I cannot get clean and cannot use white towels.

It's because your skin is moist after a shower and what you're rubbing off are dead cells. I do it all the time, it's alright you're not dirty.

It's likely just the oil from your skin and dead skin cells, especially if you are having long and hot showers your skin will be soft and more susceptible to being exfoliated by your towel.

You should only be lightly exfoliating your skin, please don't scrub hard!

As long as you use soap you can have <1min shower and still be clean! Hope this helps :)

It's bad for your skin to scrub it dry. You're damaging it. You only need to pat it dry.

It sounds like this is more about ingrained feelings from your childhood causing a poor perception of yourself.

Do not use bleach! That would probably hurt you.

Use a loofah.

Thx everyone. I'll just keep doing as I always have, but no more hard scrubbing and no long showers. And won't use harsh chemicals such as bleach. That was a stretchy thought.

It might sound silly, but maybe try to reteach yourself how to clean yourself? If what you're currently doing leaves you feeling dirty, find some hard science on hygiene and go from there. If you just guess and start mixing things you might damage your skin.

Using a bar of soap directly will remove more of the oil from your skin. May take a few showers to clean it up. Ditch the wash cloth for a week. See what happens.

Sometimes it's not actually dirt, but just dried sweat and oil from your skin. Maybe you have bad feeling's about having grown up poor, underprivileged and lacking in certain basic necessities?

When I was young I had terrible, and even disfiguring acne for which I was bullied in the seventh grade. Now whenever I walk into a room I'm usually very aware of the skin color and texture of every person in the room. I know there are those who have had it and do have it much worse, but I always notice the slightest bit of redness in my skin. I would love to have a smooth and flawless porcelain complexion, but alas it was not meant to be. The funny thing is that now that I'm almost fifty I have gotten compliments on my skin, and even had someone accuse me of having good skin, because apparently I look much younger than I am, but I stay out of the sun and drink plenty of water.

What I'm trying to say essentially is that I think if we're traumatized by difficult circumstances when we are young and impressionable it's possible that we may never quite get over it.

a sauna might help agood sweat cleans dirt out of pores

Where i grew up, everyone was poor and we joke about it always. I only mentioned my "shack of a house" to jokingly explain why I only took a bath once a week....and to explain that I no longer bathe so infrequently. I just realized that I can schedule an appointment with dermatology too. Well, I guess as long as I don't have a body odor it's not a big deal. I'm going to experiment though by taking a couple showers back to back.