Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Clear skin and aging beautifully conversations, trainings and challenges by Dr. Stacey Shillington ND.
Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions
Week 6: The 8-Week Clear Skin Challenge
In our latest episode, Dr. Stacey Shillington guides listeners through the intricate connections between acne and emotional well-being. As we dive into week six of the Clear Skin Challenge, we explore how stress influences our skin and unearth actionable techniques for managing anxiety while nurturing self-love. Listening to this episode could change the way you perceive your skincare journey by emphasizing the importance of mental health.
Dr. Shillington's extensive experience reveals that the struggle with acne is often accompanied by deeper emotional turmoil. She sheds light on the trauma many face regarding their self-image and the damaging effects of perfectionist tendencies. Stress management emerges as a focal point; listeners will gain practical tools, including progressive relaxation and mindfulness techniques designed to foster peace and safety within.
This episode not only aims to provide relief for the physical symptoms of acne but equally emphasizes cultivating self-compassion and reflecting on our thoughts. Dr. Shillington encourages building awareness of harmful mindsets and replacing them with empowering affirmations to foster healing.
Concluding the episode, she outlines simple yet effective steps for listeners: establish a feeling of safety, embrace compassion for oneself, and engage in body-centered practices. By integrating these practices, you can begin to shift your nervous system from a state of survival into one of healing.
Tune in to discover transformative insights that can enhance your relationship with your skin, encourage emotional healing, and empower you on your journey to clear skin. Don't forget to leave a review for exclusive access to the first module of Dr. Shillington's Clear Skin Group Program.
Check out my new FREE Training: Clear Skin Mastery, where I share the different types of acne and how to treat each one. Click here to watch it now.
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Welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions, where we heal your acne from the inside out. Hello, beauties, and welcome to Naturopathic Beauty's Clear Skin Sessions. I'm Dr Stacey Shillington. I'm a naturopathic doctor and for the last 20 years I've been helping women heal their acne by healing their body from the inside out. This podcast is for you, is to help you on your clear skin journey. It's to help you understand why acne is happening to you and what you can do to heal it. So not only do you reclaim your beautiful skin, but also optimal health. So welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:And this is week six of my eight week clear skin challenge. So I don't know if you're just tuning in now or if you've listened to the previous episodes, but it has been a whirlwind. We have accomplished so much. If you haven't listened to the previous five episodes, go back and listen to them. So the eight-week Clear Skin Challenge is exactly what it sounds like. Over eight weeks, I give you information on what's causing acne and what you can do about it, and each week I give you a new clinical pearl, something new to incorporate into your lifestyle. So by the time you land at week six, you have probably made some really great shifts in your diet and in your lifestyle and you're hopefully seeing a reduction in your acne. That's what I'm hoping for you Now.
Speaker 1:Some of you might be experiencing complete clearing of your skin, because some of the changes that I've shared with you are really impactful. Others may be noticing a reduction in acne, maybe not a full clearing, and that's okay, because clearing your skin is a journey, and for those of us that have had deep, cystic, chronic acne for many years, there's often deeper things going on in the body. Whether it's an infection, whether it's maybe mold, toxicity, poor detoxification there's about a million different things that can be going on, and so if you haven't quite gotten there yet, don't worry. I urge you to complete the challenge, and at the end of the challenge, I'll tell you more about next steps. So welcome to week six. Week six is all about managing acne stress and, oh my gosh, I could talk about this topic for hours and hours and hours, but I'm going to try and condense some really key points for you in just about 20 minutes. So let's face it acne is traumatic. It's mentally, emotionally and physically painful, I know. For me personally, acne changed my personality. I went from being outgoing and successful to literally wanting to curl up in the fetal position and avoid the entire world until my skin cleared up.
Speaker 1:Acne has the ability to disrupt our lives and also the way that we perceive ourselves. It can really bring a woman down, and I mean it can also bring a man down. It can bring a teen down. And the thing is, is that acne really hits us where it hurts?
Speaker 1:Because how we look matters, and you can debate this with me and say no, it really shouldn't matter. We're so much more than how we look, and that's true. But it still doesn't negate the fact that how we look does matter, and historically, throughout history, people have always taken great pride in how they look. I mean even look at all the cosmetics that the ancient Egyptians used to use, how, historically, we used to decorate our bodies in different ways. But the thing is it's even more prevalent today with the use of social media, with the use of all media in general. In the past few decades, how we look matters even more prevalent.
