3 Beauty Habits Harming Your Skin, According To A Behavioral Scientist

Now, people come to skin care with the best of intentions. No one (or I hope no one) turns to skin care routines with the intent to harm their face. But in many cases, we end up doing so because we don't know how to properly use a product, tool, or treatment; we do too much overall; we opt for ingredients that aren't suited to our unique skin needs or types; or we simply make mistakes in our overall routine, not knowing they are faux pas. 

Recently I was chatting with behavioral scientist Perpetua Neo, DClinPsy, about skin care habits gone wrong (listen for yourself in our recent episode of mbg's beauty podcast Clean Beauty School!). Neo specializes in helping type-A individuals, and her work is all about encouraging people to move past their perfectionist hang-ups that might be unknowingly holding them back. And honestly, many skin care enthusiasts often fall into this category—at least as far as their skin care goals are concerned. 

Neo says that many people fall into the trap of wanting broad, overarching perfectionism: They want poreless skin, no wrinkles, and an airbrushed tone. But wanting too much with such unreachable standards (a classic type-A fixation) actually stops you from making smart, reasonable, and informed skin care choices. "You need to get specific," she says. "You can't identify exactly what you need to do if you don't know what you want."

When we're constantly bombarded with other people's standards of beauty, we may lose sight of our own. This can only set us up for failure—as it shifts our own priorities and makes us lose sight of what's important to us, says Neo. Take the time to outline what your own goals are, and then stick to them by setting boundaries. 

"We need to ask ourselves, what are we constantly being exposed to through the media, social media, or our friends?" she says. If you're only seeing influencers with filters and Photoshop, if you only consume content that's highly curated or the people around you alter their appearance—that's going to change your perception of reality and perhaps encourage you to make choices you wouldn't otherwise want to.

I don't think this will come as a surprise, but: We are much more likely to see faults in ourselves than we would others. According to Neo, this is actually a survival mechanism. "Looking for problems is a way to avert possible losses," she says. "We think to ourselves 'If I have acne, no one will like me, and I'll have fewer likes on my photos' so we are preempting that anxiety." Essentially, we think of these worst-case scenarios so that if they do come true, we won't feel as bad. But by doing this, we are holding ourselves back.