God, if you're not going to miraculously heal me, then help me to cope
Did you know that laser hair removal on your face can make your face grow MORE hair instead of less? YEA! Neither did I!
2021 was the year when all hell broke loose for me — possibly quite literally.
First, it was the year that the government pitted the vaccinated against the unvaccinated. Which… then kicked off my many dives down many rabbit holes, which convinced me that society was actively collapsing, and that the unvaccinated were going to (possibly) be imminently rounded up and put into FEMA camps, or something equally dystopian. *Cue the extreme panic.*
It was also the year when I went into an unfortunate frenzy and rushed to get approved by insurance for a much regretted breast reduction. This will finally solve all my problems. It was also the year when my dentist got cement stuck up in my gums, which caused major inflammation and infection and jaw bone loss, and a cascade of health problems and immune overwhelm and histamine reactions …
Anywayyyyyyy.
It was a bad year.
One of the other bad things that happened, and very dumb things I did, included telling a laser hair removal technician to laser two barely dark hairs on my neck. These hairs were so barely there, and barely dark, that she couldn’t even see the hairs I was pointing to in full fluorescent lighting.
I’d seen the hair in my magnifying mirror, and I thought: oh hell no. This must be that PCOS facial hair that I’ve always been warned about. I’d better laser this off before it gets worse.
I showed her where the hair was on my neck. She said “I don’t see what you’re pointing at.” She told me she’d better not. But she didn’t tell me why she’d better not. So, I essentially demanded, “No no, please just spot treat it!”
I don’t remember how many times exactly, because it wasn’t notable to me then, but I may have done that 2-3 times on hairs they barely could see, over the next few months during my laser appointments for my bikini line. I also had been getting laser on my chin, where I’d also barely had any hairs, though I’d noticed that had gotten worse since doing laser, not better. Either way, I figured, some laser is better than nothing! You know?!?!
Well. Well well well. Wouldn’t you know it, but it turns out, in a cruel twist of fate, that getting laser on your face can often cause something called “paradoxical hair growth.” Where instead of it killing the hair, it stimulates your follicles to grow darker, thicker hair. Yea!
Also, specifically in my case, when there is practically no dark hair/melanin for the laser to laser in on, all it does is just… stimulates more hair growth in follicles that are only peach fuzz.
I didn’t know this.
I wish I had known this.
What I did know, and see, was that in the months after I demanded they spot laser hairs that were barely there, my chin and neck started growing more and more and more and more hair. Slowly but surely I was plucking for longer every day. And because of that, I didn’t really notice how much worse it was getting, and how quickly.
But eventually I realized… wait … wait, this is now… really bad? Is this happening because I’m so stressed and dysregulated that my hormones and PCOS symptoms are going crazy? It’s finally happening? That’s what I assumed. I thought my health was finally spiraling out of control, thanks to me totally losin’ it in the nervous system department. I didn’t know about paradoxical hair growth.
Well, actually, I did. I’d heard about it before, in passing. But I assumed (and just really hoped) I didn’t have it, because I’d gotten some laser on other areas and it seemed to have worked fine. But I didn’t realize that for some reason the face and neck is different. The face and neck are more likely to get paradoxical hair growth, even if the laser works as described on other areas of your body.
On some level, I must have known that paradoxical hair growth could be what was happening to me, because otherwise… I would have gone to get more laser on my face, wouldn’t I? I knew, on some level, that laser may have been the thing caused this explosion of hair growth… And if that was the case, laser was not going to help.
On some subconscious level, while still not wanting to admit that I’d done this to myself — I knew I was trapped. And it was my fault.
And so! My only recourse, was… a miracle. My old go to.
Plus, I’d just found God again. Real God. And I thought, now that I know real God, God is going to make my health better, and reverse this hair growth. God doesn’t want me turning into a MAN. I know THAT.
So, I began praying for a miracle. And weirdly I really… kind of… thought it was going to happen. I thought I was going to get a healing miracle, partially because I thought it was all stemming from a health thing anyway.
I didn’t know which was worse — a health hormone spiral that I couldn’t heal, or paradoxical hair growth from laser that never needed to happen, that I’d done to myself, and that more laser could not cure.
Either way, I thought and hoped there was a world where, if I could calm down, and get my hormones more normal, I may not even need a miracle to reverse the hair growth. I just needed a little help from God to improve my stress, and therefore my health, and therefore my hormones, and it would cascade into reversing the hair growth. Which… isn’t exactly how it works. In reality, once a follicle is stimulated to become dark, it doesn’t usually just reverse quickly on it’s own, no matter what is going on with your hormones. So again, that’s why I thought I needed a little extra help from ~*a miracle*~.
Ok, if I can get my health under control, and just pluck, it’ll get better in time. If I really ask God, and remind him that he wants me to be a woman… Health + God. And … this will go away. It’s got to.
But …it didn’t work! Months and now years have passed since then, and it has possibly only gotten worse. I got to a point where I’d pluck hairs for about a half hour a day thinking… wow this is so crazy, am I in denial over how bad this is because I would think I’d be crying every day but somehow I just keep on living without crying?
