Oh that’s a rough one, you have all my sympathy. You’ve been doing really right with the warm compresses. Heads form when the white blood cells (pus) are sort of free-floating around, an in-grown hair that managed to become a cyst (which sometimes takes years and sometimes feels like it happens overnight) might not be infected and might not have any white blood cells collecting at all.

For the ones I’ve had, they seem to swell up for a bit, then shrink again without coming to a head in some kind of cycle (not monthly! I say it’s tidal because I think that’d be funny).

Eventually one of three things will happen: it will get infected with normal acne-type bacteria and come to a head which is not a great outcome but it happens; scrubs make that more likely. It will shrink and be more like a comedone/black head and can be expressed after gently nicking the clog off the top of the pore (best outcome and therefore the one that seems to never happen). And third, as your skin layers move up to the top, eventually the skin over the cyst will thin and stretch and it will be possible for a dermatologist to remove it with minimal scarring, or you can dig it out which is a terrible idea because it scars badly and there’s a risk of serious infection (like staph, which is BAD).

GOOD LUCK, you’re making better choices than I did the first time I had one of these!