What about the transition from primary school to secondary school for you?

I think, yeah, in some ways like it was more accepted there because like yeah it was more common and you’re at an age where yeah like people just think that that’s quite normal. But in some ways I found that quite frustrating because people would, if anyone ever talked about it they’d be like, Oh, you know, you’ve just got some spots like big deal. whereas for me it, it was like a massive deal and like I just felt like no-one ever understood because you know, I’d had it so long already and it had such a huge impact on me and yeah I just felt like people were dismissive and wouldn’t take me seriously and yeah I think that was quite upsetting as well. and I remember like when I, because obviously I was taking this like medication and stuff and, you know, so like my friends knew and you know, I think they just sort of thought, you know, Why are you making such a big deal of it? Like it’s a phase, like it will go.

I mean for me like I look at pictures of me then and I just think that looks disgusting’ and I think that, that was part of the problem as well because I thought I looked disgusting so I thought everyone else must have thought that as well. And like I definitely told my, one of my closest friends that one time and she was just like, Well you know nobody thinks that. But it didn’t matter that nobody thought that, it was the fact that I felt like that. And like, you know, I see people with bad skin sometimes now and I just feel really sorry for them because I know what that’s like but maybe it doesn’t even affect them as much, maybe they don’t even care but like if for me it was just like a really big deal.

I think, for quite a long time it sort of defines you and it affects your day to day life. And I think it does affect your identity and how you see yourself because you sort of see yourself through that, as opposed to seeing like who you are. It just gets in the way of that. And for a while, like yeah it does, it makes you feel like less confident and like you do need to like wear make-up to look good, so yeh.

I think some people are just naturally more confident and less bothered about the way they look but, some people aren’t so, I think that just plays a role but, I think I try to be quite positive about it but sometimes it was frustrating cos I just, I didn’t want it, I just it annoyed me, like I just didn’t really understand why I had to have it so, that was quite annoying.

When I sort of started with acne a lot of them would pop so I’d have, say, tee-shirts that were covered in blood from them. But other than, I don’t really get that much now.

I did obviously have a point where say my bedding, I’d find spots of blood all over that, or they’d be bleached because of the creams but, like I say, now more or less, it’s more or less clear.

Yeah. Yeah. What, what, what was the sort of impact of if there was blood on clothing or, or bedding?

A lot of it, it depended on how it was, was washed. The, I mean, the bleached clothing I just had to get rid of it because it wouldn’t’ come out. But the blood did just seem to wash out, did the blood.

Is it something that bothered you at all, if you did see the blood?

Yeah, purely because sometime, say if it happened the morning, and I wasn’t at home, I was at school, some people might have noticed it. Thankfully I had a black jumper so I’d just wear that all day. And, so if I’d had known people would sort of spot, say, Oh, you’ve got blood on you back. So it was that sort of thing, people would notice that.

People didn’t see my other, you know, my back, they didn’t see my back Or they’d only see that if it was during P.E. and you’d have to get changed so they’d only see it then. But I’d sort of found different ways to come around that, to stop people from noticing by, say, wearing my P.E., P.E. clothes underneath my school uniform and different things like that. To just sort of save that hassle

Yeah.

of having to deal with people like that.

I think one of the main sort of things that I really worried when I had the condition, I also got acne on my chest and I got a run of scarring. So I had eventually I had treatment for that. I had steroid injections because I had keloid scarring and I think once I’d had that and they’d flattened out a lot, I felt a lot more confident then and so things started to improve at that point. So I think that’s the big sort of, for me [laughs].

Yeah, so because my scarring is in this sort of area [points to chest] I’ve got a high neck thing on now, but I didn’t buy any clothes that could possibly show it for quite a long time. Because I didn’t want anybody to see the sort of the scarring and the scabs and things. which was always a bit of a shame, because when I’d go shopping with my friends and it would be like, arr this is really nice’ and I’d be like well, I’d sort of pretended I didn’t like it so much, because I didn’t want it to show. Yeah and that sort of, that didn’t change until I was about sort of 16 and my mum went and did some shopping and she bought me some tops which I really liked and I wanted to wear despite them showing it, so.

