SET BACKS THIS YEAR ? POST EM HERE

[ToSelahWithLove]

protective styling under wigs was a good idea... but I think my braider is a little too rough so instead of full BSL, my ends are thin. I was going to do a few more stints under the wig, but I decided against it, sticking to Buns for a while

 

[Cherokee-n-Black]

Coloring my hair. Big mistake. Took a look at a pic from my Grandma's birthday last November and had a full, healthy APL braidout. I could not understand why I now have a SL, frizzy, unruly braid out. I kept racking my brain: "what's different?" Then I remembered, right after that pic was taken I said "ugh! Gotta get rid of this gray!" Biggest mistake I've made on my natural hair journey Well, that, and not giving a crap about my ends while I was bunning like crazy because I had no time to really spend on my hair. And who says self-induced set-backs don't count! No fair!

 

[youwillrise]

oooooh i'm soooo glad i decided against getting that tangle teezer. YIKES!

 

[ellebelle88]

Do you know what caused the matting?

From what I have heard, you hair still naturally sheds when it is in a sew-in or braided. So when you take the weave out, you have to make sure to comb through your hair BEFORE you wash it in order to get out all of the dead hair which is trapped within. If you don't, the dead hair causes matting when you wash your hair under running water. I thought I had combed through my hair well enough but I had the sew-in for 5 weeks, during which time, I didn't know how to moisturize it --so it was really dry and brittle and I didn't want to comb it too much. There were a couple places that I didn't too well a job of combing through (primarily the back) and it matted and I had to rip my hair out to free the strands.

Sucks.

 

[tenderheaded]

I stretch relaxers and did half on 10/19/10 thinking that would solve all my problems. WRONG!! My hair was tangling and coming out AFTER the relaxer! The culprit - 15 months of Hair One Olive Oil Con! When I relaxed the other half and used another conditioner, the comb glided thru my hair like it was supposed to!

I ignored the warning signs that something was wrong. Now I rotate 4-6 conditioners and everything is fine.

 

[Evolving78]

coloring my hair with Black Radiance - caused a reaction, rash, bald spot, and major shedding

using Shea Moisture Masque - caused major tangles

not washing hair in sections - major tangles

mini two strands twists - knots and tangles

i got my hair on track right now, so i just need to keep up with what works and let nature take care of the rest.

 

[Ms Lala]

Anemia due to pregnancy stalled my hair growth for months. I also had a horrible incident w/henna at the end of last year that resulted in breakage all the way until January. My hair is still about WL though, luckily I was at my goal length so my setbacks have pretty much left me in a maintenance stage.

 

[BklynHeart]

Hair getting thinner and a lot of breakage. I tried everything; changing conditioners, adding wheat germ oil, castor oil to conditioners, using peppermint, rosemary and lavender oil to thicken hair, nothing helps.

 

[Rossy2010]

made a silly mistake I clarified my hair when i was 13 weeks post then followed it up with a protein condish. Lost lots of hair and would say my hair would have been thicker. I trim those ends and move on. It is kinda painful though

 

[kblc06]

I cut at least 4 inches of hair off trying to get rid of layers and just cuz . I love the way my hair looks now even if I'm only grazing BSL again

 

[g.lo]

tangle teazer middle strand split!!
used a semi permanent colour to cover my grays ( just because i was lazy and didn't want to mess with Henna!!),massive shedding!

 

[Curlykale]

I am at "the end of the year" as my last setback was last august (2010). I was almost shoulder length hair and I had to cut it 3 times in the summer because of crazy single strand knots. I was going mad with my denman brush, moisturizing all the time and I cowashed daily and wet bunned. So I came to this forum and many people gave me amazing suggestions. Now I am bra strap length with long layers (big achievement for me as I am tall!) and I have some single strand knots here and there but nothing to worry about (I had 2 or 3 per strand last year), I don't plan to wear my hair straightened, I don't use combs and I haven't seem them become split ends, so they don't bother me. (rarely I search and destroy).

The advice was: keep your hair stretched, meaning>
don't every let it loose while wet
Wash in 4 sections,
twirl the ends of your braids/twists,
seal your ends with a ceramide oil (I find that wheatgerm, hemp and sunflower work very well)
and don't sleep with your hair loose.
Other suggestions that worked for someone were finger detangling only and oil rinsing. I also learned that wet bunning is counterproductive for single strand knots.

I followed all of this advice and it worked wonders. I love this forum. I hope this helps someone else.

 

[Tolle]

Post partum shedding! ugh!!! Bout to make a thread about it.

