TL;DR: tiny little baby white hairs above my beard zone cause ingrown hairs which cause disgusting-looking bumps and pustules (with a tiny blackhead clogged pore as a head) to form on my face. Context below

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Hello SkinCareAddiction, I want to know if someone else has experience with this specific kind of acne, since after searching around I didn't find many people with this.

When I was 14 I started developing normal teenage acne. Just a bunch of red oily zits everywhere. At this point I basically never touched my face, be it with water, soap, or anything else. After I became self-aware at around 15 years of age I started using 5% Benzoyl Peroxide, and that basically killed my acne immediately. For the next 5 years, I had very little (if ever) acne and basically forgot about it. I had other physical problems but my face was basically always fair and clear. This is what I was doing at the time:

1. Shower in the morning, hot water all over my face directly from the stream
2. After shower, apply shaving gel and use disposable razor to shave, usually with and against the grain
3. Jump back in shower to wash off shaving gel
4. Get out, apply a thick layer of benzoyl peroxide and let it sit for the rest of the day

Done! And it worked great... for 5 years... until one day, about 4 months after I moved to this foreign country, my Benzoyle Peroxide stopped working. I'd apply it after doing my routine but it would just turn this sickly oily paste and the oily environment on my head (as well as the humidity from the atmosphere) would just cause pimples to break out by the end of the day. Some deep pustules, not many whiteheads or blackheads, but I started noticing that there was way more ingrown hairs. I tried a lot, I suffered a lot, I was obsessed to going back to my previous face. Losing my beautiful face was very upsetting for me. I basically suffered through a whole year while things would get better and worse. I would modify my diet, noticing that consuming olive oil and oily grilled chicken would make it worse, and things would get better for a week, only for me to be hit by another "attack" and breakout of ingrown hairs later, and I could never really identify what it was that was causing the acne. I moved houses, tried different water sources, stopped using Benzoyle and moved to Retinoid cream (it did nothing- was even more oily then benzoyl and would be like oily->oily->oily->extreme flaking).

At some point I decided enough was enough and let my beard grow out. Turns out I have a great beard, but it doesn't fill in between my lips and my chin. I stopped using disposable razors and turned to an electric trimmer. My logic was that if I don't shave so that hairs go under the skin, then I can't get ingrown hairs. Well, it worked a little bit, as I had less surface area to get visible acne on. It feels like anything under the beard never EVER gets acne, strange. I kept getting more and more problems until I tried re-introducing benzoyl peroxide and got a limited benifit. Until yesterday, this was my routine:

1. Rinse off in the mornings quickly, shower longer at night
2. After morning rinse-off, apply benzoyl peroxide
3. If it's shaving day, use electric trimmer on my neck and non-beard face area without any extension, to cut down the hair without making it so short that it goes under the skin
4. Trim the beard using extensions

The problem is that right now ALL my acne is due to ingrown hairs. Not thick ingrown hairs, but these tiny, wispy, white baby hairs that grow in my non-beard area on my face, like on my cheeks or down on my chin. Whenever a new pustule develops, it's usually one of those baby hairs that's ingrown into a pore, I lance it and dig it out, plus all the pus from the infection. The red inflamed scars usually stay for 3 days, causing immense embarrassment. I'm just physically incapable of leaving it in there and feeling the pressure of the inflammation knowing that it's looking all puffy and shitty anyways.

Also, since my face started rebelling it's quite red, pretty constantly, and even worse with any kind of physical exertion. It was also flaky and oily at the same time. I noticed that I could look fine after my morning rinse-off, and then three hours later if I had to go to work my face would be fully oily/sweaty with a nice sheen, and it was during these hours when my face would get this way that new pustules could develop.

I've already decided to stop everything, stop all these overnight retinoids and benzoyls to help these things go away, and just use very gentle water from the sink to dab on my face, and try to be super gentle. Today though during my workday my face got oily again and I developed another ingrown hair pustule on my upper cheek, that I saw to my terror when I was taking a piss.

Please, does anyone know what the hell I can do to stop ingrown hairs? I've tried gently exfoliating every other day during the shower, it seems to sometimes help but other times cause more acne, like it's fully random! I'm at my wit's end. When the stars align and I find myself with all my scars healed and no pustules, I look in the mirror and feel so amazing- it reflects on my entire persona and mood. When I have some acne, I just want to run away from everyone, I start hating myself and get very sad and upset in general. I just wish I never had to feel like that again, it's a terrible feeling.

Extra info: I drink quite a bit of water and don't consume any soft drinks. I don't drink milk. I do have cheese occasionally but I've gone through times when I didn't eat cheese for a couple of days and my acne didn't seem to get better or worse. I always get 8 hours of sleep. I've tried changing my pillowcases, it doesn't change anything whether I use an old pillowcase for 5 months or a new one every night. I never get random whiteheads, very rarely where my nose meets the cheek. My forehead is always super pristine even though it got the most hot water, most water pressure and most benzoyl peroxide, probably because there are no hairs up there to fuck shit up. Literally my only problem is ingrowns on my face area.

Please, can someone help me??