I’ve actually been through fungal acne before. Never like this, never this bad, never this long, but I’ve been getting flare-ups almost every other summer since 2019. If you’ve struggled with fungal acne, you know how annoying it can be. It’s an infection caused by the overgrowth of Malassezia yeast in hair follicles, and it’s very easy to confuse with other conditions (eczema, heat rash, hormonal acne, etc).
Fungal Acne is typically characterized by:
- Small itchy bumps
- Appears in a cluster or recurs in a specific spot
- Treatment resistant
- Flares with sweat or any kind of hot, humid environment
The wave that hit me in 2025 was different. More stubborn, more angry, just worse. And the hyperpigmentation it left behind… devastating. We’re making progress now, almost a year later, but it’s been rough.
I also want to address my part in all of this because I do think I had a hand in it.
My skin was in great shape up until mid-2025. Honestly, I think October-December of 2024 was the best my skin has ever looked. Clear, even, strong. I’ve always gotten compliments on my skin and its always been non-temperamental. Normal, non-sensitive, non-acne prone, tolerant of whatever I put on it. I never needed much to kill a breakout or even fade a dark mark.
Then summer hit, and something shifted. It started slowly, but I’m a picker, and things got worse and worse. The crazy part is, even when my skin was doing really well, I was still finding problems with it. I had the faintest shadow of hyperpigmentation between my eyebrows from a breakout years ago. Barely there. Definitely not noticeable to anyone else but me.
And what did I do? I tried to fix something that wasn’t broken. I bought one of those turmeric-and-honey kojic acid bars on TikTok and started scrubbing my face with it every day. To remove what? I’m not even sure. I was physically exfoliating my forehead daily. I know better than this. I really don’t know what I was thinking.
Looking back, I’m pretty sure that soap completely broke down my skin barrier, and I’ve been repairing it ever since.
When the breakouts started getting angrier and more inflamed, I did what I always do. I picked. I will pop, poke, and prod at every single blemish on my face because… what are you doing here? Who invited you? I certainly didn’t.
I know it’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, but I’m working on it. Pimple patches and spot treatments have helped me keep my hands off my face a little more. At the time, though, things were escalating. I tried to cover everything with makeup, which made it worse. I used to be able to use anything on my skin, so I did. That was no longer the case; salicylic acid and glycolic acid were not working.
Then a friend pointed out that it looked like fungal acne, and something clicked. I had been treating it like a regular breakout, but it wasn’t; it was fungal acne, back and worse than I had ever seen it. I immediately started researching products.
That was last summer. And now here we are. I’m healing my skin barrier and fading the dark spots left behind.
Go to Part 2 to see how I’ve been handling it.
