Empath

school

author

Sarah St. John

Sarah supports empaths to create a thriving body, business, and life. She believes that the pathway to healing inevitably leads you to your soul's purpose.

Sarah has 13+ years of mentorship and teaching experience. She is a certified Hypnotherapist, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner, Timeline Therapy practitioner, bioenergetic practitioner, health coach, meditation teacher, EFT practitioner, yoga teacher, breathwork facilitator, vibrational crystal healer, oracle card reader, ho'oponopono practitioner, and Associative Awareness Technique trained.

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Ep. 21 How to GLOW from the inside out with Haley Ferretti

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Haley Feretti is a Holistic Skin Health Specialist who helps women look beautiful inside and out. It’s her mission to help you restore your internal health, heal your skin, and regain your self-confidence.

In this episode, you’ll hear Haley and I discuss:

both of our skin healing journeys
how it affected our confidence
natural solutions to glowing skin
opinions on birth control
the importance of detox for skin health
how healing your skin is more than an outside job
tips from Haley to get clear, hydrated skin!

Additional Resources:

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Episode Transcript:

Haley: I had no confidence for the longest time, because I was like, I want people to see me, but they’re not going to see me because I have acne. So my confidence was shot during that time. I lived in my room; I never left my room. I would either be crying or sleeping. I was highly depressed. My parents, I think at one time – they just recently told me this – were going to send me to a therapist because they were like, she’s so in her head, she’s going to … not that I was suicidal, but that I was so engulfed in this skin problem that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Sarah: Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small, and I’m a health and mindset coach for women with autoimmune disease, just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into your self-healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast as everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now let’s begin.

Hi tribe. Today I am interviewing Haley Ferretti, holistic skin health specialist. I love this conversation I had with Haley because it hits so close to home. Bumps on my face, rashes on my hands, dark pigment on my forehead. All of these things have held me back from doing the things that I love in my life. And in fact, my anxiety often manifest as skin picking, a variation of anxiety disorder called excoriation, so I was thrilled to have someone like Haley on this show. And if you check out her Instagram, you’ll see that Haley doesn’t just talk the talk. She’s been through her own amazing skin healing journey. Today you’ll hear us discuss not just how your skin is affected by external things like what you put on your face, but also how it’s an inside job. I can’t wait for you to listen and learn from Haley today. Let’s dive in so we can all have more glowing skin and radiating confidence.

Hi Haley, welcome to the show.

Haley: Hi, thanks for having me. I’m so excited.

Sarah: I am so excited to have you. I am pretty obsessed with skin health because of my own issues and struggle with having clear and even skin tone and have struggled with a lot of things that we can dive into today. But I love just starting with getting to know you better. And if you could just tell the audience a little bit of what inspires you to become a holistic skin health specialist and your own process, your own journey.

Haley: Yeah. So I struggled with skin for about probably through middle school. It was mild. It was there. No one in my school seemed to have acne; it just seemed to affect me, I felt like. I had it in middle school. I went through high school. High school was okay. Had acne still and was getting progressively worse. So around freshman year, I remember my mom taking me to see my first dermatologist and that was pretty cool. I was like, yeah, they’re going to heal my skin. I’m going to be done with this crap and yeah, it didn’t really go that way. So for years I’d be in and out of dermatologists’ office. Probably about every couple of weeks I go back, get more creams, go back, get more antibiotics. I remember one specific time, she gave me this type of medication where she’s like, if you take it too long, your skin is going to turn blue, and I remember thinking the back of my head, what is she talking about? How could she prescribe something like this, right? It’s freaking crazy.

So then I left high school and right around when I turned 19, I was old for my age. I turned 19 my freshman year of college. And I remember going back into her office cause my skin had literally erupted. I had acne covering my entire shoulder and my back, my chest, all over my face and they were not just like acne anymore. It was like a deep cyst. And I was like, this is painful. I can’t do this. I’m in college now. I don’t know any of these people. I look like a monster. How am I going to make any friends? It was a lot of things all at once. And probably stress had a lot to do with it, but it was just a lot all at once. I remember going back into her office and being like, give me something. What is causing my acne? What is going on? And she’s like, well, you’re going to have acne forever. You just got to take X, Y, and Z and continue to take them. And I’m like, I’m sick and tired of taking X, Y, and Z. It’s not giving me anything.

I had all the reactions – the skin sensitivity, the stomach upset. I was getting nauseous. I was throwing up. This medication is not doing anything good for my skin, and it was not helping me at all. I remember crying in her office, just being like, there’s nothing you can tell me that it’s causing my acne? She was like, no, it’s just genetics. You’re going to have acne. And I’m like, Oh, I’m so frustrated. I was like, all right, well, it’s nice talking to you again today. I’m never coming back. I’m going to figure this out by myself. Yeah. I literally left. I was in tears, a big, hot mess. I remember walking through the office, puddles running down my face and people are looking at me like what just happened to that girl? But I left and I was like I’m never going back in there. And from that day forward, I took my health into my own hands and I’ve been on this crazy skin healing journey ever since.

Sarah: How did your skin issues kind of manifest? You said it was kind of all over, but was it also anywhere specific on your face or anything?