Yeah, in Greece lots of-, well some of the girls have spots, in the girls I used to hang out with so, but like they didn’t really find it weird and none of them wore make-up so it was just like, like everyone-, like no-one would wear make-up so it was alright with me. When I came to England it all changed.

It was weird cos the first day I didn’t wear make-up because I didn’t know how it was. But I saw everyone was wearing it and they were looking at me weirdly and stuff. So I started putting make-up on after a week or so.

Yeah, well cos most of the boys in my school don’t really have acne and most of the girls don’t really-, well some of them do. The people, they just don’t really like it so I just feel awkward when I’m around boys cos I can’t really talk to them cos I just feel awkward.

If a guy gets a spot, people think oh, it’s normal, like guys get spots. But like if there’s a girl, like usually girls because they wear make-up, their skin always looks good. So, you get a girl who’s got acne or something all of a sudden she doesn’t have good skin and she will stand out a lot more. Whereas, a guy who’s got bad skin – there is probably sort of maybe two or three other guys that have got bad skin as well. So it’s just a case of, it’s less common in girls, but, well as far as I know it is, but if it does occur in a girl, obviously she can only do so much to cover it up. So it’s, yeah, and if you do, if you do try and cover it up you can still kind of see, see through it.

And it’s obviously there’s that, I think with girls obviously they care about the way they look a little bit more obviously to a certain extent guys do as well, but yeah, girls are a lot more image conscious.

Whereas, I think there should be more focus on that guys putting on make-up – maybe. Like, it’s, if you, I think, if you, because obviously the, the make-up thing you think if, if you said to me make-up’ I’d think, Oh yeah, girls, like use it to, before they go out sort of thing, or whatever. You don’t really think of guy make-up or guys using make-up. But if you give me some of the products that are out there now, which match my skin tone and cover up things quite nicely, as well as being like, as well as like letting your skin breathe and things like that, not like a thick foundation

I’d probably use it like because you can’t notice it often and if it makes you feel more confident in yourself of like, like why not?

Could I ask a bit more about confidence and your experiences with that?

Well, in my opinion you should just accept that you have spots. You can’t change it, you’ll just have to wait, be patient until they leave but certain people seem to make big deals out of it. They can either-, it can actually lead people to being depressed having spots, having to cover, cover them up, but that’s not my case I suppose.

Why do you think that might be, that you’re a bit more sort of okay about it?

Well, in my case I think as-, in my age group and generally boys I wouldn’t say I care that much about my image. It doesn’t bother me I wouldn’t mind if someone commented on me having spots but I suppose for other people it must be quite harmful and it must bother them quite a lot.

If you have trouble with your mood small things tend to have a much larger impact on how you’re feeling and if its’s like the face that you literally face the world with that’s actually significant but I think acne tends to be brushed away [in general and in terms of its impact on the acne patient’s self-esteem and mental health’] as something that is maybe, you know, they worry more if its’s like scarring types of acne but they tend to brush it off as like its’s not a particularly threatening to your health and wellbeing or it’s not threatening to your physical health very much well, you know. And, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t tend to be seen as a very serious problem but you know, I’d be interested to see, I think it will be interesting to see sort of like, you know, among people that do struggle with, you know, not necessarily like clinical levels of mental health problems or, but particularly those that concern your self-image which is quite a number of them actually I’d, you know, I’d hazard a guess that those people are people that have things that probably affected their appearance in one way or another including acne, other skin conditions things like that. you know, cos I know, you know, it’s very well documented about how obesity can contribute to depression.

people get depressed, you know, for all sorts or reasons and on their own but like I definitely think that my skin didn’t help and I think that’s probably true for a lot of my friends that had, you know, problems with their mood because you feel really bad about how you look.