Causes of the Shy Blush

Psychologists are showing a greater interest in the problems of chronic blushing. Their concern for sufferers is laudable but their approach generally seems misguided. For example, one academic says blushing is not thought to relate in any direct way to the personality trait of neuroticism. This contradicts my own experience. Neurotic anxieties were at the root of my problems.

In recent years the problem of chronic blushing has become a clinical diagnosis indicating the need for treatment. I have doubts about the effectiveness of treatment which puts a narrow focus on blushing because of the risk of making the sufferer even more self-conscious. Chronic blushing has its aetiology in the way the growing child develops in response to parental and cultural influences and the way society perceives children and young people who have a shy temperament. A much broader approach to this problem is therefore required.

The apparently irrational nature of blushing is the focus of this article. In my experience, the blush feels like a flooding of emotions and is uncontrollable. The nature of the emotions that trigger a blush can be better understood if psychoanalytic theory is used to provide insight into the underlying conflicts that cause it. I will try to explain the hidden logic of the blush.

In the past my blushing was part of a broader personality trait which could be called slightly neurotic. I had little confidence in myself. I had a tendency to respond in fearful ways to others and to suffer from social anxiety. Blushing is no longer a problem to me, although I still blush on occasions simply because I am human.

My problems with shyness and blushing were partly caused by growing up in a mildly dysfunctional family. My parents were aspirational and made me feel that my shyness was unacceptable. Although my mother had been a shy blusher in her youth this was apparently not a problem to her in adult life as a housewife and mother. She tried to convey to me a positive attitude towards the social world and confidence that I would be able to cope with it.

There was much that was good about my childhood. I was the middle of three children and had a stable family life. My parents gave me the space and encouragement to follow my interests and fulfil my potential. However, they failed to recognise that in infancy I needed to develop a close bond with them. As a result I grew up vocally uncommunicative and with little understanding of my need for affection. I was very clingy with my mother and when people spoke to me I looked to her to answer for me. I hated school initially but once I settled in and learned to read I spent a lot of time reading. I often found the stories of other people's lives more interesting than my own. In my teens I became seriously interested in stories of romantic love - though I assumed that romance was really a fantasy and so these interests remained in my inner life, hidden and private.

Seeing photos of me as a girl I notice the shy smile, timid look and warm expression in my eyes. I now realise I wanted to relate to people but did not know how to, or what to say. My mind was so focused on pleasing everybody else that I had no sense of who I was or what I liked. Fortunately, there were plenty of children in our neighbourhood whose parents welcomed me and I was happy to play with them.

My memories of childhood are hazy and it is difficult to remember the details of family life. However, one event that does stand out is the birth of my sister when I was nearly ten. This period coincided with my father getting a new job and the family moving house - which meant I lost touch with my friends. There were many problems with the move, which involved a number of changes of school for me, and the stress caused me to become even more shy and withdrawn. At my new village school I struggled to speak and my teacher dealt with this by getting me to help my peers with their reading. At registration the rest of the class confidently shouted out their names but I could never bring myself to do this. However, I was the only child to pass the 11+ exam and this gave me a sense of being different from others. I did well at grammar school and was therefore expected to go on to university.

Adolescence was a particularly difficult time for me. Family life was secure and comfortable but my mind was in turmoil. I had become increasingly self-conscious about my shyness and the fear of blushing was a major preoccupation.

Like many people, I assumed that by getting a degree, a job and someone to share my life with I would find the answers to my problems. The process of transforming myself by achieving these goals seemed a sensible way of taking my mind off my social anxieties. I consciously tried to dissolve the gap between my inner and outer experiences by concentrating on achievable tasks and not thinking about my inner fear of blushing. Recently I came across the 'Task Concentration Technique' now being used to treat patients with a fear of blushing. This approach tackles the person's negative thoughts by providing strategies for focusing attention on the social task itself, thereby helping to interrupt the destructive cycle of crippling self-consciousness. The theory underpinning this approach is not unlike the one I was using during much of my early life.

I realise now, in my sixties, that one of the causes of my problems was growing up as an introvert in a family of extroverts. It has taken me many years to fully understood the way that early childhood experiences have shaped my personality. My shy disposition meant I had to force myself to venture into the outside world and push myself into social activities. My anxieties were low-level but, at each stage of my development, I worried constantly about the new challenges ahead. I felt driven to be sociable but anxious about my performance. I wanted to be normal and assumed this required me to be extrovert. It was a long time before I fully understood the power of extroverts to dominate the public space and and to make introverts feel under-rated.

It may seem rather odd that I chose a career in social work. However, when I made this choice I was still in denial about my introvert nature. My training in psychiatric social work introduced me to the ideas of the psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott. I was particularly interested in his concept of the 'false self' as opposed to the 'real self' - which gave me insight into how I presented myself in the social world.