Haley: So, yeah, it’s really hard to think back to where it was, but it covered my entire face. I think growing up, it was more around my temples and the sides of my face. It was never really on my cheeks. But when I turned 19 is when it coated my entire everything, jawline, chin, places I had never seen acne before, it decided to show up there

Sarah: Yeah, it can be really challenging. I was kind of the opposite. As a teenager, I had no acne. I had very clear skin and except for one. My mom called it my stress detector. I literally had a little third eye pimple. Every time I was really stressed out by that and it would just pop out, but then it would go away. It was not the end of the world. It was one little zit, right? Then in my early twenties, I’d say maybe around 22, 23 after college was all of a sudden when my skin just started freaking the ass out. I had all these stomach issues as well. It was cystic acne just like you described where it started just like little pimples or zits, but then all of a sudden, my whole face was inflamed. I had literally open wounds on my face. Had – what do you call it? – keratitis on my arms, the little white bumps. I know a lot of

Haley: Who wants that on the back of their arms? No one wants that either.

Sarah: No, especially when you’re dating, you know?

Haley: Sure. Let me cover my entire body. I’ll just wear that.

Sarah: Yeah, it can be really challenging. I was having a lot of that in my early twenties and it really didn’t discriminate on my face. It was pretty much all over, and then around that time, I also developed melasma, which for people who don’t know is dark pigmentation. I have that around my eyes, a lot on my forehead, kind of speckled. It’s mostly on my face and in those regions. Then after I was diagnosed with celiac disease, which at the time, same period as being diagnosed with celiac had literally bloody eczema all over my hands and arms.

Haley: Girl. Your body was screaming at you!

Sarah: It was sending me a message that I think we’re going to get to here, but I wasn’t listening. I was just like, Oh, go to the dermatologist, take the antibiotics. I had a staph infection so that, yeah…

Haley: Holy smokes. I can’t imagine what you looked like cause you are beautiful right now. I can’t imagine what you were going through at that time

Sarah: Oh, it was mortifying. It took a huge hit to my self-confidence, and so after celiac, the eczema, all of that, a lot of it, it did start to clear up when I changed my diet, but then I developed vitiligo. The vitiligo was actually auto-immune and you lose the pigmentation in your skin. So now I have a combination of melasma and vitiligo mostly on my forehead, but I get a little bit of the vitiligo and other patches on my face. It hasn’t presented itself anywhere else in my body. A lot of people will get it on their hands; face is pretty common as well. I feel you as far as the skin struggles.

Haley: For sure.

Sarah: I want to ask you a little bit about… because during my early to mid-twenties and only in the past few years at least, I still have to really be careful and mindful of skin health as far as the pigmentation, both the light and the dark, and I will forever to some extent, but the acne really has cleared up for me. However, during that time, I didn’t go out with my friends cause of my face. I didn’t go on dates because of my face. I didn’t go on live video because of my face. So many things I feel like it was holding me back from. Can you relate to that and can you speak to a little bit about how it affects your self-confidence?

Haley: Oh yeah. I thankfully have been with my boyfriend since really, really young. We were like in eighth grade we started dating.

Sarah: Oh my God!! I love it!

Haley: So when he went away to school, that’s when my self-esteem really took a hit. I was stressed because he was leaving, I was stressed I was going to school. And then on top of this, I had all this acne and he was away at school meeting all these cool people and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m going to go up and visit and I’m going to look like that ugly, gross girl that he’s dating. I can’t go see him. I can’t go see him like this. I was so self-conscious. I remember caking on makeup and everything and I am not a makeup person. I do not like to wear makeup. I do not know how-to put on makeup. It was just super uncomfortable. I remember making the hour and a half drive and I’m just like, I can feel it on my face and I’m crying and I don’t want to go see him like this. I’m super uncomfortable. Granted, he loved me no matter what and didn’t care what I looked like, but I guess I didn’t want to go in front of people I didn’t know as this monster-like creature. That’s what I felt like. I felt like this monster. What are these craters all over my face?

Sarah: Yeah.

Haley: Oh, I am even getting really sick about it, just thinking about how awful it was, and I wish I had better confidence back then to be like, I don’t care what anyone thinks. Now I don’t care obviously. I’m in a sports bra right now with my hair up with zero makeup on so everyone knows we don’t wear makeup now. I had no confidence for the longest time, because I was like, I want people to see me, but they’re not going to see me because I have acne. My confidence was shot during that time. I lived in my room; I never left my room. I would either be crying or sleeping. I was highly depressed. My parents, I think at one time – they just recently told me this – were going to send me to a therapist because they were like, she’s so in her head, she’s going to … not that I was suicidal, but that I was so engulfed in this skin problem that I couldn’t get out of my head that I couldn’t get out of my head.

Sarah: Yeah.

Haley: Yeah. So it was just a whole mass of things. Just thinking about it makes me so sad for myself back then. I wish I could go hug her and be like, everything’s going to be okay. You’re beautiful.

Sarah: I resonate with that too. I think we’re our own worst critic, right? Like that saying goes, we see these little spots on our face or wherever it is on your body as this giant protruding thing that is sometimes actually not nearly as bad as we make it out.

