Skin Nightmare!

Last week I did a post about what I was using right now for my skincare, body and hair.  When I posted it, I was feeling rather smug that my skin was in tiptop condition, it hadn't reacted to anything for ages, and I hadn't had any breakouts recently... It seems to be true that pride comes before a fall, because my skin then decided to react to everything I was using and I've been desperately trying to sort it out ever since...

On Friday I travelled with a friend to a conference.  It was hot in her car as the air-conditioning had broken, and my skin started to feel really tight and horrible.  Throughout the day my skin felt worse and worse, and when I got home, after another hot car journey, my skin had gone all dry and scaley, flaking off around my mouth and chin - nice! I initially put it down to the hot conditions my face had been subjected to during the day and decided to use a harsh scrub to get the dry skin off, then a moisturising face pack and load my skin with as many oils and my most moisturising creams as possible.  In retrospect, this was not a good idea.  Everything I used started to sting my face and make it feel tighter and tighter.  Even products I've used for ages felt awful and did nothing for my skin.  I woke up on Saturday morning with worse skin than on Friday, feeling even drier and more flakey.  Again, I piled on the products and they did nothing except make my skin feel worse.  The same thing happened on Sunday - I didn't look great after my 10K race, with dry, scaley and sweaty skin!

Yesterday, with no sign of improvement, I decided to take drastic action, so I headed into Boots to get some ultra-mild and soothing skincare products.  I bought the following:

Avene Extremely Gentle Cleanser
Avene Skin Recovery Cream
Sudocream (for when everything else fails)

I immediately used the Avene Cleanser, and it didn't sting or hurt at all.  I didn't rinse it off, as you don't have to, and I used a cotton pad to clean my skin.  A thumbs up for this one.  I then used the Avene Skin Recovery Cream.  I really liked it, as it felt moisturising, again without stinging my poor skin.  However, the moisturising feel didn't last very long and it began to feel tight again (probably due to my skin's current condition and not the product).  Before I went to be, I piled on the Sudocream and my skin felt much better.

This morning I repeated this routine, including the Sudocream, which isn't a good base to apply makeup to!  I paired down my face makeup to just foundation with a bit of powder on my T-Zone, rather than all the layers I usually apply to my face. 

Currently,  my skin is feeling a bit dry and tight, but it is improved from the scalieness of yesterday, and it feels less dry.  I'm going to continue with this routine and hopefully see a bigger improvement over the next couple of days.  I've stopped using all the new products I was using last week which included:

- Sanctuary Hot Polish Cleanser
- Avon Clean and Clear Daily Facial Scrub
- Kiehl's Micro Serum
- Doozle Serum
- No 7 Protect and Perfect Day Cream
- Body America New York Cheesecake Body Wash.  This contains real strawberries, and I'm worried this may have been caused by a minor allergy to strawberries (even though I didn't use it on my face), so I thought it best to cut it out.

Once my skin has recovered, I'll slowly introduce these products one at a time to reveal the culprit - perhaps it was a combination of all of them!

What do you do when your skin decides to rebel?  Any suggestions?

Thanks for reading!  xx