Depressed from Browlift and Upper Eye Procedures

I am right now 8 weeks post surgery. I am so depressed–I feel that my jaws and lower part of my face look bigger. I hate the way I look. I do have decent eyelids now–but my forhead seems big. I feel that my hair is thinner where the incisions were made. Will my look improve?
PatsyHanse

Hi PatsyHanse,

There does seem to be a phenomenon after cosmetic surgeries where the patient becomes depressed after surgery. I think it may be more common with facial surgeries, since our face is our identity. Either the patient becomes depressed from the bruising and swelling which temporarily distorts the face, or the unexpected difficulty in the recovery period, or possibly they are not used to the new changes to the face. Usually the depression passes as the patient continues to recover from their procedure, and the temporary post-operative issues heal and resolve, and they get used to and begin to like their new look. I don’t know what type of browlift you had, but the incisions in the hairline from both the traditional (coronal) and endoscopic browlift techniques can have some temporary hair loss at the incision sites. For some people, their hair follicles can go into a state of “shock” and the normal hair growth/cycle becomes disrupted. This can cause the hair to fall out, initially, and it can take several months for the follicle to “reset/reboot” and start to grow again.

A browlift can raise the hairline, because in order to smooth out the forehead wrinkles and raise the eyebrows, the forehead skin is stretched upwards to accomplish those two goals, but the trade off is that the hairline can also go up. This can make the forehead appear to increase in heighth.

I don’t know your age, so I don’t know what is happening with your lower face and jaws. It may be possible that your upper face/forehead and eyelid now look younger and the lower face is now not matching the upper face. It’s possible early after surgery, that swelling from the browlift and eyelid surgery can travel down to the lower face and jaw and this swelling can make this area look bigger. But at 8 weeks, most of the swelling is resolving and since no surgery was performed on the lower face and jaw, it should be the same as prior to surgery. If you feel that this is more of an optical illusion, it may be that the upper face/forehead area now looks younger/smoother, and the lower face is now not matching the upper face and appears to be bigger, although nothing was done surgically.

You should contact your surgeon and discuss these concerns with him or her.

Best,

Dr. Yang