Haley: Everything looks so much bigger to our own eyes. We just see things and it looks so awful, and then if you ask someone, they would be like, Oh, I didn’t even know you had a mark on your face or I didn’t even know that was like that. They don’t see that. They see you. Well, the people that you’re supposed to have in your life see you. They don’t see your acne.

Sarah: If any of the women listening are struggling with acne right now, what is maybe the first thing that you would have them focus on, as far as the emotional side goes? Because obviously getting to the root of it is going to take a little bit longer. So, in order for them to feel confident in their skin right away, where would you start that conversation?

Haley: So a lot of the things I do with my clients right now is I have them set reminders on their phone, just things that pop up on their phone that read ‘I am beautiful’, and then I have them repeat that to themselves like three times so they can actually feel the emotion. Yeah, you can read, Oh, I feel beautiful. No. I want you to actually feel the emotions so that your body knows that you feel beautiful. So making reminders on your phone, having sticky notes on your mirror, doing nightly routines where you’re lying in bed and actually visualizing how you want to look. So it’s really hard to visualize when you’re have a reflection looking back at you and you can see the acne, but it’s way easier to visualize and you’re lying in bed and you’re like, Oh, I have such beautiful skin. My skin is glowing and you can actually picture how your skin is supposed to look really helps you get out of that self-hatred mode where you’re like, Oh, I am beautiful. Just really helps you get into that. Embrace it, embrace your feminine and to really feel yourself.

Sarah: Yes, I’ve done the sticky notes on the mirror before. I’m also a picker. I fully admit it. I think the inner perfectionist in me is a monster and she comes out and she just says, Oh, let me grab that for you. Let me get that for you. And so I would put sticky notes on my mirror to try to remind myself not to do that, but also to then affirm, you know, you’re beautiful. And then at one point same as you were feeling, I was just so down on myself because of my skin. And I had a little – I don’t even officially call it anything – but was kind of like a skin journal where I would just write. I guess I wasn’t really visualizing it, but similar to what you said where I’d be like, I have a beautiful skin. My skin is glowing.

Haley: You were manifesting it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Haley: You were actually telling your body this is what I want. I do that with my clients sometimes too. I have them set a date. I put a date three months out, four months out on the date you want to have clear skin, and I want you to actually feel that feeling of having clear skin every single day until that day.

Sarah: And it’s actually possible, right? When you get stuck in this cycle of acne, it’s like you can’t even imagine yourself not having it. You don’t want to have it, but you also can’t imagine yourself without it.

Haley: Yeah. It’s your crutch almost. Like, Oh, if I have it, then it actually means I have to go out and live my life. I have to be social. It’s really hard; it’s a scary barrier. You’re like, I have to change everything. It’s a mind hack like, Whoa, what are you talking about?

Sarah: Yeah, definitely. So I study a lot of the emotional root of illness and I talk about that a lot to my community, and I’ve studied a little bit of the emotional root of skin issues and a lot of what I’ve read is that first of all, our skin is always sending us a message and also that it can in some ways be like someone’s getting underneath your skin literally, but also our skin is our largest organ and how we communicate and touch and interact with our surroundings and the world and people in this human body. And so can you talk a little bit about what are some of the roots to skin issues, what is under the skin? What are the messages that are trying to get through when we get a breakout or some of the women in my community have psoriasis or eczema? What does this all mean?

Haley: A lot of things. So how I break it down is I’ll have my clients send me pictures of their skin, and depending on where they are breaking out or where they’re having these patches of eczema or psoriasis, your body is made up of all the different meridians based in Chinese medicine if anyone is familiar. So you have pinpoints all over your body of certain areas where your body communicates you via certain organs, so if you are breaking out in a certain part of your face or a certain part of your back or certain part of your arm, your body is literally saying, this is the organ it’s connected to and this is how I’m going to send you a message. If you are super in tune with all that Chinese medicine, all the things how your body is connected through meridians, it’s really easy to pinpoint like, oh, your liver is super irritated right now. It’s really, really slow and it’s not processing all the toxins correctly. Oh, your lymphatic system is not moving at all. We have got to get that moving, or even your spleen. There are so many different organs it could be, and honestly when you have a skin condition, all of them are affected and they all are taking on extra weight because of one organ or cause of two organs, and they all are trying to team together to fix what’s going on.

Sarah: Yeah.

Haley: Your body is one big … alright, well I’ll help your liver out for a little bit and then I’ll help your kidneys out for a little bit. But you know what? I’m going to keep sending you these messages until you help me out so I can actually heal.

Sarah: Yeah.

Haley: It could be a bunch of different things or it could be just one thing, but it’s just your organs. Your organs literally communicate with you and it’s so incredible. Once you embrace that your body is physically talking to you, that is so awesome. Everyone has ways that their body communicates to you, but if your body is communicating through your skin, love your body, give yourself a big hug right now and say thank you, because this is the sign you were looking for.

Sarah: Yeah. It can be seen as empowering, where instead of thinking our body is fighting us or against us or trying to make us antisocial, instead it is sending us a message on how to heal. Can you give at least one or two specific examples as far as so if I had jawline acne, what would that indicate?