Speaker 1:Today, with the use of social media, with the use of all media in general, in the past few decades, how we look matters even more and there's more emphasis on looking perfect, and that's really hard to take when you have acne and when you're surrounded by all these icons in our culture that are so beautiful and look so perfect. This amplifies the disappointment we feel. When we don't look that way and, for the most part, acne's right in the center of our face. It's difficult to properly cover up, it's difficult to ignore, and the truth is is that when people look at us and we have a lot of acne on our face, they do see our blemishes and this creates so much insecurity within ourselves. This goes deep into the heart of our greatest fear that we're not good enough, that we're not lovable. And this hurts. And this is why acne is so traumatic, because it hits us where it hurts the most. And we are even more susceptible to this when we're perfectionists.
Speaker 1:Now, I've seen thousands of acne patients over my career and I would say that 95% of acne patients are the same we tend to be type A, we tend to be ambitious, we tend to be hardworking, we tend to be perfectionist, we really care about what the outside world thinks of us and this leaves us very prone to anxiety, very prone to overwhelm. Our nervous systems are trapped in a state of survival. We are trapped in our sympathetic nervous systems and when we're there, when we're constantly looking for threats in our environment and acne is kind of like the cherry on top it can be crushing we feel this deeply, we feel as though we're not enough, and this can be heartbreaking, and this is why acne is so difficult, because not only does it hit us where it hurts, but it usually hits the type of people that it's going to hurt the most, and I see this again and again with my patients. They are literally crushed by acne. You know, the deepest human fear that we have is that of not being loved, and acne certainly puts us in a position where we feel that way, where those feelings are really amplified. So for every single person out there that's suffering with acne, I send you so much love and so much positive healing energy, and it really is my mission to take care of you, to help you on this journey, because it is not an easy one, but there are solutions. And the really great news about this journey is that it is designed to help you cultivate self-love. You have to learn how to love yourself, you have to learn how to balance your nervous system and get out of that state of survival in order to have success on your healing journey, and I really do believe that's what acne is.
Speaker 1:Acne is kind of like the straw that breaks the camel's back and forces us to take a look around us, to get out of survival into a state where we can relax and heal and reclaim what's ours. And what is ours is an ability to love ourselves, an ability to feel good in our own skin, because even without acne, we're often not feeling good in our own skin. Acne is an opportunity to address our beliefs, and this is really difficult because many of our beliefs are hardwired into our brain's nervous system, and the older you get, the stronger, the deeper and more automatic are the neural networks that hold these beliefs. It takes awareness and it takes dedication in order to rewrite these automatic thought patterns that leave us in a state of survival. But that's what I really want to teach you how to do today, for instance.
Speaker 1:Often these thought patterns are so deep wired that if somebody says to you and people have said this to me over the years so many times they would say Stacey, just relax, just relax. And I would think to myself, just relax, just relax. And I would think to myself I don't know how to relax. I actually don't know how to do it, and I don't know if anybody can relate with that, but that's because my body was so stuck in a state of survival, my neural pathways were so deep and so strong and my thought processes were so ingrained into me that I didn't know how to escape. I didn't know how to escape that situation and it took me a long time to figure it out. I was in deep survival panic mode.
Speaker 1:Now we know so much more. We understand the nervous system, we understand the brain and on top of that there's so many great therapies that are available to us to help us get out of that state. And I want to emphasize that when we are in that state of survival, it's really difficult for the body to heal. I have many patients and they are doing all the right things, as acne patients do. They're eating the right diet, they're taking the right supplements, they're doing everything that I'm asking them to. We've done all the testing, we've figured it all out, I've helped adjust their supplement schedule and they still are not getting better. Their skin is still breaking out. And then we have to have a heart to heart.
