4 months of CGM _ my hair got bad (and addressing the hair obsession)

Hello, welcome back to my curly method series where I talk about my progress each month. So if you haven't seen any of the previous episodes go check them out before watching this one otherwise this one might not make a lot of sense because I have to warn you that this video might come off a little negative because month four was extremely extremely difficult. It was probably the most difficult month so far on my curly girl method journey. There's quite a few reasons why this might be which I'm going to discuss in this video. I didn't even want to make this video, I wanted to just skip month four completely because I'm currently at the end of month five so it's taken me a little while to like get my thoughts together to make this video but I wanted to just be really honest and just tell you the reality of what's been going on and how my hair has really been affecting me mentally. My, I guess my mental health has been extremely low, my hair was being really bad during this month but I think it was also partly because it was lockdown, all of this stuff that's been going on around the world and I think lockdown took quite a toll on me mentally anyway so that didn't help and then that with you know all this energy and focus on my hair and my hair not just not cooperating this month kind of just sent me down a spiral. I made a video on hair and mental health, I will leave it up here for anyone that's interested, if you're skeptical about why hair should affect anyone please watch it because not a lot of people talk about hair affecting people's mental health, it's just something people don't talk about so I made a video and it kind of just scratches the surface, just outlines why hair affects us. Okay so I'm about to spend a few minutes addressing something that a lot of viewers don't seem to be aware of, if you've just come for the information the rest of the video starts here but please do listen to the truth of the matter before you leave any kind of opinion. In my case it's been particularly bad, partly the fact that I'm documenting it on YouTube, even despite the video I made about hair and mental health, in my case it is not normal to be putting this much energy and focus into any part of my body, that just happens to be my hair, but it's not normal. The reason that I am putting so much energy and focus into it is because I have made a YouTube series so it's kind of like a blessing and a curse, you know normal people don't document their hair as their job but YouTube is my job, it's my full income and because my hair videos are what generates most of my income it's something that I have to commit to, that I started, that I will have to finish, so no it's not normal, it's not normal that I am obsessing or have obsessed so much about my hair and I need you to know that because as much as it is normal to feel down about your hair, like it's normal to be affected by hair, but it's the amount that I have put into my hair is not. So I just had to make that very clear, I often sometimes get comments implying that I'm in denial, you're obsessed with your hair and you just don't realize it, I realize it, I know I don't talk about it, I choose not to talk about it because I don't really, you know, that's something private that I deal with, yes I do realize I am obsessed with my hair or I am obsessing over my hair in an unnatural way because this is for a YouTube series, a normal person wouldn't be researching so much in so much detail about their hair in this way that I do, it's also not normal for you know a normal person to have thousands of opinions coming in at them about their hair and hundreds of comments and messages and advice about their hair and it's so sweet that people want to help but at the same time if I were to read all of that I would go insane, I would go insane, it's not normal to take in that much about something that's already so personal and such a delicate topic for me, it's just because this is a YouTube channel so I just want people to be aware of that and also to just please don't worry about me because I deal with it in my own way and I did go through a rough patch but I have been finding ways to detach my emotional self from my work, this is something I'll probably not talk about again because I just, I just want to make videos and help people and that be it, I don't want to have to go too much into my you know private life, I don't want to have to go too much into my mental health because it's not nice to read opinions and comments every single day dismissing my feelings or telling me that I'm in denial when I'm not, I totally understand what's going on, I'm very aware that it's not normal, I kind of stopped reading comments for a bit because it was really difficult to go through them, I have tried to respond to all of the messages I receive on Instagram and in other places, I really try to respond to as many as possible whilst taking care of my mental health so please understand that if I'm late to reply to you or if I don't reply to you it's because I need to look after myself and sometimes not reading comments and messages is the best thing I can do and I also want to thank everyone for all the support and all the help, I can see it's coming from a place of love, by all means don't feel like you can't reach out, what some of you have to say honestly warms my heart, I'm always happy to hear your stories, just be aware that I might not be able to respond, yeah I just wanted to be totally honest that the curly girl method is not going to be easy all the time, I have wanted to quit so many times, the only thing that's kept me going is the fact that I am doing this series and that these videos seem to be helping a lot of people with their hair, the fact that I am still struggling with my hair and haven't found a solution or anything that seems to make me happy with my hair, it seems to have comforted a lot of people who also can't seem to find what's wrong with their hair, although it's a lot better now in month five, these monthly videos are helping people who are also on their hair journey or a curly girl method journey to know what to expect as the months go by, in honesty I thought that it would take maybe two or three months for my hair to start to take to it and so the fact that month four was like a huge step back just completely knocked my, you know, my mentality like down quite a few pegs, like the frustration, you know, it is, it's just frustration isn't it, I've been on a hair journey for like seven years and it's never been how I want it, it's never been how I want it for various reasons, I fixed one problem and then another problem came up, so it's just, there's a lot of backlog, a lot of people do say that it can take like six months to a year for the curly girl method to really work and it's like can I commit that long to this, like it is a big commitment but I've started it now, I've started the series so I've got to do it, so that's why I'm here continuing this and as you can see my hair is improving now, but I'm going to show you a few clips of what my hair looked like during month four, a few reasons the curly girl method can be really difficult is because your hair can be really unpredictable, you can wash it the same way, use exactly the same products and it will come out differently for some reason, that's