Haley: So for me, people go back and forth on jawline acne, whether it’s hormonal or things like that. To me, hormonal acne is a little bit deeper than just surface level. A lot of people are like, Oh, I am breaking out my jawline. It’s definitely hormonal. Could be, definitely could be but if your hormones are out of whack, you probably have something to do with your liver and colon that aren’t processing and aren’t detoxifying correctly. But the other reason you could be breaking out on your jawline could be your lymphatic system. So your lymphatic system – you have lymph nodes all down your jaw line, all around your ears, your armpits. You have lymph nodes everywhere and one of the main areas you have lymph nodes is all along your jawline. So if you are using heavy, toxic products like makeup or even facial products that are weighing down your lymphatic system, it’s going to show up through your …. well everything’s connected so it’s going to show up in your lymphatic system. It’s going to show up in your hormones. It’s going to show up in your liver. It’s going to show up in your colon, one big concoctional mass.

So if you are breaking out on your jaw, definitely look at your products that you’re using. Definitely look at anything you’re putting on your face. Things that you’re eating. Everything comes back to what we’re supposed to be putting on our skin. Should be very minimal, very organic, very nontoxic. If you’re using toxic products, you probably should start eliminating all that kind of stuff. If you’re breaking out around your temples, that’s typically a sign of your liver. Same with if you’re breaking out on your eyebrows, typically liver and then if you’re breaking out in the corners of your mouth, that’s a really big indicator to me that your colon could be not processing toxins correctly.

Sarah: What about my stress detector in high school in the middle of my forehead?

Haley: For me, a lot of the forehead things has to do with gallbladder or water consumption.

Sarah: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I never drank water. Ever. I mean, I’ve got water in other sources, like food and fruits.

Haley: That’s awesome.

Sarah: I ate a very processed diet in high school.

Haley: My favorite foods in high school were probably macaroni and cheese, the big chocolate chip cookies that were in our cafeteria and oily, oily French fries. It just makes me happy thinking…. All that good stuff. No, it’s horrible for you.

Sarah: It showed up on your skin, right?

Haley: Yeah. It did years and years of damage. Yeah.

Sarah: Sugar cookie every day at lunch in high school with a turkey sandwich. Not good then and I would come home and eat a chocolate donut.

Haley: I look back and I’m like, wow, I am the complete opposite of how I was in high school, which is fine. There’s always room to grow, but I’m like, I did not eat well in high school.

Sarah: No, I know. It’s crazy. I could have had so much more energy if I was eating differently. Yeah.

Haley: I shouldn’t have to take 10 naps a day. I should have been fine.

Sarah: So I recently … have you ever heard of muscle testing?

Haley: Yes.

Sarah: Like, okay. So I use that a lot in my coaching and into my personal healing, and I did muscle testing for the first time, probably two or maybe a little bit more than two years ago, and one of the first things I ever asked when I was learning muscle testing was about my skin because it was my major pain point. It was the thing that was literally on the surface and it was really bothering me. And so I muscle tested to try to figure out what was causing inflammation in my skin and more specifically at that time of my life. I had kind of this cheekbone, between my jaw and my cheekbone acne right around my jawline, and it turned out that it was eggs. I muscle tested, found I had a sensitivity to eggs, cut eggs out of my diet ad it didn’t completely disappear, but like 75% better.

Haley: Hell yeah.

Sarah: I was so excited. And then I used muscle testing for everything after that.

Haley: That is so awesome. Yeah. I just started doing it. I was just on a retreat. We did a lot of things with Qigong and muscle testing and stuff. And one of the things they did with muscle testing was for emotional testing to see where you have emotional blocks, so you can do it with food and you can also do it with emotional blockage too.

Sarah: I love that. Yeah. And I think what you’re talking about before is so important for people to know is that maybe it’s one route, one thing, but then even if it is just one thing, it can affect multiple parts of your body. So you were saying like the jaw line, lymph, liver.

Haley: There’s so much to it. Yeah.

Sarah: Can you talk a little bit about our lymph and our liver are both part of our detoxification pathways and processes in our body. Can you talk a little bit about how to detox, the importance of detox in skin health?

Haley: Yeah. So I’m like a crazy person with detoxing. I think detoxing needs to be a part of everyday life. Probably a hundred years ago, people were detoxing regularly, and then as the years went on, we as a culture almost across the world, everyone has forgotten how to detox or the importance of detoxing. So we live in a world that is, I’m sure all your listeners know, super, super toxic. The water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe is not super, super healthy.

Sarah: It’s not just the food. I think that’s really important to point out. Maybe not everyone listening does realize that you can cut out foods that are covered in pesticides or processed, but like you just said, it’s also the air we breathe. It’s in our bed sheets and our beds, our mattresses.

Haley: Things you lay on, your clothes. It’s everywhere and unless you’re super, super aware of it, it’s hard to get everything out, and I’m not telling all of your listeners to throw their house away. Don’t do that, but take it step by step. Obviously look at the air you’re breathing. See if the air quality in your area is actually breathable. Look at the water you’re drinking. How many chemicals are in your water? I was just telling one of my clients there is a lot of chemicals and pesticides and prescriptions that you have no idea that are in your water. If you’re drinking tap water, I am a huge proponent to get off of tap water. So if you’re drinking tap water right now, look into a filter.