In terms of my own personal life I have to admit I was a late developer. During my twenties there were times when I felt confused and depressed about my personal situation. My style of relating to people was quiet and restrained and I tended to avoid intimacy in relationships. My mother's influence had made me sceptical about marriage and motherhood; feminism had reinforced these views. Eventually, at the age of thirty I fell in love with a man who was ten years older than me who gave me the affection and security that I needed. Over the following decade we enjoyed an active social life together and developed a shared understanding that marriage and children were not for us.

Then I was hit by a mid-life crisis triggered by events at work. The job that I loved was axed and managers handled the process of redeployment very badly. For a time I suffered a complete shut-down of my emotions and an inability to cope with the social world. My GP signed me off work for two weeks but I initially struggled to recognise that I needed help for myself and was suffering from depression.

Fortunately, I found an excellent therapist who tolerated my misery and tears over several years. Although her insights helped me understand my depression and my faulty coping mechanisms, I still continued feeling trapped in a very dark place. She suggested that my psyche had been built on weak foundations and, as a consequence, my 'breakdown' was an understandable response to stress and also a necessary process - in the sense of giving me the opportunity to re-build it on firmer foundations. I experienced her as 'the good parent' - containing my pain and guiding me as I gradually re-examined my relationships and began to make changes in my life that were consistent with my own well-being. I can now say that I have definitely come out of depression stronger, wiser and more alive. The experience enabled me to become more authentically myself and to avoid people who treat me in a depersonalised way. Furthermore, in retrospect, I have come to realise that Winnicott was right when he said there is value in depression. The experience enabled me to get in touch with my real self and become more authentic in the way I relate to others.

One of the issues at the beginning had been my resistance to revealing myself and getting close to my therapist. It was the first time in my life my tears had been met with approval, rather than disapproval, and this in itself was therapeutic. She introduced me to the psychoanalytic theory of the 'basic fault' and suggested that my despair and sense of disillusion with people had their roots in early childhood. Therapy was helpful in giving me space for working through unresolved feelings from the past, and eventually giving me insight into the fact that I had grown up feeling uncertain about whether my parents loved me. I gradually realised that the lack of parental affection and support in childhood had made me very self-contained and incapable of expressing my feelings and needs in the way that normal people do. At that stage in my life, in my early forties, I was in so much inner turmoil I was incapable of really loving another person.

Eventually, I began to feel that I had worked through my difficulties sufficiently to let go of my therapist. She had been my lifeline during the darkest period of my life but I needed to get on with the task of living my life more authentically without her support.

It is often assumed that therapy focuses on childhood trauma and brings to the surface repressed childhood memories. This was not my experience. In fact, I was unable to remember much about my childhood and it remained largely unexamined during therapy. I never mentioned my problems with shyness and blushing, nor the trauma I had suffered at the age of ten. I had mistakenly assumed that my parents' care for me had been 'good enough'. Now, decades later, I realise that my forgetting childhood memories arose out of 'dissociation' - a necessary coping mechanism. During my therapy I had been too ashamed to admit to my shyness and blushing - possibly because I blamed myself for my personal 'failings' and failed to recognise the emotional harm caused by parental failure to meet my needs from birth onwards and the pressure on me to be independent and self-reliant. It has taken me a lifetime to develop a deeper understanding of the origins of my blushing in childhood and to realise that my parents, though kind people, had serious limitations as parents arising out of their own unsatisfactory childhood experiences.

Since leaving therapy I have moved on in my life and found my soul mate. We have been happily married for 22 years. My husband is naturally open and affectionate and this has brought out loving feelings in me that were previously buried. The security provided by a happy, long-term, intimate relationship has enabled me to explore my sexuality and find an inner confidence that extends to all aspects of my life.

As a consequence I have found the freedom to be myself. I have stopped blushing because I have turned self-consciousness into self awareness and come to terms with being a shy introvert. Marriage has given me the satisfaction, excitement and intimacy that I had always wanted. Since finding 'The One' to share my life with I have started to have a more healthy relationship with the social world.

My shy nature was repressed in childhood and I was taught at school and at home how to perform socially and to work hard to get approval. Fortunately, in adult life I have been given emotional support from people who have enabled me to stop 'performing' and to start 'relating' in a more authentic way. I now have a much deeper understanding of what Freud discovered about the central importance of the unconscious in adult life and the persistence of infantile unmet needs and desires. In the past, neurotic anxieties caused me to keep a tight rein over my emotions but now that these anxieties have less of a hold over me I have become more alive in the social world - although on occasions the remnants of childish feelings deep in my unconscious can still trip me up. However, I intuitively know how to be myself with other people and whether it is in my own interests to express my feelings openly. I have finally reached a stage in my development where I feel confident in most areas of my life.

Along with these changes there has also been a change in my attitude towards sex. I no longer feel shame or embarrassment about sex and can talk about it without blushing. I have discovered the pleasures of a real orgasm and when I orgasm I get a sex flush on my face. My husband likes to see this because it is a positive sign that I am enjoying myself. The involuntary sex flush is remarkable. It makes me feel like a natural woman and has also helped me overcome blushing. I am surprised that psychologists who study the blush do not mention the phenomenon of involuntary sex flushing.

Hilary Searing