If you’re interested in learning how to stop blushing, it might be useful to remember that blushing does serve an important purpose in some circumstances. When we blush, we make others aware of our feelings so that they can modify their behavior in an appropriate manner. Blushing helps communicate the emotions that we might be too afraid to verbally express. As Mark Twain once wrote, “Man is the only animal that blushes or needs to.”
If you want to stop blushing, the first step is to make sure that your condition doesn’t have a verifiable medical cause. Blushing is often confused with the flushing caused by side effects of prescription drugs, rosacea, menopause, or other disorders. Discussing your symptoms with your doctor can help you determine if there is a physical reason for your blushing.
However, the difficulty in finding a way to stop blushing lies in the fact that there are three separate problems to address: the physical reaction of blushing, the fear of situations that cause blushing, and the embarrassment felt over other people’s reactions to your blushing. Essentially, blushing is a vicious cycle. Embarrassment and anxiety cause you to blush, yet embarrassment and anxiety will lead to more blushing. To stop blushing, you must break this pattern.
Cognitive behavioral therapy can help stop blushing by teaching you to adjust your expectations of social norms. According to researchers, people who blush excessively have unrealistic expectations of how they should behave in social situations. They fear that even a small mistake will be mocked by others, so they become unnecessarily anxious and start to blush. In comparison, babies and small children who have yet to develop these feelings about social interactions do not blush at all.
Hypnosis is another popular treatment option to stop blushing, although it might not work in every case. Essentially, the goal of hypnotherapy is to help you reprogram your unconscious mind to stop blushing. A good hypnotherapist may also help you learn to feel more confident, thus reducing the embarrassment and anxiety that contribute to chronic blushing.
While you may have heard that surgery can help stop blushing, it should be noted that this is only a viable treatment option in the most severe of cases. Endoscopic Transthoracic Sympathicotomy, the surgical procedure used to stop blushing, requires that portions of the sympathetic nerve trunk be clamped, removed, severed, or burned. Side effects can include difficulty regulating heart rate and body temperature, as well as excessive perspiration. For this reason, the surgery is generally only used in patients who suffer from idiopathic craniofacial erythema—blushing with little or no provocation that is unresponsive to all other treatment options.