Sarah: Is there any you would recommend at all, or are they all about the same?

Haley: I really like my Berkey filter. I’ve used it for two years now. I know there’s better and worse ones but Berkey seems to be a good price point for a lot of my clients. You have it on your counter and you can do clean your water from the river or from anything. It’s so awesome. It makes it drinkable. There are over I want to say like 280 contaminants and all that kind of stuff. It makes the actual drinking water, because you don’t want to be drinking chemicals. That’s just going to throw down a bunch of stuff on your body.

Sarah: I grew up on tap water and when I started filtering my own water, I was joking with you how I never drank water before? Well, once I started to filter my water, I was like, Oh my God, this tastes so good.

Haley: It tastes real. It’s like your body remembers what it’s supposed to drink. I’ll be honest. I was just on a plane and they offered Dasani water. I’m like, Oh, I will starve before I drink that water. People probably think that’s crazy, but I’m not going to put that junk water in my body.

Sarah: Just because it’s bottled does not mean that it is cleared of contaminants.

Haley: Yeah. And that’s another thing. People, you need to be really cautious of the type of products you’re drinking out of or things you’re storing your food in. If you are a big person that uses plastic, I highly, highly recommend switching to glass. Plastic leaches so many chemicals and so many hormone disruptors into your water, into your food. If you feel like you have a hormone sensitivity or if your hormones are a little bit wacky, look at the things you’re storing your food and waters in. It’s really, really important.

Sarah: Yeah. We use the Pyrex snap-ons.

Haley: It’s a game changer. I’m like, this is the best thing ever. I don’t know why I never used glass before.

Sarah: It’s a little bit heavier, but it’s amazing. I don’t need more space to store it or anything.

Haley: Yeah. That’s perfect.

Sarah: Awesome. Any other detox tips that you have for us, Haley?

Haley: Yeah. You definitely need to look into finding a routine that works for you, herb-wise. There are types of herbs that you can take long-term. There are herbs you can take short term. So if you have a cold, taking Echinacea is great, but it’s not a long-term herb you should be taking cause eventually your body will reject it. But if you take certain herbs like a really good one that I love is milk thistle. You can take that long-term just to help with your liver health and help with detoxification. But yeah, looking into some really good detoxifying herbs, just depending on what your body is craving and a really good one for everyone is pretty much any liver cleansing herbs like burdock, yellow dock, milk thistle. Those are really good ones for just cleansing overall cause like I said, we live in a world that is highly toxic and having a regimen that you can continue to take day by day is just going to help your body feel that much better.

Sarah: Yeah. I do. I do milk thistle personally and I also do dandelion root tea.

Haley: Yeah. Oh yeah. Dandelion. I always forget dandelion. Dandelion is great. Parsley is great. There are so many things you can take.

Sarah: Parsley! I didn’t know that one. That’s a new one.

Haley: Yeah. Parsley is awesome. If you just want to gently heat parsley leaves, it will turn your tea green and it’ll taste literally like you’re drinking warm celery juice, but it’s so good for your skin and is so good for overall health.

Sarah: Yeah. I’m going to try that for sure. I’ve done the celery juice a little bit and I like the taste of that, so I feel like it’s the best of those two. Yeah. So what about birth control?

Haley: You’re touching on my heart. Yeah.

Sarah: I’ll tell you just a little background on me. I’ve been on a lot of forms of birth control. I was on the pill when I was younger. I’ve been off the pill for at least five or six years. But then I, in the last few years, switched to the copper IUD, had that removed just three, four months ago and it was transformational to have it out, even though there were not synthetic hormones, right. Still, inflammation in the body, but I know a lot of the women listening in my Facebook group at least are resonating with this and they’re struggling and they’re trying to figure out what’s the best thing to do. So, let’s talk about it in relation to skin health though. How can the synthetic hormones in birth control affect your skin?

Haley: First of all, none of you are deficient in synthetic birth control so you don’t need to be taking it. You’re not deficient in it. Just because your doctor said your hormone levels are off does not mean that you are deficient in synthetic hormones cause you’re not. Your body is obviously telling you through having wacky hormones that something is wrong.

Sarah: Something else?

Haley: Yeah, not necessarily that your hormones are doing anything wrong. Your hormones are doing the best they can by what you’ve been giving them. So, let’s say you’re estrogen dominant. Something in your body is giving your body the signal that they need to produce more estrogen. You don’t, but need to be able to pinpoint where the roadblock is and why your body thinks, Oh, I got to hype this up. This girl needs some more. It’s really going to mess.

Speaker 1: So yeah, if your hormones are out of whack and you’re taking a synthetic hormone, you’re going to definitely see results. I’m not saying you won’t see results, but the second you want to have children or I don’t need to be on birth control anymore is the second your body’s going to be like, wait a second. You just told me for X amount of years that I didn’t have to do anything with these hormones and now you’ve taken this thing away. So now I have to remember where to put the estrogen, where to put the testosterone, where to put the androgens, where to put the progesterone. I don’t remember. So then your body’s in this freak out mode, sending you all these different signals, sending you all these different hormones and you’re like, what in the heck is going on? Your body almost doesn’t shut down, but has a meltdown because you’ve been giving it mixed signals. Give me what you want me to do kind of thing.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It can be a really hard thing to detox from as well. Even after having been on the pill, for example, for 10 years, some people to be able to detox from that, it takes a lot of time to then rid even those synthetic hormones from your body so that your body kind of makes the estrogen again.

