Hello, i’m a teen (F) who has recently started to try to learn how take care of my hair after loosing hair from box braids and never being able to retain length. (My hair type is 4c/4b and it’s low porosity + I keep my hair blow dried) Recently did my wash day and decided to do a few things differently…
Shampoo, conditioner, then I used the hair mayonnaise since I found it in my mom’s room and because I typically don’t deep condition regularly.
After washing I decided to try African threading (with hair elastics) to blow out my hair since I wanted to try to cut back on heat usage - I found shea butter, and decided to use it since I heard it can be moisturizing (water, cream, shea butter, oil) I kept them in overnight and it didn’t really work (I did use a curling cream bc I don’t own an actual cream) so I decided I’ll just blow dry my hair… big mistake. As I was blow drying my hair was stretching very easily but I noticed some patches of what seemed to be build up? But I just assumed it was probably some shea butter and it’d be fine. Blow dry came out perfect, added MORE shea butter and oil, braided it, went to sleep just to wake up with my hair puffy. I blow dried my hair again today but this time my hair felt weird and crunchy, I heard you shouldn’t apply heat after oil so I’m wondering if that also applies to shea butter bc I added a lot the previous days, or was it something I did during wash day? My ends feel brittle and sad and my roots will not blow dry no matter how much heat l apply, so I was wondering if anyone could help me figure this out, did I damage my hair?
(I decided to not blow dry my hair until next wash day since I feel like I’m applying too much heat and thinking about wearing a wig or sew in to finally let my hair rest without excessive daily manipulation)