'd get up again and I'd maybe want to read a book, or I'd want to make a cup of tea, or I'd want to, like clean out my sock drawer. I always had to be busy. My body actually couldn't relax because it's in such a state of survival.

Speaker 1: 13:15

It's in such a state of distress and I find that most of my acne patients are in deep survival. They're in panic mode and many times loved ones that are surrounding acne patients they don't understand just how much pain these people are really in. This is not something to gloss over. So I have three steps that you can start to take to cultivate self-love, to start healing those wounds. And when we heal those wounds, we're automatically going to heal our acne. And I have had so many patients that have said to me I've tried everything, I've done all the work, things didn't really start moving until I started actually loving myself. And loving yourself is not just about taking long walks or taking hot baths. It's about some deep work, deeply reformulating the way that we believe in ourselves.

Speaker 1: 14:13

And the first step is to get out of survival. We need to shift out of our sympathetic nervous system into our parasympathetic nervous system. That's always the first step in healing, because if you're in your survival nervous system, you're not going to be able to think clearly, we're not able to access our frontal lobe as well as if we're in the parasympathetic nervous. When you're in sympathetic nervous system, you're in survival. You're not thinking about how to do things better. You're not thinking about improvement. You're not thinking about how to do things better. You're not thinking about improvement. You're not thinking about love. You're thinking about surviving.

Speaker 1: 14:50

So there's a few ways that have been clinically proven actually to get out of survival. The first one is the breath, and I talk a lot about the breath in you know, I think, the third podcast episode that I released. If you want to know more about that, go back to that episode. I share a really amazing breathing technique and access to an app that's going to help you monitor your breath to actually get you out of survival. It takes practice, it takes time. It's not a one-time thing. It's not like you do one exercise you're out of survival and you're good to go. This is about commitment. This is about cultivating awareness. This is about creating rituals that are going to help you rewire your nervous system and get you out of a place where you're trying to survive and get you into a place where you're going to heal, because when you're in your survival nervous system, your body actually can't heal. Meditation is also a really important tool to help get you out of your sympathetic nervous system Changing our thought patterns I'm going to talk a little bit more about this in the next step.

Speaker 1: 15:59

But our thoughts actually create our beliefs. So if we are believing that we're not enough, if we're believing we're not lovable, it's our thoughts that have created those beliefs. So we really have to shift our thoughts in order to start to love ourselves and calming the nervous system. And there's a lot of great ways to calm the nervous system. I think breathing is really the best tool. Learning how to do a calming breath is so helpful because the breath is something you always have on you, no matter where you are or what you're doing. You have the breath to help you out and it's free. You don't have to pay for it. You're never going to run out of it. You don't have to reorder it. Learning how to breathe to calm your nervous system I think that's the very best tool that you could possibly have Now, when you start shifting out of your survival state into your parasympathetic state, it's going to feel uncomfortable because it's the unknown we are not used to being there, and that's one thing about the body it loves to be comfortable, it loves to be in a familiar state.

Speaker 1: 17:04

And we know that because, even though being in a state of survival isn't pleasurable, it's the known for our body. It's what it's used to. And so the body has a tendency to come back to what it's used to. And, the funny thing, being in a state of relaxation is actually more pleasurable. But it's difficult for us to get there because the body just loves what it knows. So it's going to feel uncomfortable to shift out of survival. But that's why you just have to keep coming back to it and be persistent and tap into that breath, tap into activities that make you good, tap into activities that make you lose time. That's a really great sign that you're in your parasympathetic nervous system. So some people, for instance, they really love painting or playing music or cooking or doing something where they think they've been doing it for 20 minutes, but actually they've been doing it for an hour and a half. If there's any activity you have that makes you feel that way, that's a great, that's a great way.

Speaker 1: 18:08

So the brain's going to keep coming back to old thoughts and feelings. That's why it's so important we have to make a daily practice. It has to be a habit. Coming into our parasympathetic nervous system has to be a daily habit, and it's going to take a lot of work for a while and then it will become our new natural state of being. And when it becomes our new natural state of being, that's when the body really starts to heal and the body really starts to shift.

Speaker 1: 18:35

So the second step is cultivating self-love. This is where we have to shift the belief that you are not enough and, as I said earlier, our thoughts create our beliefs. So we have to be continually mindful of our thoughts and this is a lot of work at the beginning, I'm not going to lie to and our thoughts are going to run away from us, and I think the very first thing we have to understand is that we are not our thoughts, and that's what meditation really helps us understand, because as we sit there, of course everybody, the goal for everybody is to clear their mind. So you sit down to meditate, you clear your mind and, before you know it, these thoughts start running through your brain and you may think that you're failing at meditation when this happens, but you're actually achieving the first goal of meditation, which is to understand that you are not your thoughts. You are the observer of your thoughts. So as you're sitting there quietly and these thoughts are racing through your brain, you realize that you're watching your thoughts, you're not your thoughts. And once you realize that, it's so empowering because you realize that you actually can control your thoughts and this is probably the biggest shift that anybody is going to make in their life realizing that they can control their thoughts. And if the thought comes into your brain that you don't like, you can stop it. You can absolutely shift to think about something different. And this is the key to shifting the belief that you are not enough. You have to believe that you are enough.

