Ok, I just have to come in here with a counterpoint about facial epilation. I have been doing it on and off for around a year, and was also told how it was 'so bad for the face', 'too painful', 'it'll mess up electro', and blah blah blah. Me being myself though I don't listen, and it was (still is) *very* important for me to have a smooth clean face.
Now for the ingrown hairs, you just have to be sure to exfoliate very well about two days later, and exfoliate gently like every other day, when your waiting for the hairs to grow back. (you might be different but you'll figure out the routine) If you don't exfoliate properly you WILL get tons of ingrown hairs, so this is very important. Personally I use a mixture of sugar salt and cider vinegar, but I'm sure any strong rough commercial exfoliate would be good as well.
For pain... It's really only VERY bad the first couple of times. After almost a year of doing this myself the pain is still there, but it is perfectly tolerable and not a whole lot different from pulling hairs from the legs. The hairs DO get weaker after being ripped out on such a consistent basis. To ease the pain I have a few tips... First of all work in very small areas, kind of like making small quarter sized circles with your wrist. The goal is to *not* grab a bunch of hairs all at once. Grabbing too many hairs can pull on the skin and leave you with nasty red marks, and they hurt! So make it a point to go slow, and not run through large patches of hair at a time, and your skin should be fine. I do use fast circular motion, but moving slowly from area to area only catching a few hairs with the corner of the epilator at a time. Trust me your skin will thank you if you take your time!
Now, I am personally prone to having some skin get roughed up around my mouth area, so I do use manual tweezing under my lip, and on my upper lip and around the sides of the mouth. The fewer hairs that are being pulled out at a time the less chance you have of messing up your skin. (cant stress this enough)
When it comes to electrolysis, I've had a few sessions and haven't had any problems =/ I can understand the logic behind why epilation may cause problems, but actual experience with it has shown me otherwise basically. I AM NOT saying that I think you should continue down the face epilating path, I'm simply saying it didn't give ME any problems.
As far as 'permanant' hair removal I had/have patches on my cheeks that no longer grow hair. Considering I have not had electro on my cheeks I can only assume hormones+consistent epilation was the cause. I have also noticed thinning (finer gauged hairs) around the outside areas of my neck, and on my chin and around my mouth, but to be fair I have had electro on my upper/lower lip... What I have had no change in whatsoever is hairs near the center of the neck and around the jawline (especially toward the center).
Well I hope I could help or offer some kind of perspective considering I have actually been doing this. I actually thought of putting up a youtube video of face epilating to help anyone else who was considering, but at the risk of being burnt by people who are 'against' the idea, and someone possibly messing up and hurting themselves I haven't done it. I just remember it was so frustrating for me to have to figure out the best way to epilate my face without any guidance or anything. >.>
Please be careful though! The red welts that can happen REALLY hurt =(
