What skincare mistake made your acne way worse before you realized it?

I’ll go first: treating my face like it personally offended me.

Every time I broke out I would panic and throw the entire bathroom cabinet at it. Scrub? Yes. Harsh spot treatment? Obviously. Exfoliating because maybe I just needed to “clear it out”? Sure. Touching it constantly to monitor progress like I was checking stock prices? Absolutely.

And somehow my skin kept getting angrier. Weird.

I got one of those painful blind pimples last week and ended up reading a guide on treating blind pimples, which honestly made me realize I might have spent years making inflammation worse instead of better.

So now I’m curious: what was your skincare mistake that took way too long to figure out?

Over-exfoliating? Picking? Using too many actives? Following random TikTok advice? I need to feel less alone here.