Toxic Together?

"Wow, you look like a boiled crab", Simon said to me when we met two weeks ago.

I winced and then shrugged. "I know, I think it's my new skincare".

A few days earlier, I'd started using a new BHA exfoliant and a Niacinamide booster. Imagining my skin all glowy and perfect fuelled my impatience so much that I disregarded the most important advice: Go low and slow!

I just slathered everything on!

By itself, both products work really well for my skin. I know this now. What I didn’t know is how they interact.

Turns out that if you put them together, they go at each other like two angry toddlers having a tantrum over the little red truck.

This is because their chemistry is just off. Literally.

When you combine BHA, which is an acid, with Niacinamide, the Niacinamide changes into Niacide.

Niacide can really flush and irritate the skin.

Hence, the crab look.

Apparently, this reactive interference of ingredients is quite common in skincare. Especially, when you use "active ingredients".

If you are a bit dumb, like me, and try too many things at once, it becomes very hard to isolate the ingredient or the combination that causes the irritation. In my case, for example, I thought that my problem was just the quantity and frequency of the products I used. It didn't occur to me that they simply should not be put together.

Now, I have them separated nicely and use them during different times of the day. My skin is very happy with that.

Somewhere in my skincare misery, there is a life lesson.

Do you know how sometimes you have a bad reaction to your environment but you can't really pinpoint a specific cause? Sometimes, that's a calendar thing (hi, cycle), but sometimes, things feel heavier than they ought to even though nothing particularly bad is going on.

My suspicion is that toxic environments can happen just like the chemical misfire I experienced with my skincare. Perhaps, by themselves, the factors are harmless. When you put them together, though, something goes boom and suddenly you're close to burning out, getting a divorce, quitting your job, or buying a motorcycle to ride into the sunset of your midlife crisis.

The same goes for people. Some of your friends might not mix well. When you spend time with them individually, everything is great. But when you put them in a room together, you end up with an atmosphere so tense you stub your toe on it.

I see this most at work and in online communities. I think it has to do with the lack of control we have over those environments. We can’t really pick the ingredients but still have to slather the resulting concoction all over our metaphorical skin.

Very often, it's not the people by themselves that are toxic. It's the dynamic between the people and the way they all react to outside stressors that turns a benign group into a nightmare.

So, instead of quitting everything or looking for a big smoking gun, see if you can separate some of whatever goes into the mix. Maybe it’s not “all of work” but just lunch with two particular colleagues that stress you out. Perhaps, it is not the whole project but a particular person having to deal with a particular part that makes it go sideways.

Switch it up a bit. Take some things away. Don’t add to it.

Insert some space and see what happens.