 

[allmundjoi]

Heat damage from a former stylist that I should have let stay a former stylist. She used a crap load of shea butter on my hair with her Marcel oven and hotcomb/curlers. She basically cooked my hair and I paid her to do it. A few days later when I washed my hair, I had 2-3 inch curls broken off in my hand with poor reversion in some area. I also have scattered breakage at the scalp on my head. I was devastated. I called her to let her know the damage and she responded that in her 20+ years she has never damaged anyones head. Yea, ok...they just don't come back. I would have went batsh*t on her, yes, it's my hair and it's that serious...but she is part owner of the salon with my aunt...a whole other can of worms. Its funny, I tell people what to do everyday, yet when I sit in the salon chair I get quiet and am less than hypervigilant. Not 3 months before that my regular stylist was supposed to trim my ends, and cut off 2-4". My hair was on the floor, but what I saw was 4-8mths of hardwork on the floor. She said she had to cut off relaxed ends. Funny, I had no relaxed ends. Smh. And the style was less than to be desired. My hair also looked dull. She saw me looking at my hair and told me my hair was 'in shock.' Hunh witch? No, I am in shock. I walked out w/o saying anything. I just haven't been back. I am just taking "L" after "L". *sigh*

Lots of protein treatments. My hair is doing great. And i completely backed off of heat. No heat in the past 2.5-3mths. At least I am still getting 0.5 an inch/month. I wont be going to a stylist anytime soon.

Sent from my DROIDX

 

[chikachic817]

During the school year, half heartedly shampooing and DCing my hair, not clarifying as needed, using products that weren't really working for my hair (just realized this recently when I found something that did work and felt the difference). I was also bunning constantly even though my hair wasn't moisturized with my products, so extreme breakage ensued. I just wasn't really caring much so I didn't retain my growth and decided a couple of weeks ago to trim. I thought about keeping as much as I could but then decided that I wanted it to look healthier vs. having length, as that could be attained later. Plus I hated how thin my ends looked. It looks alot better now and if needed after my relaxer this weekend, I'll clean it up some more.

I also realized that the reason why the last 1.5-2 inches of my hair on the right side were so frizzy, dry, stiff, and brittle was because my last salon visit 3-4 years ago, resulted in my whole head being overprocessed (thinking about it now, she would perm my hair root to tip with every relaxer ). So I am slowly working on cutting all of that off and if I have to stay at my current length for awhile to have healthy hair, I would rather do so.

On the good side, I have just found a good leave in treatment and protein treatment that works well for my hair, so I am super excited

 

[SuchaLady]

Update: My hair was hacked off in January and I got a relaxer yesterday and I see growth! Yay! Off course I should see growth since that was 6 months ago but watching your hair too closely will make you think you are crazy.

 

[Evolving78]

Post partum shedding! ugh!!! Bout to make a thread about it.

renewmetoo
try a black tea rinse or get you some aloe vera juice and spray on your hair.
that black tea really does work, just be mindful of how many tea bags you use and don't leave it on your hair. do this before you deep condition your hair.

 

[OsnapCnapp!]

Im having a setback right now.....this summer. First was the damn coconut oil disaster that completely robbed my hair of any moisture it was trying to cling to. Now Im having to get my hair cut because the ends are severely split, thin, dry and they are traveling. I just don't get it! I have been doing everything right so I don't know what the hell is happening. But......that's why its a natural hair journey. It's always going to be failures before you can really really succeed.

 

[levette]

I ran out of my favorite conditioner creme of nature and used mane & tail conditioner. My hair became so matted and tangled that I some of my hair came out especially in the back... I had to trim it and my hairstylist just re-trimmed it on Wednesday. I am now back at APL length with my hair really being short in my nape area but it is hidden some. But I will not give up

 

[davisbr88]

For those of us who had setbacks, what are you going to do differently to make a turnaround? I think we should turn this into a support thread!

 

[growinghair]

I haven't been on the forum in a while and I have been paying for it! I am shoulder length and am going to have to cut almost 2 inches off tomorrow. I fell for the Tangle Teezer and have splits up the shaft. I also haven't been protecting my hair like I should.

 

[iri9109]

the tangle teezer F'd my hair up...messed up my ends and gave me white midshaft splits...then i tried to trim the damage, but my scissors were crappy so that didnt really help much...also i colored my hair...i dont think the coloring caused a set back, but me getting hair lazy and slacking on moisture and protein haven't helped...i don't want to lighten my hair again, so i'm going to color it black, and that's the end of my experimentation with color....i also have some broken hairs and SSKs...i didnt want to use heat until nov, but i think next week i'll get my hair straightened and trimmed, and then i'll get kinky twists until the end of the summer, and then wig it until the new year. i really wanted to make APL by the end of the year, but i'm not sure if that will happen...i probably need to cut up to 2 inches of damage off, but i'll cut an maybe an inch now, and then the rest at the end of the year. hopefully by next year my hair will be completely healthy again...