Haley: Yeah, cause your body is so dependent when you’re taking a synthetic birth control. You should literally just take a step back and just let your body kind of do or let this pill do what it’s supposed to, which is awesome. Your body is super responsive to things like that, but then like I said, your body forgets to a point. It won’t always forget. You just have to remind it this is what I want you to do. This is how I want it to go, and yeah, some people have no side effects at all. They won’t even notice it. I have girlfriends that go on off the birth control and they’re like, Oh yeah, I’m fine. Nothing’s changed. Nothing has ever happened. And then I have other women that I coach and they’re like, yeah, I went off my birth control three months and my face is freaking the hell out. I don’t know what happened. Everything was great. I never had acne in my life. Your body just was like, Hey, what do you want me to do with all of these hormones? I kind of don’t remember what you want me to do with them.

Sarah: Yeah, it is. I was just reflecting too a little bit on your story, and I feel like that dark place that you were in with your skin almost just prepared you for the work that you do now, right?

Haley: Oh yeah.

Sarah: It’s prepared you to step into this role to empower other women, to heal their skin and to love themselves, even with whatever spots or imperfections they might have on their skin. When you reflect on the people you’ve worked with and the clients that you’ve had, what are some of the transformations you’ve seen and have you kind of peeled back the layer on some of these women’s skin to figure out what was the root, what was the deeper layer? And I know it’s not simple at all, but if you could expand at least on maybe some situations you’ve seen to give us a better idea.

Haley: Yeah. So a lot of the women I work with are just like … and this could be just from them from years and years of just not having confidence or whatnot, but a lot of them that I work with have very low self-esteem and very low confidence. They know they’re beautiful. They know they’re gorgeous, but they don’t feel it. And when they talk to me, they just light up because they’re like, Oh, someone actually relates and someone gets what I’m talking about and I can talk to them openly and cry and be upset and get angry. I express like I want them to feel every emotion that they have around their acne. If you don’t express your emotions, you’re just going to hold it in and that’s where you’re having your first problem. If you’re holding it and you are showing resistance, your body is having a reaction, an emotional reaction and it wants you to release it.

So a lot of the women I do talk with, they are holding onto all these emotions because they’ve been told that they can’t feel sad about their skin and they can’t have emotions around being perfect or all these kinds of things. And so they hold it on and hold it on. And then when I give them permission that they are allowed to cry, they are allowed to be frustrated, they start to open up and they start to be like, okay, I get this. You can see that their heart is opening. They’re like, okay, I get this. I can breathe a little bit. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But yeah, a lot of the women I work with are just very closed off from the world, and there’s deeper things in all their stories that makes them closed off. But the more closed off you are, the harder it’s going to be for you to break through and actually get that clear skin. It’s a lot of emotional blockages that a lot of these women face. And for me personally, I was always closed off and always told to be strong, to keep it in, don’t cry kind of thing. And that has a lot to do with my story with acne too. I get that acne at some point for some people acne isn’t physically painful, but it is physically painful if you look in the mirror and you’re like, I don’t like the reflection I see. For a lot of people that don’t have acne, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you didn’t like the reflection looking back at you. That is such a hard thing to face, seeing a reflection that you don’t like, or that’s not a representation of me. I’m so much more than that reflection. It’s so much harder to get to that point of acceptance with yourself.

Sarah: Yeah. I love that. It is. It’s so much deeper and it’s your whole body. It’s not necessarily just your skin. Have you ever worked with anyone with melasma before?

Haley: No, I haven’t. Well, I take that back. I had one client that used to get it just around her upper lip, but she would only experience it when she was in the sunlight, and we kind of figured it to be hormones. She had a little bit more estrogen dominance and that kind of thing, but she would only really experience it when she was in the sun. So during the winter she never experienced it, but during the summer months, she’d always feel like I have to wear a hat. I have to wear a hat!

Sarah: That’s me. I wear sunscreen every single day, a nontoxic sunscreen.

Haley: Nontoxic being the key there.

Sarah: And I wear hats, sunglasses. I really try to protect my skin for both those dark and light spots. But as I understand it, I’ve seen a lot of people about my melasma. You can definitely lighten those areas, but it may not ever go away. For me, it’s spread to most of my face, but based on people I talked to, it’s absolutely hormonal. I remember the first time somebody told me oh, it’s your birth control pill, and of course, you know, it’s more.

Haley: It’s a little deeper than that.

Sarah: Because going off the pill didn’t make it disappear, right?

Haley: It’s still there.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I just find it so important to protect my skin. And I was also, I didn’t include this. I was like that tanning bed girl, 18 to 22 where I just wanted to be tan.

Haley: I wasn’t saying that

Sarah: I’m just saying to all the women out there, it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. Vitamin D, natural sunlight. Absolutely. Go for it.

