Questions about my electrologist! HELP!

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
#1

I have been going to this electrologist for about 5 months now and the more I read about electrolysis the more I think she is not doing it right. I will post my concerns below.

  1. She plucks my hair out after each follicle is treated, sometimes I don’t feel the hairs coming out, and sometimes I do. She doesn’t slowly pluck out my hair like I have seen on you tube videos, she pulls it out fast like when you pluck your eye brows. Is the hair that she pulls out supposed to have the root with it? I have found hairs on my face that she has pulled out that didn’t have the roots.

  2. If I have an ingrown hair she tries to pop it out like when you pop a pimple and she makes my skin bleed. She is very rough with my face.

  3. It has been 5 months and she is just now almost clearing my upper lip. I still have a lot of hair that she has never even touched.

4.She told me she will not remove every single hairs because it makes it look unnatural and you can see your pores. I know people that has removed all of it and does not have any pores showing…

I don’t know if I am just being paranoid, but if anyone has any input I would greatly appreciate it!

#2

Here’s MY OPINION, Point by Point:

#1. You should not feel the hair coming out as if it were being tweezed. Sometimes this can happen and if it does, the Electrologist will feel the traction. If this happens to me, I go back in the empty follicle and zap it again.

I do not pull the hair out fast so I can test it. If I see the slightest tenting of skin rising, I let go of the hair and re-insert. If I have to re-insert too much. We want haría to slide out like a hot dog with vasoline on it.

You should not see broken hairs. You should see full bulbs and so should she.

#2. I don’t squeeze ingrowns. I use a sterile lancet and gentle and slowing lift the ingrown out, only if it is close to the skin’s surface. Sometimes there is a little bleeding associated with treating ingrowns and sometimes not?

A gentle hand and voice are soothing techniques that make a client less nervous and it is wise to get in the habit of soothing your clients.

#3. I don’t know what her abilities are for clearing areas. I don’t know what your area looks like, but I will tell you that from the corner of the nose, back to the corner of the lip, I can get a first full clearance in one or two sessions. From there, I can keep it clear everytime the client comes in. The middle upper lip is the last dog to go. There can be tons of hair there and we can only work so long in that area because it HURTS! Be patient. Five months means you are a third of the time away from looking good.

#4. I do remove every hair if a client wants it. Good surgical magnification is needed for total removal. I understand what she is saying, but I don’t agree with it looking unnatural. Trust me, there will be other smaller hairs that pop up over a lifetime, so being completely bare is an oxymoron. The bigger hairs can most certainly go, but who cares if there are finer hairs that no one can see. Pores are not a problem. Some people have big pores - hair or no hair - and some people like Ivana Trump have no pores in sight. Lucky B…

#3

I just wrote a boat load and it didn’t show up! Let me calm down and I will try to re-write it later. S…!

#4

If you feel plucking, you’re not getting good treatment. She might be either plucking the “treated” hair or getting hair next to it if she has bad lighting/magnification/aim. Either way, don’t pay for that crap. I got plucking treatment on my knuckles and the percentage of hair did not decrease at all in the long run.

And her saying she won’t remove every visible hair despite your wishes says a lot about her (lack of) ability. I could be wrong, but that’s a weird thing to say.

#5

Good job, Gorillagal!

I will add my opinion to answer your concerns and hope that it goes through, unlike last time!

#1 Yes, indeed the hair should slide from the follicle like a hot dog with Vaseline all over it. If the skin “tents” up and the hair feels like it is being tweezed, then it is being tweezed. Not a desirable thing to do. If you feel traction, then your Electrologist feels traction. Not desirable. Sometimes, we DO feel some resistance, so we go back in the empty follicle and zap it again. If too much resistance is felt for several hairs, then the intensity or timing need to adjusted. It’s just how you play the game.

#2 We don’t want to be rough on anyone’s face. A gentle touch and a soft voice reduces ones apprehension, something that many feel when they see an Electrologist. I remove ingrown hairs when the hairs are close to the skin’s surface. I use a sterile lancet and a slow, gentle touch, telling the client what I’m about to do before I do it. You could ask her to to talk you through it and to be gentle?

#3 Lip hair, from the side of the nose to the corner of the lip can be completely cleared in a session or two on women and some men. The middle part of the upper lip usually has a fair number of vellus follicles, so that is the last section to go. It is a very sensitive area for most people, so it may take several sessions to completely clear it.

#4 I see nothing wrong with clearing as much hair as the client wants. Surgical magnification and a great light source is needed for vellus hair. As far as the pores go, some people have big pores, with or without hair in them and some people have no pores that are visible, like Ivana Trump. When the hair is removed, it is just a big pore, minus an ugly hair sticking out of it.

#6

Have you ever compared her treatment to another practitioner? Your doubts sound valid to me, I believe you can do better.

#7

@ lbb

Some small thin vellus hairs do not have large structure or what you call “roots”
Is your hair thick or thin ? -if you feel a pulling/ pluck, then most likely the hair was not properly treated long enough or the current was not right for the hair.

