Why does my beard grow "up"?

You have soft beard that’s why you feel it like that. There’s nothing you can do now but eventually it will come back to what others call normal. But remember .. since you shaved for so long you might forget how your beard was. Maybe this is your normal but you just forgot.

Just needs to grow out some more. I’m sure the skin and pores you used to have to shave on everyday has done little damage to the actual growing process of your beard. Here is what is happening, you brush down, it pushes the hairs into your skin, you brush upwards, well then its just pushing the tips of your hair away from the skin. Take a picture.

The shaving did not affect it. It is not unusual for beards to grow in crazy directions. My husbands sideburn on one side grows up, and the other grows down.

The hair on my head grows in an asymmetrical swirl. I can style and tame the left side but not the right. Parting it one way produces calm and smoothness, the other way, the Lurch look.

Sounds like the problem is course or wirey hair… It’s natural not much you can do about it, especially if it never happened before the military and you tend to shave up, your hair folicles have probably been retrained to grow in that direction now.

Kind of like retraining a cow lick to straighten itself by constanty combing it in the opposite direction.

Forgot to add that I’m African-American with a hint of indian.. :/

I am guessing this is very very common among African Americans.

@Moegitto Well then shouldn’t you not be shaving in the first place? Forgive me if that is an assumption that ends up sounding ignorant, but I was always under the impression that African American men used chemicals or something instead of shaving to prevent bumps and ingrown hairs?

@GabrielsLamb Some do, but most of the time the whole fiasco with shaving down is for us because of the curly hair type. Unfortunately, I don’t really have curly hair. In high school the girls used to love my Dark skin Redhead type. I used to grow beards all the time back in those days (man I’m getting old) with absolutely no problems. But now everything is upside down :*

Sometimes, areas of hair just grow “upside down” or even “sideways”. The hair isn’t actually upside down or sideways, it’s just how it grows. Half the hair on my neck grows in toward my adam’s apple while the other half grows down as it’s supposed to. Like going bald, it’s not really anything you can help. You just have to let it do what it does or shave it off.

@Randy Why’d you have to remind me of how I’m going bald… :(

@Well… When you shave, you always cut the hair on a bias so you can actually change the direction of the new growth over time.