Curly hair and crazy breakage...

[abritta3]

Hi everyone...I have 3a hair and it's driving me nutssss!! I am super careful with my hair but still notice those white dots in my hair shaft...I made a thread the other day asking for advice because this damage is about 2inches up into the hair shaft.
The overall answer I recieved was for me to trim the ends off.

I feel like I go through this cycle month after month, trim after trim! I get the damage so I cut it off..then 2-3 months later I am back at the prior length with damage YET AGAIN!!!
This is so frustrating...it feels like my hair never grows because I have to keep cutting!!

I wear my hair up in a wet bun 90% of the time (if not more)
I use 'cone free CO only method or use Bert's Bees CO (which is 97% natural)
And the only "product" I use is jojoba oil

I am just feeling so frustrated. I feel like I will never reach my goal.

Any advice or similar frustrations?!

[Anje]

When do you comb your hair? For curly hair, you might only want to detangle in the shower with a wide-tooth comb, while your hair is totally loaded with conditioner.

A seamless comb might be helpful, too. The bone/resin combs from Hairsense can go in the shower with you, while a horn comb probably shouldn't.

[curls2grow]

Raising hand. :(

I do get my ends trimmed regularly. My curls don't curl as well when my ends are in bad shape. My ends always feel rough to me, but my HD (who is very supportive of growing my hair longer) always tells me that I don't need to cut as much as I think I do (and I doubt she's trying to sabotage my efforts by lying to me. Been with her 20 years!)

My recent pics in my album state my frustration at being perpetually at or around shoulder length. And I have a modest goal -- I just wanna get to APL and maintain there!

One of the reasons that I did a bigger trim and got a bit of layering done is that I want to try to wear my hair curly more this summer. Last summer I bunned it daily. In my case, I think that damp or wet bunning may have contributed to some mid-strand breakage (which, on me, is probably only about 4-6" from root) I wasn't pulling my hair back too tightly, but I think that if it wasn't the act of pulling it back that resulted in breakage, it may have been my placing the bun in just about the same place day after day. Also, since I was growing out hair that was dyed with permanent dye, I had a theory that my hair was breaking off due to tension where the newer gray hair met the older dyed/damaged hair.

So this may be the summer that I look like a frizzball on CO wash days when I wear my hair unbunned. And then maybe I will only bun in on the 2nd day when it's not wet and not as vulnerable to breakage. I don't know if this plan will work for me or not, but at least it's a plan, so that I don't put "bun stress" on my hair every day.