Speaker 1:We sit down and we really talk about it and I'm like look, it's your nervous system, your nervous system is in the way when we can start to shift out of survival mode, when we can start to get into the parasympathetic state of your nervous system. You watch, things are going to start to heal dramatically, and so we put a process in place to help balance the nervous system. And this isn't easy to do. But if it's done properly, if the awareness, if the dedication is there, then all of a sudden the body starts to detox. All of a sudden the gut starts to heal. All of a sudden the hormones start to balance, the body starts to shift into alignment when the nervous system is taken care of, and then all the supplements work beautifully, the diet works beautifully, you don't have a detox reaction anymore, sleep comes easily, your body starts to become rested, your nutrients are absorbed, magical things start to happen within the body when we're able to shift the nervous system out of survival.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to share three steps with you, the three initial steps that you can start to take to get your body out of that survival state. And the first step of getting out of survival is creating safety, telling yourself that you are safe, that there is no immediate danger and everybody's going to have to figure out how to do this in their own way. You need to be constantly aware. If you get angry, if you get frustrated, if you feel hopeless, if you feel really sad, you have to back up and say, look, I'm safe, it's okay, there's no threats around me. I do not have to be in a super vigilant place right now, and then you can utilize a tool such as your breath or meditation or progressive relaxation to help shift your thought patterns and calm the nervous system. Now, for people that are really in their heads they're overthinking, their thoughts are taking over. Progressive relaxation is probably going to be one of the very best things.
Speaker 1:Meditation Often these patients cannot meditate. They're too much in their head, their thoughts are going crazy. They're in such a state of survival they couldn't think of meditating. If this is you, you want to try something like progressive relaxation. This is where you lie down and get yourself very comfortable and then, through a pre-recorded meditation, you start to focus on different parts of your body. You focus on your feet and then your calf muscles and then your knees, and you're really getting out of your head. And when you get out of your head. When you stop those neural pathways from constantly firing, your body starts to relax. And when you do this every day, when you do this on a regular basis, your nervous system starts to relax.
Speaker 1:Now the rule of thumb is that you want to engage in these activities at least 20 minutes twice a day for 21 consecutive days, and when we put this amount of effort into the practice, the nervous system starts to learn how to shift into the parasympathetic mode. And that's when healing happens. It doesn't happen overnight. You have to be patient, you have to be persistent and you have to have a constant level of awareness. But allowing your body to feel safe is the first step to healing your nervous system. It's going to feel uncomfortable and the brain is going to try to go back to its old thought patterns. It is really going to try hard, but you have to be vigilant, you have to be stronger and you have to keep taking your thoughts back to a place that are not in survival. And that comes to the second step, and the second step is really about cultivating self-love and shifting the belief that you are not enough. This is because our thoughts create our beliefs. Therefore, we have to continually be mindful of our thoughts, and very often we are caught in thought patterns that are not helpful.
Speaker 1:Thought patterns that are like oh my God, I have another breakout, my skin looks so ugly, nobody's ever going to love me, I can't leave the house, and it keeps going over and over again. When you get started in a thought loop like that, you have to have something else prepared. You actually have to write it down on a piece of paper and say to yourself whenever I start having these thoughts, I'm going to think these thoughts instead. So, instead of going down that thought loop, you're going to say something like wow, my body is communicating with me and I'm going to take this time to understand my body. And when I understand my body, I'm going to heal. And when I heal, I am going to look and feel my most beautiful and live the life I want to live. And I'm not exaggerating. You have to start thinking thoughts that are going to manifest what you want to occur. So write down some thought, a thought pattern that you want to think instead of the current ones, and not only is this going to get you out of survival mode, but it's going to help you manifest what you want to happen, which is healing your acne, and you're going to have to do this over and over again in order to rewire those neural pathways, and the older you are, the longer it's going to take. If you're a teenager, you're really in luck, because this is not going to take long for you to get the hang of at all, whereas if you're a 45-year-old woman, it's going to take you longer because those neural pathways are much stronger.
Speaker 1:So the first and the second steps are all about feeling safe and learning how to shift our thought patterns. And then, in the third step, we have to get into our bodies. We have to get out of our head into our body, and the way that we do that is that we feel. We feel what's going on in our body. So we sit down, we close our eyes and we just notice the sensations. We notice feelings, we notice emotions. We do not attach stories and thoughts to those feelings. We just recognize what's going on in our body and then you ask yourself what you need. So, for instance, you might decide to sit down in a chair, close your eyes and you notice that you're feeling, maybe some you know. Around your heart area you're feeling some congestion, or around your throat area, you're feeling a tightening and then you ask yourself what do I need? Maybe you need to have a glass of water, maybe you need to go outside for a walk, maybe you need to hug somebody, maybe you need to play with your pet. But this is very individual and this is very spontaneous. So really getting out of your head and getting into your body is something that we need to practice, and many of my patients most of them are trapped in their heads. They don't spend enough time in their body. They're always thinking, their thoughts are taking over, their thoughts are running the show and they're not really understanding how they're feeling.