Haley: Yeah. Get your vitamin D in. But yeah, don’t sit in the tanning bed. That doesn’t do anything good for your skin. I know a lot of the girls that are probably listening are like, Oh, I tan to get rid of my acne. Don’t do that. It’s really going to make you scar. It’s going to really mess up the layers of your skin. Don’t do it. I did in high school; was not worth it. I don’t recommend it.

Sarah: No, me either. I’ll never, never, ever do that again. Let’s talk a little bit about food too. Foods that feed the acne or clog up the liver or versus foods that are going to support the liver and help with clear skin.

Haley: Yeah. So there’s a lot. I know diet is kind of a touchy subject for a lot of people because you hear so many ‘do this, don’t do that, do this, don’t do that’. I’m plant-based. I don’t know what your diet looks like. You have a lot of grain restrictions and things like that, right?

Sarah: Yeah. I don’t have a label. I’m sort of Keto by Acne. First it was paleo. I don’t have any sugar in my diet. No sugar, no grains, no eggs. I actually just did an episode on this, on what I eat. I titled it what I eat, but why? Because you know, I’m not restricting foods for the hell of it.

Haley: No, I like to eat. Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. I really like to eat so yeah, my diet is a little strange, but it’s sort of keto. I do eat grass fed beef. Not very much. I eat more bison and lamb than beef, but I was vegetarian for six years. So I ate vegetarian for a really long time and then ended up, I felt like almost I had to reintroduce meat at one point, cause I had so many other restrictions in my diet and I’ve done really well with the meat now. But most of my meals are vegetables.

Haley: Yeah, I was going to say most of my meals are definitely plant-based. I eat a lot of vegetables. I do limit the grain consumption. Certain grains just make me bloated. I don’t digest them. I could eat rice and my face would be swollen. My belly would be swollen so yeah, I have different restrictions and obviously there’s no one perfect diet for each person. If you’re listening to us right now, like wait, she eats the way I eat. It’s going to be completely different for you and it’s not going to be perfect for you either. Everyone is so unique, and through your life, you’re going to change because certain things are not going to work for you long-term and they’re going to change. I could have eaten anything in high school, literally anything and obviously had acne, but I didn’t have digestion problems. I didn’t have bloating. I didn’t have bad breath or anything. It was just like, Oh, you can eat whatever you want. You’re 17 years old. Go for it.

So food is very tricky and obviously you have to be really in tune with your body. A and that takes time to get to know yourself again and figure out what foods to eat. But plants are really good place to start. If you are open to eating broccoli, if you’re open to eating green beans, open to eating Brussels sprouts, all the greens – kale, spinach, all the greens. The darker the pigment, the darker the pigmented food such as vegetables or fruit, the more antioxidants and more nutrients it’s going to have. So when you are grocery shopping, get the darkest greens, get the darkest reds. Really, really hone in on getting all those nutrients. Like people say, eat the rainbow, but eat the richest colors because that is where the nutrients are as well. Get the darkest colored rainbow you can.

Sarah: Awesome! Yeah. Good. Yeah. I try to eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables, like the broccoli that you mentioned, but also cauliflower, because cruciferous vegetables….

Haley: Hard word to say…

Sarah: Helps balance hormones and detox estrogen and I’m estrogen dominant as well.

Haley: Okay, cool. That makes sense a little bit with the melasma too, the deposits on the skin, but okay. So food is going to be different for everybody. Eat the darkest rainbow. I’m not saying you can’t eat cauliflower. You can, but if you’re trying to heal something, then the more pigment, the better.

Sarah: Yeah, so that’s what we’re putting inside of our body. What about topically? I know you said makeup is a huge source of toxins, chemicals, just fucking shit.

Haley: Yeah. Literally.

Sarah: As far as skincare goes, topically, obviously we’ve been talking a lot about the root of why is there acne and what we can change internally to help heal? What are some of the things you can support your skin with on the external layer, on that topical layer, either with makeup or lotions, cleansers, that type of thing?

Haley: So there’s a couple of brands I really, really like, and obviously everyone is different and you may not like these brands or may have not had a great time with them or what not. What works for me and what has worked for a lot of my clients is using Alfya® products, evanhealy® products, and Acure® products. Those have been super, super clean and they really nourish the skin and those are all topical products. They’re not makeup brands. Those are all different brands for your skin health and they’re all different. They’re not specifically all for acne. They are for the aging woman, the woman that wants to have beautiful skin, the ones that wants hydrated skin. There are so many things with it and they’re all at different price points. So I would say Alfya® is probably the one that’s a little bit higher end , evanhealy® is kind of in the middle and then Acure® products are right at the lower end, just so no matter where you are budget-wise in your healing, you can afford to get nourishing good products. It’s an investment; you’re investing in your skin. You’re going to have the skin for the rest of your life. Something you want to invest in is probably your skin and your health.

Sarah: I have never tried any of those three actually, but I would be interested. I’ve heard of Acure®. I think I’ve even seen it on Thrive Market maybe.

Haley: Possibly. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: And so we’ll link to those in the show notes for listeners, because those are a little bit of a mouthful.

Haley: Sorry, I’ll just take all this.

