The story of how I restored my skin after getting contact dermatitis from mindlessly overexfoliating ㅠㅠ

Hello everyone ㅠㅠ About a month ago, my skin turned completely red and broke out, and I really suffered a lot. I was worried that there might be some of you out there who are foolishly abusing and tormenting your skin just to make your makeup apply well, like I used to ㅠㅠ so I wanted to leave a tearful review about how I wasted all my time and money just to barely manage to restore my skin barrier, to give you a warning.

The terrible beginning of the incident was my makeup flaking in the morning. Every morning, when I painstakingly applied foundation to head to work, I absolutely hated how messy, white flakes of dead skin would appear—especially around the butterfly zone next to my nose and between my eyebrows—flaking off like a snake shedding its skin. So, during an Olive Young sale, I bought a scrub with fairly coarse granules and scrubbed my face like crazy while showering, determined to dig deep into my pores. Haha. As if that wasn't enough, every evening after washing my face, I scrubbed it vigorously with a rather harsh peeling pad packed with AHA ingredients. For the first few days, perhaps because the dead skin was peeling off, my skin felt smooth when I washed it, so I thought, "Wow, this is working amazing right away!" But...

It's been about a week, I think? Suddenly, when I got off work and washed my face, unlike usual, it felt intensely hot and stinging as if it were on fire, and my entire face was red and swollen. Even applying just the mild hydrating toner I usually use felt like being pricked by thousands of needles, and tiny, transparent, blister-like bumps—smaller than millet—popped up like crazy all over my forehead and cheeks. I was so shocked and scared that I took a half-day off work the very next morning and rushed to the dermatologist, where they diagnosed me with severe contact dermatitis. They told me that my stratum corneum had completely peeled off, leaving the skin's protective barrier against external stimuli completely gone, and the doctor scolded me severely for having peeled off my skin so recklessly.

From that day on, I canceled all my appointments, was completely banned from wearing makeup for a week, and devoted my entire focus solely to repairing my skin barrier while taking antihistamines prescribed by the doctor. I immediately stopped using harsh foam cleansers and washed my face only with lukewarm water morning and evening. I skipped all the nourishing products I usually used—toners, essences, and ampoules—and applied only a single soothing Zeroid cream sold at dermatology clinics, reapplying it frequently whenever my skin felt dry or stinging. To cool down the redness and heat on my face, I also made sure to soak cotton pads with cold saline solution bought from a pharmacy and applied a saline pack twice a day. I can't believe how much suffering I went through just because of a wrong exfoliation attempt. Everyone, please never scrub too hard; use a gentle product that dissolves dead skin cells and only do it occasionally!! If your skin barrier collapses, it is truly hell.