Taylor Setterfield, 20, said she had the odd bout of acne when she was younger, but by the time she was 16 her skin was “flawless”.

But when she turned 18, stress caused her acne to return “with a vengeance”.

Taylor, from Chichester, said it was “more than just normal teen acne” this time, adding it was now adult cystic acne.

She said: “At one stage my cystic acne was so bad, I had almost every single inch of my face covered in deep red cysts.”

As her skin kept getting worse, and she was referred to a dermatologist to try and address the condition.

Taylor, a marketing assistant, said: “They put me on everything from lymecycline and zineryt to duac cream and finally at the end of last year I took a course of Accutane last summer.

“I was on it for four months.

“The only thing that had any effect at all was Accutane, but the side effects were so awful that I didn’t want to take another course.”

Taylor says her skin began affecting her confidence, and it began to trigger anxiety.

She said: “I’m normally one of the bubbliest, most confident people you could meet, but when my acne was bad my anxiety levels were through the roof and I’d lose all my confidence.

“When I developed cystic acne when I was older, after everyone else’s acne had cleared up, it made me incredibly insecure to the point I didn’t want to leave my bedroom.

“I remember constantly staring at myself in the mirror so confused as to why I couldn’t look like the other girls my age.”

“My friends often talk about how they go to bed with their makeup on and how they don’t even have a face care routine yet their skin is flawless.

“I have such a thorough skin care routine for every morning and evening and have done so for years – yet I suffer with severe acne. It seems incredibly unfair.”

Taylor says luckily she was never bullied over her acne, but she says the end of her relationship caused her to develop body dysmorphia disorder.

She said: “I hated my face so much that I used to stare at it for hours. I thought I was so ugly.”

After she became single, she says her face became “red and swollen and very painful”.

“I felt as if it was distorting the shape of my face because my skin was so Inflamed”, she admitted.

But Taylor didn’t want to go back on Accutane so she tried a range of other treatments, including light therapy, face washes, elemis, tropic, la roche-posay Clearasil and Clean, but she says they “had very little effect”.

Taylor said she reached a low point, saying: “I became particularly depressed when my acne came back after taking Accutane.

“It was not as bad as before but I could feel it had the potential to get really bad again if I didn’t find something that would control it and I didn’t want to take any medications again as my skin felt destroyed.”

Taylor had nearly given up hope of loving her natural skin, when one of her followers on Instagram recommended Clarol Silver Serum

She says initially she wasn’t sure it was working as it ‘purged’ her skin, but after two weeks her face began to clear up.

Taylor recalled: “First the redness and swelling reduced and then slowly but surely the deep painful lumps and bumps reduced until I was left with just normal ‘pimples’. Eventually after about a month they went too.”

She says the serum, which is made with ‘micro-silver’ and works by re-balancing the skin’s bacteria, evened out her skin tone, and now two months after starting using it, she’s able to go make-up free.

Taylor raved: “Two months on and I am now able to go out in public more or less make-up free, which if you had told me this a year ago I would never ever have believed it.

“My skin isn’t perfect or flawless but it’s so drastically improved that I feel grateful most days when I look in the mirror.

“Even though it’s not perfect, my skin now glows whereas before it looked dull and blotchy.

“I feel for the first time in my life I’m able to look at my skin and love it, despite the scars and

the few spots that are still lurking around I feel like a long hard battle has finally been won and I love myself and my skin for surviving it.

“I really deserve to be loved and so does my skin. My skin now feels the clearest and healthiest it has felt for about two years.”