5 Bad Habits To Avoid When Growing Long Relaxed Hair

By now, we all know that long, healthy relaxed hair is a thing that some of us don’t get to see because it can be quite tedious to achieve. But like everything else, once you learn the dos and don’ts, all you need to do is be consistent and then it’s easy from there. However, sometimes the line between what we should and shouldn’t do gets blurred and we’re really not sure what advice we should take.

No worries! Picking out the bad habits is a piece of cake, but just in case you’re still unsure, below are 5 habits to avoid when trying to grow long relaxed hair!

Stretching Your Relaxer Longer Than Your Hair Can Handle

Stretching your relaxer helps to avoid over-processing, thinning, breakage, split ends, and overall unhealthy hair. A lot of women stick to relaxing their hair no more than 3 times a year because they believe that having time in between relaxers helps with hair health and growth.

However, stretching relaxers months at a time does not jive well with certain hair textures and types. These women actually see breakage, shedding, dryness, and other damage because they’ve lost the harmonious balance between new growth and relaxed hair.

To avoid damage, you need to figure out how long you can actually stretch relaxers and stick to it! Just because someone can stretch their relaxer for 6 months, doesn’t mean that you can get away with it too.

While you stretch your relaxer, write down the changes in your hair and determine up to what point you are willing to go. When you figure out how long you’d like to stretch, construct an appropriate regimen for yourself!

Trimming Your Hair Too Often

Getting a trim every few weeks or months is one of those things that women, in general, try to avoid because we love our length far too much to willingly give it up. On the other hand, if we don’t trim our hair, we’ll most likely experience raggedy split ends and start losing more hair than we would if we just had gotten that trim.

So we get our hair trimmed regularly out of fear of split ends, and what happens? We end up trimming way too often! We can easily fall into the habit of trimming the same amount of hair every time we go get a cut and sometimes, that’s just too much.

If you’re properly taking care of your hair and retaining length, you may only need a little bit of hair taken off after your initial trim. If you’re cutting the same amount of hair every time you get a trim, you might be cutting perfectly healthy hair which means you won’t see any growth.

Sealing with Heavy Oils

Moisturizing and sealing are one of the major keys to growing healthy hair, but when you don’t use the right products, it can work against you.

Heavier oils, such as castor oil*, have the tendency to make relaxed hair stringy by weighing it down and clogging it’s pores. If the hair pores are clogged, it will stop hair from growing and allow buildup to collect on the scalp. This can lead to dandruff, hair loss, breakage, and many other time-consuming damages.

All relaxed hair is different, but because it is straighter than the kinks and curls of natural hair, lighter oils work better. Sealing with oils like grapeseed*, avocado, or coconut* is ideal because they are light, give your hair a non-greasy looking, healthy shine, and they still effectively trap in moisture while allowing you to style however you’d like.

Wearing Partial Sew Ins

Full sew ins are one of the best protective styles because they are cute and versatile, but still allow your hair to rest and grow. Partial sew ins, on the other hand, still require you to leave your hair out which can lead to damaged leave out.

When you have a partial sew in, you always have to manipulate your hair to match the texture of the weave* you installed. Sometimes this means you have to use flat irons* and curling irons* for your desired look.

If that one section becomes damaged, you’ll have to cut it and/or nurse it back to health; which ultimately means that your hair will be uneven until you can grow your leave out back out.

If you’re going to wear extensions*, install a full sew in or crochet braids because they completely cover your hair but still allow you to wash and care for part of it underneath.

Using Hairspray

When I was relaxed, I used hairspray by the bucket-load. Simply put, my hair was too straight and just couldn’t hold up in certain hairstyles–especially curls. Hairspray definitely did the trick, but the drawbacks definitely outweighed the benefits.

Hairspray would coat my hair like a light gel and harden onto it throughout the day. This wasn’t a problem until I noticed that I had to wash my hair every other day or else my hair would break off in my comb and brush.

Most hairsprays have harsh alcohols in them so not only do they dry out your hair, they make it brittle and limit how you can care for your hair between washes.

Like hair gel, hairspray can cause breakage after it hardens–this will obviously put a damper on any hair length goals you set for yourself. Your best bet is to avoid chemical hairsprays and look for natural hairspray and pomades to keep your hair in tact.