what I experienced at least, my hair looks different every time I wash it even if I do the same thing, for a lot of people with curly hair they've like done the same things for years, they've like found a routine that works for them and their hair has found the groove and so the curly method works for so many people, a lot of people with curly hair don't struggle too much because they found their groove, for me it's like just not quite going that way, that's one of the reasons I haven't made a like routine because I haven't found a routine that I'm happy with yet, you know I'm switching things up and at the same time I'm trying not to do too much to my hair, like I don't actually use a lot of products, quite a few comments which is a little frustrating you know saying you're doing too much to your hair that's why it's you know not behaving, people say you're using too many products but on a daily basis I'm really not doing a lot to my hair, I wash my hair every four days so it's about twice a week, I do some kind of treatment maybe once every one to two weeks and if I do a treatment it's like a natural ingredient, one thing I did buy in month four is a clarifying shampoo because whilst I was in my research phase of the curly girl method I came across a lot of videos of people explaining that you should do a monthly clarify which is basically where you use a shampoo that does have sodium lauryl sulfate in it or lauryl sulfate, some kind of sulfates that will help remove the build-up, I picked this one up it was super cheap, its first line of ingredients is water and sodium lauryl sulfate so I'm pretty sure this is what people were talking about, I've used it about twice, I don't feel like it did much for me, I didn't really feel like I had a lot of build-up in the first place, I don't know maybe some people experience build-up in different ways, I just didn't feel like I needed it, my hair's so dry as it is I just don't reach for this, another thing I did was I did an overnight avocado oil treatment and it was very confusing, I basically soaked my hair in avocado oil for like 12 hours and I think I've got some footage I'll show you, I washed it out the next day, I used a tiny bit of this and just a little bit of normal no sulfate shampoo just to help get the oil out and when it dried it was so so so dry and frizzy and just looked awful like it felt dry and frizzy, like after soaking your hair in oil for 12 hours and it being drier it just didn't make any any any sense and this kind of sent me down the hole like this is where I hit rock bottom, like I just cried, I cried so much, I was fed up, I was exhausted of you know constantly constantly trying all these things in my hair and seeing no results, that long-term results for years and I went to my mum and just cried and I was like look at my hair like I was like look at my hair, I don't understand, I just soaked it in oil for 12 hours, you would think that it would like be a little bit more shiny or more sleek or it would do something but no it's like hey, didn't make any sense, I thought maybe it might have been this, I literally needed a tiny bit of it yeah that's when I hit rock bottom, that was like in the middle of month four and I had a big chat with my mum about it, she was like this is, she could see it was affecting me, my mental health and then I had a big chat to my dad about it, he's a counsellor, we went on a nice long walk and we just spoke about it and so after that I decided I needed to just stop, stop, just stop what I was doing, I decided I would just stop looking in the mirror because it kind of started with like I'd look in the mirror, I'd see something with my hair or I'd notice how dry or gross it was and it would get me really down, so I covered up my mirror because I found that every morning I would look in it and check my hair and I just wanted to just stop checking my hair, so for about one or two weeks I just, I just stopped, it helped me a little bit, I didn't do any treatments, I didn't do anything crazy, I was just carrying on the routine, I carried on with my gels but my hair just seems to be really really frizzy and really dry that month and the curls weren't cohesive, the refreshes weren't really doing anything, I actually wasn't really refreshing my hair that much because it was so frizzy, like it was a bit awful, try and find some footage, I still don't really know why it was this way but I feel like there it might have had something to do with lockdown, there is this theory that when you feel bad on the inside it reflects on in like your skin and your hair and so it could have just been that, you know, because my mental health was kind of dwindling because of lockdown that it reflected in my hair or it might have just been that that's, you know, the natural progression of the curly comb effort, maybe it has to get worse before it gets better, all I know is it was a bad month. In terms of products I was still using Boo Clem and Function of Beauty which I was sent and I've still been using the aloe vera gel and my curl jelly, all of this stuff will be in the description, also in my last video I spoke about how I'd be using castor oil and I was doing that on my crown the night before I'd wash my hair, so about twice a week I was oiling my crown, I was worried that I was losing hair there, there doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment, like it doesn't seem to be a problem, so I think maybe that was just a weird parting that my hair was going through, but yeah I stopped doing the castor oil about halfway through just because I'd had enough, like I just wanted to stop, you know, trying so hard with my hair. I also tried this weird curling method, I'm not going to speak about it too much because this video is going to be really long, but I saw this video on YouTube of this like, it looked like a super easy way to curl your hair, I did it and my hair turned out like this okay, this also sent me over the edge as you can imagine, so yeah I went out and bought this, I did the method, I wrapped my hair in a silk scarf overnight and it looked so bad, it did not make any sense, I also wasn't documenting it so much, I used to keep like a document on my computer where I'd like literally document everything I did and I just, it wasn't good, I just, I didn't like obsessing over it so much, so I just stopped that, so I don't really have much documentation, but I still wanted to share this video anyway because it was difficult and it's, I have to be honest, this is part of the whole experiment and you might go for it too, this video is just to help you realize that you know, it might get really hard, so yeah, just overall this has not been a great month, but that's it okay, the point of this video is just to let you know what's going on behind the scenes, to be honest and upfront and also to tell you that the curly girl method is not going to be easy and that you need to be aware that these things might happen to you too, but don't worry because it will get better so if you'd like to see month five where things do get better, I will leave a link somewhere, I am going to post it shortly after this video, if you've made it to the end of this video, thank you please leave a comment to let me know you've made it to the end because I feel like no one will, but thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one, bye