#8

Where I am from there is only two electrologists. My friend actually went to the other one and after getting electrolysis for months, the practitioner told her she was too hairy and couldn’t work on her anymore. That is when I decided to go to the one I am at now.

I do have some vellus hairs and since I have been doing electrolysis my hairs have thinned out a lot.

Sometimes I do feel her pluck the hair out and sometimes I don’t. But I have noticed that sometimes while she is plucking my hair the hair breaks and that is when she starts being rough with my skin trying to get the hair to come out.

I just wish I had more options, I don’t want to go back to waxing after spending hundreds of dollars on this but I think I might have to…

#9

I feel your pain. Despite the glorious Zappers that post on this forum , my experience out there in the real world ,has been hundreds of dollars spent , over many years with many different zappers and in the end honestly, little satisfaction. I am not here to argue this. It is my honest experience. I really wanted to believe in Electrolysis. It worked well for my sister. I still believe in it if you are lucky enough to get one of the few who are really skilled. Good luck with that crap shoot! Odds arent that good frankly. The truth is there are a few great zappers and MANY MANY not good ones.
For a small example , i wont go into the first zapper that took me for a couple years, or the spots left behind on my eyebrows from her, and no they have not faded…there is a hair on my eyebrow, I KNOW ITS THE SAME one because it stands alone in a certain place with nothing else around it . That hair has been treated at least 20 times and it still grows back.

Strangely enough i really did not think the LHR would work . I did it as an experinment and didnt spend much money at all …well to my shock i have to say it worked for me and has totally changed my life. Wish i could say the same for the quadruple ive spent on Zapping ;(

#10

Dear ibb and Danika,
I’m so sorry for your experiences, clearly NOT professional nor skilled operators, and unfortunately this is sadly becoming all too common and therefore giving Electrolysis and skilled Electrologists a very bad rap! I do hope that you will seek other options to eliminate your hair growth, and maybe even investigate other Electrologists who come highly recommended close to your State? I say that because as a practicing Electrologist for 20 years, I know Electrolysis works however there has been a decline in schools due to a number of factors in the past 20 years and therefore, not a lot training and students going thru the schools. That said, I believe there is a shift and the industry is going to have to change due to unsatisfactory results across the Country.

#11

Can someone tell me what exactly CLEARANCE mean? I see people saying I got a full clearance after 10 hours, or whatever the amount of hours. What does that mean?

#12

Here’s what “clearance” means to me.

Let’s say you have an unshaven underarm and it takes me 5 hours to clear all the hair off. That would be your first “clearance.”

If you are tweezing at the same time as having electrolysis … you don’t get a clearance: you get finished when you are finished.

If you are shaving? That would still not be (in my opinion) a clearance i.e., you cannot treat all the telogen hairs.

With the tweezing and shaving case, once you get to a point that you are clearing off all the hair in one appointment and do not have to shave between appointments … that could be considered a “clearance.” I usually use the term “control” at that point, not “clearance.”

I’m finishing up a beard case that I have been zapping for 9 months. Now, I can clear off all the hairs in a 90-minute appointment: that too could be considered a “clearance.”

Confused? Yeah, me too!

#13

Haha! Good explanation, Michael.

If I remove every visible hair in an area, that is a first, full clearance to me.

In this picture, I would consider this bare patch a first, full clearance.

If I chose to clear this area only the next time, it would be a second full clearance and so forth.

This cleared patch will be hair free after 8-15 full clearances over the next year to 18 months, if the client chooses to come every 4-6 weeks…

There are other strategies that work just fine.

Clearance means removing all offensive hair in a certain area. Sometimes it means all offensive hairs and a little more, including the telogen spikes that are barely peeking above the skin. The area should feel smooth and look visibly hair free.

#14

In the case of virgin hair, as we can see in the photo above, and assuming that the hair development is completed (as seems to be the case), 8/15 clearances seem too much in my opinion.

4 to 6 weeks after the first clearance, only a 15% of the amount of hairs removed during first time should have appeared. This 15% are exogen hairs which were not present in the surface at the time when the first clearance was performed.

In the following 4-6 weeks, the area should remain practically bald. It would be advisable to wait at least a couple of months after the second clearance (15% of the original amount), so that there is enough hair to remove.

#15

Oh, Jossie, I should have explained this better. In this case, this man was coming in twice a week so we could “peel” back that hair all the way to the belt line. If I saw any hair in that original area that I cleared, I would remove those hairs, thus, keeping that area constantly clear.

If I could humanly clear his whole back, arms, shoulders and clavicle area in two weeks with him coming every single day for 8 hours a day, then we could have relaxed for three months and then have done another clearing. He lives in Columbus, so he opted to come twice a week until his back was clear. The way you described it works, too, but that was not the strategy he chose. I wasn’t wiling to block off that much time for one client either because other people can’t get in to see me. Sorry I didn’t explain that better!