Sarah: So they can see the spelling and they can check those products out. So I know you’re not a makeup girl, but other women that you work with who love makeup or find it as a way to express themselves, what do you recommend for that?

Haley: So like you just said, I’m not a huge makeup person, but I do really, really like 100% PURE. They’re all plant-based plant pigmented makeup brand and I really liked their makeups. I haven’t been able to find other products, but there are. So if you are a big makeup person and you’ve tried 100% PURE and it kind of wasn’t for me, I want something a little bit better, the app I use is called Think Dirty. It’s a brain. You literally just use this, scan it, type it in. It tells you exactly what’s in it, tells you if it’s clean, tell you if it’s dirty. It’s a no-brainer. It makes my life easy when I’m shopping for topicals. If I’m shopping for lotions, just scan the bar code, Oh, it’s a seven. I’m going to put that back. It’s so easy. It makes finding nontoxic beauty so much easier.

Sarah: Yeah. I love that. Just to be able to simplify the process, quite willing to that too. Is there anything else you want to share with listeners today, Haley or anything you feel could help the woman who really is struggling with this, who might be in the position that you were back in high school, that I was in my early twenties that literally wants to close the door and never come out. How can we help that woman and speak to her today?

Haley: First of all, I want you to hug yourself. Really, really hug yourself because it gets better. It’s really hard right now and it’s not fun, but it gets better. I was there for seven years. It’s a really dark place. I know exactly where you’re at. It gets better. You need to breathe and just really let some stuff go. I want you to cry right now. If you are really, really upset, I want you to cry and get it all out. And then I want you to get out of your bed. I want you to go walk outside and go sit in the grass. The more time you spend with yourself and you are actually outside with nature and just really breathing and letting things go, the happier you are going to be. Being in your bed may seem like a really safe place and a really happy place at the time, but it’s not going to make you better. It’s not going to make you feel better. I really encourage you, whether you have acne or you have eczema or psoriasis or anything, do something that’s uncomfortable so that you can start getting comfortable again, being outside, being socialized. It’s really, really important. I wish someone would’ve told me or dragged me out of my bed when I was in this position. Get outside! Go play with your dogs, go play with your pets, go play with your sister or your brother. It’s really important just not to stop living. Yeah, it’s a really, really hard place, but don’t stop living because you have something on your face.

Sarah: It’s so simple, but that’s the beauty of it. We just sometimes have to get out of our own freaking heads. And actually, I had a little a-ha moment when you were just talking. I was like, Oh, so I lived in Chicago for four or five years, and that was when my skin was the worst. It really broke out. And I was in a high rise, city, cars and pollution. Even the lake, even though it’s pretty, there’s a lot of pollution in the lake and I live in Colorado now. And since we’ve been out here, we go outside way more. The weather is way better and my skin has improved. It really has. It’s improved and I just am able to kind of let my skin breathe a little bit.

Haley: Yeah. Your environment and the way you think is so important. If you look in the mirror and you tell yourself how ugly you are and how awful you look, that is what you are going to get in reflection. Your body hears everything you tell it. So if you want pretty skin, you need to tell yourself and look yourself dead in the eyes and say, I have beautiful skin. I have glowing skin and mean it, because your body is going to hear that and your body is going to be very receptive to that.

Sarah: Yeah. I love that so much, Haley. Thank you so much for sharing your story and imparting your knowledge on the list because it’s so helpful. And I think that it’s really powerful to hear other women talk in a vulnerable way about their skin cause I think so many of us do close the door and pretend like it’s not happening and just try to cover it up when we go out into public, when it’s okay to talk about this stuff. It’s okay. You’re allowed to keep living your life even though you have imperfect skin, right?

Haley: No one is perfect. I don’t know if you’ve met a perfect person before, but no one is perfect so you can continue to live.

Sarah: Yeah. Awesome. Anything else you want to share?

Haley: No, that was it. I really, really enjoyed talking with you. This is so fun. I hope you all enjoyed it and if any of you have any questions or anything, I think she’ll link my Instagram and all my social stuff to the bottom. But any questions or anything, just talk to me. I’m here to support you 100%. I love talking about skin health and I love helping people in any way that I possibly can.

Sarah: I will link to all of your social medias in the show notes, as well as some of the products you mentioned today. How can people actually work with you as well, more specifically?

Haley: Yeah. So I have an application on my website. They can go to my website and just go to the tab where it says work with me and go through all the fun stuff, see what I have to offer and if you’re interested in it, just click the application form and that’ll send it to me and I’ll type to you back and see what we can start and all that fun stuff. I also have online programs and an eBook and I don’t even know what else. A lot of fun stuff.

Sarah: Go check out Haley’s website, learn so much more. Reach out to her and get your healing journey started. Cool. Thank you, Haley. Thank you so much.

Haley: Thank you.

Sarah: Thank you so much for tuning in for today’s episode with Haley. You can find links in the show notes to the products that we mentioned during the show, as well as Haley’s social media accounts. Make sure to follow her and reach out if you are struggling with your own skin health challenges. She’s definitely an inspiration, and as you heard today, we’ve both overcome what seemed like permanent skin issues, so it’s possible, tribe. Don’t give up. You can get your confidence back. I hope you loved today’s episode. See you next time.