Over the years I’ve changed my approach to people who feel cursed with blushing. Again, blushing is an, “end-point,” phenomenon. So focussing on the end point can often exacerbate the situation.
My experience is that it is process driven, can have a range of triggers and is self-reinforcing. (What’s that mean in English?). It happens following a sequence; it’s generally about social exposure and about what others’ may think of you. Once you’re a regular blusher your thought processes sort of pump-prime the cycle with anticipation and the experience of blushing feeds into your expectations – reinforcing the process.
OK, so what do I do now?
First you have to accept that you have no control over the blushing and attempting to do so will probably make the situation worse. This acceptance can be tricky to pull off for some people because at an emotional level you’re desperate to control it.
However, what you have 100% control over is where you put your attention. OK once you can feel a blush coming on, the threat of the blushing demands your attention. (It’s the spin-offs from the threat that really grabs your attention as you start to monitor whether anyone has noticed yet). You can learn to lock your attention in the moment. Once you start to do this you’ve broken the cycle and the blushing will start to diminish in both intensity and frequency.
It sounds simple – because it’s simple. The tricky bit is to get someone who may have spent years adapting to the threat of blushing to believe that such an approach can work.
