Hair Maintenance is Mental Health Maintenance
Beauty, health, and wellness businesses should be considered an Essential Service Business. After Covid many clients told me how uncomfortable they felt because they could not go to a place to either get their body hair removed or get their hair done on a regular basis. There are numerous ways people maintain their mental well-being, and sugar hair removal is a subtle way many people choose to help theirs.
My job is my passion because it’s one way I can help others, but I also regularly see another Sugar Professional. Why? Sugar hair removal on certain parts of my body is a necessary way for me to help with my anxiety. After 10 years of specializing in sugaring, and getting sugared by a professional, I finally realized the importance of getting sugared every four weeks. If I go more than four weeks without getting sugared, I find I sabotage my everyday life by stressing out about how much the process will hurt the longer I wait. This may sound ridiculous to anyone else, yet I finally realized this was a best practice for me to remove one mental obstacle.
On a personal level, hair is so much more than just something that covers your skin. For so many people it is a nuisance. How do you even have a conversation about hair being annoying to a person? You don’t! Hair can cause people to have bumps on their skin because of in-growns. These in-growns can be itchy and cause a person to itch so hard they bleed. That itching and bleeding can lead to spreading bacteria creating an infection. That infection can lead to a scab that itches and starts the whole cycle over again. For others, body hair, if not maintained, can lead to boils and cysts. Boils and cysts on areas of the body that rub can lead to infections which hurt when sitting or moving. Areas some people have a hard time maintaining are the inner thigh and backs of legs. These areas may get infected easily due to rubbing against each other, wearing leggings, the roughness of pants, from sitting down, or from sweating. As a Sugarist I have witnessed a person's skin go from angry and inflammed to smooth and comfortable because they sugared on a monthly basis and started using body care products that did not dry out their skin with alcohol-based ingredients.
Lastly, picking at your skin is a comforting pass time for many people. Have you ever put Elmer’s Glue on your arm and then peeled it off slowly when it dried? It's a weird pain that you can handle and even like. Dermatillomania is a mental health condition where a person compulsively picks or scratches their skin, causing injuries or scarring. It can look like someone tweezed a lot of their body hair or removed in-growns and created holes in the skin.
I used to wax and get really bad blackheads, in-growns, and boils afterwards. At the time, I did not realize my skin did not like waxing, or I was in denial about it, so I focused on the joy of picking at my skin creating holes and scars that will not ever go away and will continue to be a nuisance forever. Skin picking is a thing for so many people. It may create craters on the body, yet it feels really good to pick at yourself, especially if you get an in-grown. It’s crazy how much I used to attack my skin, basically excavating the area as I dug out chunks of skin. For others, myself included, sugar hair removal is a technique used to hinder mental desire to pick at the skin creating forever scars and emotional turbulence. Sugar hair removal creates smooth skin and clarity when done on a regular three to five week basis along with consistent exfoliation and moisturizing with a water-based moisturizer. This practice of sugar hair removal and home maintenance creates mental fortitude due to smooth skin that lacks bumps such as in-growns or hair. If I can’t find anything to pick, I lose the desire to pick and the obsession slowly lets go of that habit.
Hair and skin protects you from the environment such as wind and sun. Even though no one is really educated about how to maintain body hair, it is important to take note of what your skin is telling you. It is also important to become aware of how your mind and body relate to your skin, which is your body's armor from environmental elements.
Realizing after 10 years of suffering how to help myself has eased my levels of anxiety and stress. Being sugared on a regular basis opens my mind to other things instead of being mentally paralyzed because I am worried about my hair removal appointment not hurting. Sugar hair removal also helps me let go of the kind of bad desire I have to pick at my skin. Seeing clearly for me means not obsessing on hunting for an in-grown.
Hair maintenance is mental health maintenance. Supporting yourself by realizing that hair on some parts of your body may cause mental distractions such as sweating, infections or smell, and removing unwanted hair while maintaining your skin can ease your mind on a continual basis.