Speaker 1: 20:06

So, for instance, let's take an old thought session. Say you're sitting there in meditation or you're just sitting there doing whatever, and all of a sudden a thought comes into your brain. You're thinking about your skin, like my skin's ugly. No one's going to love me looking like this. If you catch that thought, you can change it, and you can. Instead, you can say whoa, whoa, I don't want to think that, I want to think. You know what? My body's actually beautiful, it's amazing, it's like one of the most fascinating organisms in the universe and I'm lovable, no matter what, because I'm amazing being and you have the power to do that. And that's exciting because it means you actually can shift your beliefs. And the one of the secrets is that not only do you have to change your thoughts, but you have to change the way you feel. So if we're looking at this old thought, that's, you know, my skin is ugly. No one's ever going to love me when my skin looks like this and you're feeling down about yourself, you're feeling like, oh, this sucks. But when you catch yourself and you stop that old thought and instead you embrace the new thought, like, wow, my body is really amazing. It's a self-healing, you know organism and it does so many things to stay in homeostasis. I want you to feel that. At the same time, you want to feel excited, you want to feel like whoa, and if you can capture that feeling with your new thought, that is when magic is going to happen. So you know, shifting your thoughts is one thing, but shifting your feelings is even more powerful.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Okay, so the third step is tapping into what you need. You need to ask the body. So tap into how you feel. You want to feel what's going on in your body. Are you feeling a tightness in your stomach? Are you feeling an aching in your heart? Are you feeling a lump in your throat? And you don't want to necessarily associate thoughts with those feelings. You just want to feel and you just want to sit with your feelings, let them move through you and ask yourself what you need. What do you need If you have that lump in your throat? Do you need to, like, sing a song? Maybe that will feel great? Or if you have, like a knot in your stomach, do you need to walk it out? Do you just need to go out in nature and walk around? Um, or if you're feeling really lonely, do you maybe need to talk to somebody? That's going to make you feel wonderful? Or maybe you feel tired and you need to take a break. So, understanding how the body is feeling and not associating thoughts with those feelings and then asking yourself what you need. So this is tapping into how you feel without the thoughts, and that might sound a little abstract.

Speaker 1: 22:56

I don't want to overwhelm you with all of this, because these are new skills. These are new skills. Many of us have not been taught these skills and you know, when it comes to really feeling our body without attaching thoughts to those feelings. Most people have never done that. They've never asked themselves what they truly need based on their feelings. But this is really important. Make this a daily ritual and give yourself a lot of grace, because learning to cultivate self-love, this is a new skill and, as I mentioned, it's probably going to feel foreign. It's probably going to feel uncomfortable. Don't expect to feel wonderful right away. If you expect that and it doesn't happen, you're going to give up. I want you to expect that it's going to feel uncomfortable, but I want you to keep coming back to this activity every single day until it starts to feel wonderful, and it will.

Speaker 1: 23:53

And this is the key to deeply healing acne learning to love yourself, no matter what your skin looks like, and once you're able to love yourself, healing happens quickly and easily. And you know, when you combine this work with physical healing, magic happens. It really does. It's spectacular and not only does your acne heal, but so many other parts of your life are going to heal. And truly, I believe acne is our greatest teacher. Acne is a teacher. It is communicating something to you. It's communicating that something needs to shift and you know absolutely. It can be a physical thing. It can be an infection in your gut. It can be the way that your body detoxes or drains. It can be quenching inflammation and balancing hormones, but it also often, if we take a deep enough look at it, it's going to lead us to heal our core wounds, and that is that's next level our core wounds and that is that's next level. It's so very deep and wonderful and you know, I often work with my patients at this very deep level and really amazing things happen when we put these steps into place.

Speaker 1: 25:07

So I hope that this podcast has been helpful. I hope it has not been overwhelming. I really want to talk more about this, the concept of self-love and how I see so many of my patients struggling with this and feeling deep, deep pain and desperation and unworthiness. I see this all the time and I really want to, you know, talk about this a little bit more. And it's not always an easy thing to talk about and often you don't actually hear this message until you're ready to hear this message. So everybody gets there at a different time in a different place and, believe me, it took me a long time to understand that I wasn't loving myself. I feel like I'm a very slow learner, to be honest. I feel like it takes me a long time to figure these things out, and that's why I want to share this with you, because I don't want you to have to spend years and years figuring out that, oh, I'm not, I'm not loving myself the way I need to. I really don't want you to do that. I really want to share this with you so that you can heal and you can live your best life ASAP.

Speaker 1: 26:17

So for more clear skin tips, be sure to watch my free clear skin masterclass, where I share my four pillars of clear skin. You can click the link in my show notes and, if you're ready to start your clear skin journey, check out my new hormonal acne healing program. I've just launched this and I've been thinking about this program for a long time. A lot of people that reach out to me they can't necessarily afford my one-on-one coaching. I know it's not inexpensive. It's worth it, but it's not inexpensive. But they want to still clear their skin and they need help from a practitioner, and so this program is designed either to be a self-study program, um, or you can use it with your healthcare practitioner. I give you the guidance on what testing I'm looking for. You know what the order of healing is and you know I I feel like this program is going to really help so many women heal their acne, especially when they're able to share parts of it with their healthcare practitioners, get the right testing, understand the healing that needs to happen. So the link for that program is in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 27:26

I'm sending you so much love. Have a beautiful, beautiful week, and hopefully this podcast was not overwhelming. I feel a little overwhelmed myself, so maybe that's not a good sign. But if you have any feedback at all, please be sure to leave it with me. I only want to help you and deliver you the very, very best, most heartfelt information and guidance possible. I'm sending you love. Have a great day.