Everything Zen
Well-Known Member
Sigh...
I am so proud of how I manage to keep my hair detangled with low manipulation nder water with my fingers and a lot of conditioner, 2 braids pinned up and a headband is my usual style. Sometimes I will use a shower comb but otherwise that's it... Except for when it gets closer to a retouch. I am usually so cautious about treating my hair as gently as possible that as the NG comes in I start to get used to the springy coils and lax on the detangling as I'm trying to learn my curl pattern/hair type. I realize I have never seen my hair in it's natural curl pattern.
The past 2 weeks I've been inclined to do a few dry curly rollersets where I wet it and re-roll each section every day without detangling. So when I washed my hair recently, I looked down in the shower and saw no hairs at all! I was amazed and pleased. Then when I washed it yesterday, I was wary of rough and bulky my hair felt. I'm getting a relaxer next Friday so I'm just prepping right now. Late last night I was playing with my hair and I noticed a rough knot. I absent-mindedly detangled and then I felt another. I started to panic. Apparently I hadn't done a good enough job of detangling after the 2 weeks of rollersets!! My hair was matting!
My hair was dry at this point save some olive oil but I started detangling with my fingers and my super large comb. I must have some serious childhood trauma of getting my hair detangled because to this day, I am always dismayed when I do a serious dry detangling because it's like I always forget how much it hurts (I was a tender head)! It seems like so much stress on your hair but there is really no other way to do this when it gets tangled like that. Thank God for my Denman. I'm so gentle with my hair and that thing scares me but it worked well!
Of course there was a sizeable amount of shed hair with a small amount of tiny breakage hairs. It's not excessive because I'm know what to expect especially after something like this! My hair is super strong and resilient. I treat it like it's damaged so it seems like dry detangling would be damaging but I realized how strong my hair is. It took a good hour and a half to complete.
Anyway I was wondering if you could really get away with the shower finger detangling alone? I tend to do this dry detangling thing a week before my relaxer (and I'm always surprised at the difference in my hair afterwards- like I forget what it's like to have completely detangled hair.) Is it a necessary evil? I wouldn't dream of doing this while my hair was wet. Either way I'm wondering if I caused real damage that was unnecessary if I had just kept up more with the shower detangling?
I think of some ladies like Cichelle and FlowerHair for example who wear their hair in its natural curl patterns. Do they detangle dry because it would obviously destroy the curl pattern or do they just wet finger detangle and still manage to avoid any matting? I will eventually transition but this made me stop and think because I HATE dry detangling but if that's the only way it can be done to maintain hair health I'm not so sure I can do it all the time.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
I am so proud of how I manage to keep my hair detangled with low manipulation nder water with my fingers and a lot of conditioner, 2 braids pinned up and a headband is my usual style. Sometimes I will use a shower comb but otherwise that's it... Except for when it gets closer to a retouch. I am usually so cautious about treating my hair as gently as possible that as the NG comes in I start to get used to the springy coils and lax on the detangling as I'm trying to learn my curl pattern/hair type. I realize I have never seen my hair in it's natural curl pattern.
The past 2 weeks I've been inclined to do a few dry curly rollersets where I wet it and re-roll each section every day without detangling. So when I washed my hair recently, I looked down in the shower and saw no hairs at all! I was amazed and pleased. Then when I washed it yesterday, I was wary of rough and bulky my hair felt. I'm getting a relaxer next Friday so I'm just prepping right now. Late last night I was playing with my hair and I noticed a rough knot. I absent-mindedly detangled and then I felt another. I started to panic. Apparently I hadn't done a good enough job of detangling after the 2 weeks of rollersets!! My hair was matting!
My hair was dry at this point save some olive oil but I started detangling with my fingers and my super large comb. I must have some serious childhood trauma of getting my hair detangled because to this day, I am always dismayed when I do a serious dry detangling because it's like I always forget how much it hurts (I was a tender head)! It seems like so much stress on your hair but there is really no other way to do this when it gets tangled like that. Thank God for my Denman. I'm so gentle with my hair and that thing scares me but it worked well!
Of course there was a sizeable amount of shed hair with a small amount of tiny breakage hairs. It's not excessive because I'm know what to expect especially after something like this! My hair is super strong and resilient. I treat it like it's damaged so it seems like dry detangling would be damaging but I realized how strong my hair is. It took a good hour and a half to complete.
Anyway I was wondering if you could really get away with the shower finger detangling alone? I tend to do this dry detangling thing a week before my relaxer (and I'm always surprised at the difference in my hair afterwards- like I forget what it's like to have completely detangled hair.) Is it a necessary evil? I wouldn't dream of doing this while my hair was wet. Either way I'm wondering if I caused real damage that was unnecessary if I had just kept up more with the shower detangling?
I think of some ladies like Cichelle and FlowerHair for example who wear their hair in its natural curl patterns. Do they detangle dry because it would obviously destroy the curl pattern or do they just wet finger detangle and still manage to avoid any matting? I will eventually transition but this made me stop and think because I HATE dry detangling but if that's the only way it can be done to maintain hair health I'm not so sure I can do it all the time.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
