Warning Long post ahead, but there are chapters..lol
Relaxer day was a success! Best it's gone in like over a year!! MAJOR TURNING POINT IN MY HHJ!
If you've been reading my posts, you've seen that I've had some struggles with my hair over the last several months. Just want to dive into what happened and how it's going now. Maybe it would help someone else in a similar situation...
Conclusion: I was experiencing product buildup overload. Luckily my hair wasn't breaking, it just felt awful all the time, relaxer wouldn't get my hair straight even after 30 min, it was massively tangled, underprocessed, and overall unmanageable all because of too much product buildup.
Backstory: I have high porosity hair and one of the things that has made it easier to handle is using neutralizing shampoo instead of regular shampoo. It helps keep the hair from drying out and makes it 100% tangle-free. I would follow up with a regular sulfate shampoo after the first wash too, but it wasn't enough in hindsight. This routine went on for about a year maybe? I hit a rough patch around October of last year. My relaxers started becoming underprocessed and no longer would become silky straight like before. It became a nightmare to wash/style and handle. It's like my hair couldn't be relaxed anymore no matter how long I left it on. I was heartbroken...
I noticed a few months ago while looking at my hair in the light that it looked dirty even though I just washed it, like there was lots of lint and small particles stuck to my hair. I decided to change up my shampoo. I've been using a regular shampoo exclusively over the last few months and it has been an absolute game changer. The conditioner has absorbed better, making the hair 100x softer and more manageable. The aphogee absorbs and makes my hair feel like silk. I was able to use the mixed chicks DC again and it made my hair feel soft again. Seems like the aphogee 2 minute I can leave on for like 10-15 minutes and my hair loves it. Been considering the 2-step, but I had a very bad experience with it years ago due to protein overloaded for months, so I'm scared of it.
Conclusion: I'm going to discontinue using neutralizing shampoo unless it's relaxer day or limit to every other wash. And not use within 2-4 weeks of an upcoming relaxer to be extra careful not to interfere with my relaxed results.
My relaxer came out silky smooth and soft for the first time in a while. My intuition about reducing the processing time was correct. I did 3 minutes less and it was still silky straight. I can probably take off another minute or two and still be fine. But, I want to see how my hair holds up and if it bounces back at all over the next 10 weeks. Very happy to be past this hump!
This is how my hair looks today. No flat iron needed just a blow dry on warm with serum and the tension method!