Then the ingrown hairs started worsening, and I started digging for ingrown hairs to tweeze them… and I got to a point where, even if I was plucking every day, and no one was seeing any hair, my neck still was all inflamed from the ingrowns.
It was bad.
And God didn’t heal me.
Eventually, defeated and panicked, I switched up my prayer. I said, ok God. Ok. If you’re not going to heal this. Please… please just help me cope. Because I don’t know how to cope.
I knew I was in some sort of denial, holding my breath — and I didn’t know how to cope with this. I knew that what I was doing, plucking, felt unsustainable.
Please, if you’re not going to heal me… just help me cope.
And I left it at that. Please just help me cope. I didn’t even know what that really meant, I just knew that… I didn’t know how to navigate it. I didn’t know how to cope.
I didn’t know how I was going to navigate life, needing to pluck hairs out of my neck for a half hour a day. What do I do about this? Especially when I’m hearing that it’s possible that laser will only make this worse, and may have been the cause to start?
Red Light Therapy
Around that time, unrelatedly, I got influenced by the red light therapy people. You know. Those people. The biohackers. Red light this red light that. It’s great for your circadian rhythm. It’s great for inflammation reduction. It’s great for collagen production.
I thought maybe I was gonna start using red light therapy on my face for like collagen and stuff. Or whatever it does. It was supposed to be good for you. I thought, ‘hey… it’s supposed to lower inflammation, so what if it could actually, reverse the hair!?!?! So, I started doing some internet research on it, hoping that maybe I’d found the answer to my hair problems. Instead I found a couple posts on reddit saying the opposite. Many people who had hormonal hair growth on their face, said that the red light therapy made them grow more hair.
First, I felt a huge let down. Darn, this isn’t the solution. In fact… it sounds like I can’t even use red light for collagen and inflammation now.
I kept reading, which took me to some other reddit groups where I found countless posts from women who suffer with facial hair. These women confirmed that they tried laser hair removal for, what often started out as minimal hair on their face, and it made their hair growth explode. Some of them developed a full dark thick beard with a 5 o’clock shadow. Some of the pictures are really shocking.
I have always been able to hide it, mostly. Well, except for the red welts from some ingrown hairs. But that just looked like acne. I luckily was not close to looking like I had a beard, and maybe it’s because I’d only had them spot treat a few places with laser, a few times?
But wow. Wow wow wow. Sooo so many people on this subreddit said that laser made their facial hair way way way wayyyyyyy worse.
And this was the first time it actually clicked, and I finally realized that this is, in fact, what happened. I thought back to the timeline. It was the laser. It actually was. It wasn’t even my epic stress, though I can’t imagine that helped either.
I did this to myself. I cannot believe it.
And then, on reddit, came the solution: People were raving about electrolysis.
I’d heard of electrolysis before but I figured it was just… old fashioned laser? Or whatever? I’d never considered it. I don’t know why. But! Many many people raved about it. And while it’s an expensive, long process, that can often take over a year for full results… it works.
And it doesn’t cause paradoxical hair growth on the face like laser. It actually just … kills and cauterizes the hair follicles. Permanently. And slowly. One by one.
Why didn’t I know about this two years ago!?!
I reached out to a local laser and electrolysis place. I told them on the phone that I did laser a few years ago, and that I think it made everything way worse. They said, “Oh, yea. That is often what happens. We never do laser on the face for that reason.” MAN. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS.
Their electrolysis appointments were booked out for weeks. So I made the soonest appointment. I got antsy. Ugh. Now that I knew this was something that would actually help, I wanted to start NOW. TODAY. PLEASE. LET’S GET THIS BALL ROLLING.
I had only been wallowing and praying for a miracle because I didn’t know there was another option. But there was.
And weird to say, but I knew… this was God helping me cope. More than cope, actually. It was the practical solution I didn’t know existed. Something like: No, I’m not performing a miracle on you Caroline. We don’t need a supernatural intervention for this one, but you can go get electrolysis, and do this the real world way.
Yes, I do have my bad little habit of trying to figure out what God is doing in the midst of what he is doing, but ….that’s what it feels like! It is an answer to a prayer, just one where I have to spend a ton of money and have red welts on my neck every week from the constant sessions where a probe cauterizes the hair follicles one by one by one.
I asked for a miracle. And the answer was no.
I asked for help to cope, and the answer was yes.
It’s been 19 weeks, or 4.5 calendar months. I went every week to start, and only now am I seeing enough of a slowing down that I can go every 2 weeks. Hopefully in a few months I’ll see more of an improvement.
And if you see me walking around with an inflamed neck this next year, it’s cause of the electrolysis sessions.
If I can’t have a miracle, just help me cope.
And he did.
Thank you, God.
⬇️ Paywalled voiceover perk for paid subscribers :-) Also a paywalled detail about why I am sharing about the hair right now, and not back when I started electrolysis….