Speaker 1:I know I was like this for many years. I completely ignored how I was feeling, I ignored my body, I ignored my emotions and I was instead concentrating on how I could control the world around me so that I would be safe. That was where I was at and that was how I kept safe in this world and felt okay. But that also made me very, very ill. It put me in a state of stress where my skin was breaking out, I had chronic insomnia, my gut didn't work and eventually it led to four stress-induced heart attacks, like I was at the upper end of the stress spectrum. I had two alcoholic marriages, there was a lot of emotional abuse. I was in such a state of vigilance and my nervous system was in such a state of survival that it took me to a place where my heart actually exploded four times. That's a story for another time.
Speaker 1:But just to impress upon you, I deeply understand this process. I know what you're going through and this is a huge part of the work that I do with my patients is teaching them how to regulate their nervous system and heal their nervous system, because I promise you this is such a large part of what's going on with your acne. So this is a new skill what I'm teaching you. It's very new. I go over it in much more detail in my program. I really guide you step-by-step through it, because at first it's going to feel overwhelming, because this is completely new territory. And not only is it new territory, but it's scary territory For so many of us. We've been vigilant for so long, we've been in a state of survival for so long that to actually let go is terrifying.
Speaker 1:And I find you need a lot of support to go through this process and you need to do it at your own pace. It cannot be rushed, but you want to be thinking about it every day. You want to be aware of what's going on, and when you're aware and you're conscientious about it, things are going to start to shift faster. And when you do daily exercises like progressive relaxation, we get out of your brain into your body. When you recognize different thought patterns, all of these things really help you heal a little bit faster.
Speaker 1:All right, and the last thing that I want to leave you with is give yourself grace. Oh my gosh, give yourself so much grace, because this is this is such a big part of not only your clear skin journey, but your life journey. And I truly believe that's why you have acne right now is because your body needs you to learn something desperately. It needs you to learn how to love yourself. It needs you to learn how to get out of your state of survival. Survival because when you're in the state of survival, you're not living your best life. You're not able to relax, you're not able to enjoy the things around you. You are so busy trying to stay safe that you're going to make yourself sick. So give yourself a lot of grace on this journey. It's going to take time, it's going to be uncomfortable, but know that you are not alone. And when you finally do get into that parasympathetic nervous system, when you finally do cultivate that self-love, everything is going to change. Not only your skin, but your life is going to be more joyful, your life is going to be more pleasurable and more satisfying, and you are going to live in a state that you never thought was possible. You're going to know how to relax. It's the difference between living a life where you actually don't know how to relax to living a life where you're actually able to experience pleasure deeply.
Speaker 1:And I honor acne because it is a teacher, because acne is what has has led so many of my patients, you know, out of stress and discomfort, to living a really beautiful life. So I want you to look at acne that way. It's not a really bad thing that's happening to you. It's it's a start of something really wonderful, because when you're stuck in stress, it's not always the most fun place to be and, believe me, I'm saying this from experience. So I hope that this podcast has been insightful for you. I hope that there's been some aha moments. I have tried to navigate a really deep, complicated topic in a very short amount of time, so I hope it's not too much, but this is the information that I know you need to hear.
Speaker 1:So for week six of the clear skin journey, go through these three steps. Number one you want to cultivate safety. You are safe. Try something like progressive relaxation, where you're actually starting to relax your body by getting out of your head into your body. Start some relaxation and tell yourself you're safe because you are. You're an adult, you're able to protect yourself. Step two is noticing your thought patterns, and when you notice a thought pattern that's not beneficial, replace it with a thought pattern that is going to serve you. And then number three is to get out of your head into your body and just feel. Just feel what's going on in your body, without attaching it to any thoughts or any stories, and then ask yourself what you need. So three simple steps that take a lot of awareness to really integrate into your being, but this is the secret to healing your body.
Speaker 1:If you want to know more about how I heal acne, be sure to watch my masterclass Clear Skin Mastery. I take you through the steps to heal acne once and for all. If this podcast has been insightful and beneficial. I would love it if you could leave a review and in exchange for a positive review because this is how we reach more people I'm happy to offer you the first module of my clear skin group program for free. The link for both my masterclass and directions on how to leave a review are in the show notes, and directions on how to leave a review are in the show notes. Thank you so much, and stay tuned, because next week is week seven of the eight-week clear skin challenge and I can't wait to see you then. Have a wonderful week.