 

[chicha]

Still had major shedding. Yeah shedding, from the scalp. Many scalp bald areas and scalp thinning areas where you can see it. Finally found a reggie but its difficult for me to keep. I'm a female pattern hair loss sufferer. And I hate that ish.

 

[chicha]

Oh what I'm doing to turn it around trying to find things that make it easier for me to keep up with the reggie.

 

[GaiasDaughter24]

I had 2 major setbacks.

1- Post partum shedding

2-Coupled with that, I had a HUGE life changing event happen the beginning of this year. It has caused me so much stress that my hair has been falling out. My front edges were GONE. They've finally started coming back. It was really bad.

I still need to trim about another 1/2 off and I think I will next month. Not to mention, SSK's are KILLINg my ends. For a short while I was too depressed to really do much with my hair so I wore wash n go puffs a lot. Not good SSK's took over my ends. I really need to get rid of them.

So I guess that's 3 set backs.

 

[Janet']

Missjae09 would say that this isn't necessarily a setback BUT...coloring my hair and not being diligent in my deep conditioning and protein treatments gave way for far less retention...When I straightened my hair Dec 31, 2010 and just reached MBL...I knew that the next time that I straightened, I would be darn near WL...Grad school and life got the better of me and my hair suffered...davisbr88 asked what have we done to fix the problem:

I started back dc'ing and doing protein treatments; I started taking Nioxin faithfully and I resumed using Boundless Tresses. When I got my hair braided for the cruise that I just took this past week and she blow-dried it- I could definitely see a difference...I'm on the mend finally!!!

 

[trendsetta25]

i decided to color my hair in with a blonde semi-permanent thinking "what harm can this do to my hair?". I bought one bottle and of course 1 bottle wasnt enough for my whole head. So the next day i bought two more bottle to finish off the color. After coloring, about 2 weeks later...i noticed a lot of shedding and breaking and my hair was soo weak. No matter what i did (hard core protein treatment, weekly DC's, bunning, consistant with hair vitamins) my hair would just break.

Long story short, a lovely member informed me that i had chemical damage

Before the color - I colored in Dec 31st

Now

 

[JJamiah]

Sorry for all the set backs.

My Hair totally needed a trim it was at Hip Length and the ends were thin, I didn't keep up with my trims and stretched for about 10 months. I don't want length with thin ends, I want healthy hair first. My Stylist cut me back up to MBL and I am soooo Happy she did. I will deep condition and not skip my trims. I use heat Blow dryer when I wash my hair, so I will dry longer under the dryer so I can go back to only 2 minutes of Blow dry and on medium heat.

I have no regrets and I know that I can reach Hip Now to baby my ends and get back there fuller then ever! (only been there once )

 

[Missjae09]

My set back story, is I was reminded the hard way that my fine, kinky nape cannot, under any circumsatnces, come within 25feet of a hot comb... I would never use a hot comb on my hair but my stylist would used one when i got my hair done occassionally so I didn't think it would hurt since it wasn't used on my hair often. I could not have been more wrong! My entire nape fell out! :-( by the the time it was done falling it was less than an inch long... I'm on the road to recovery but it's been a long road. I know people have choppy napes and it's no biggie, but it's a biggie when you are trying to reach SL! you really need that nape! lol ... but I was able to reach SL

 

[discodumpling]

I'm chock full o' set backs ( but strangely NOT discouraged) in tis my 4+ yr of nappturality.

1. Post-partum shedding with my now 19 month old Chaiya. I have 2 older kids and NEVER had a shed like this one it was EPIC!! I'm STILL recovering and now RE-GROWING my problem patch.

2. I let my "cousin" braid my hair with gel. My hair was thriving for yrs before I let ANYONE except my Mama or Auntie occasionally touch it.

3. Micro-braids. DISGUSTED with my thinning, dry, see-through hair I decided to braid it up at my local braiders. She SCISSORED my hair & @ takedown I ended up with CRAZY hair. Short in some sections long in others.

I know better....'been here long enough...but @ that point I truly did not GAF!!

So just today I CHOPPED. Right back down to my curly fro. DH is looking @ me like ...but he really ain't tryon' to TEST me right now.


I FEEL FREE! After an incredibly stressfull almost 2 yrs an still counting this is EXACTLY what needed to be done.

I've spent almost 2 yrs cultivating and caring for babygirls hair and will be sharing her regi in the childrens section when I get some time. BUT i'm excited to renew my committment to my own hair ...even amidst ( yeah i'm full o' drama the still fiery furnace of my life!