Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
My extreme blushing drove me to drink...
Russell Norris, 40, from Surbiton in South West London, explains how developing a rare form of uncontrollable blushing as a teenager triggered a phobia of people that affected his whole life – and how he made peace with it
Social anxiety typically arrives in adolescence, so I was a textbook case. All of a sudden, about half way through secondary school, I started blushing excessively at anything and everything.
Other boys latched on to it, trying to make me turn redder on purpose. Pretty soon, I couldn’t stand being near other people.
By the time I reached A-levels I was skipping school to avoid social contact. My grades suffered and my teachers told me I had an attitude problem. I knew there was a problem – but not with my attitude.
It would be years before I understood properly what was going on.
For just about as long as I can remember, I’ve had social anxiety. Not the shyness everyone feels at one time or another. Not the nerves you might get before your driving test. What lives deep inside me is a phobia of social interaction of any kind.
And I’m far from the only one. Social anxiety disorder affects millions of people worldwide and up to 10 per cent of people in the UK have it to some extent.
Symptoms can range from a fear of speaking on the phone to a fear of being watched in public.
My social anxiety is fuelled by something called idiopathic craniofacial erythema – a rare form of extreme blushing that can occur unprovoked or as a result of situations that spark stress, embarrassment, or anxiety.
I’ve been blushing uncontrollably for years, as a teenager living in Sutton in South London, and still today, as a 40-year-old man with my own family.
Over the years it created a vicious cycle. When I blushed I had no control over it. Because I had no control over it, I feared it happening. And because I feared it happening, it started happening more. This feedback loop reinforced itself over and over, until I’d do anything to avoid situations that might make me blush.
This avoidance is one of the driving forces of social anxiety disorder.
When I left school and went to university, the avoidance got worse. I developed a fear of eating in groups and went out of my way to have meals on my own. I got drunk before going into seminars because it was the only way I could build up the courage to participate. Then I started skipping the seminars and stopped going to the campus altogether, scared to death someone might see me, start a conversation and I’d have a nervous, red-faced meltdown in public.
I cracked in my third year at uni and went to my GP, who told me it sounded like I had social anxiety and that it could be treated with antidepressants.
I took little white pills for the rest of the academic year but they made me feel like another person. As if they were taking away my anxiety but my personality, too.
I came off them after my final exams and never took them again.
Out in the workplace things didn’t get better. To suppress my blushing I became an expert at being drunk and hiding it. I once drank a bottle of wine before going into an interview (unbelievably, I got the job). I became a copywriter at a TV channel and if I had a stressful meeting in the morning, I’d drink whisky before going into work. At one point I was drinking absinthe before arriving at my desk at 9am because it was the strongest stuff I could get my hands on.
This all caught up with me eventually when my colleagues caught me out. So I stopped the daytime drinking and looked for other ways to escape.
I noticed how lack of sleep made me less terrified in the office. So I started forcing myself to stay up late. If I had to give a speech to a roomful of co-workers the next day, I’d stay up the entire night and wouldn’t go to bed at all. I’d give the speech in a zombie-like daze and repeat the process, month after month, until I burnt out.
I could go on about the curse of social anxiety, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: I no longer believe it’s a curse. A curse can be a blessing.
I’ve learned, over time, that my phobia gives me advantages. For example, I was never confident in person, so I grew more confident on the page. It gave me a career as a writer. Eventually, I found healthier ways to cope. Exercising lowered my adrenaline and blood pressure and decreased the physical signs of anxiety such as trembling and blushing. Reframing my thoughts helped regulate my nerves.
I took small steps and some of them were excruciating but I forced myself into the situations I desperately used to avoid. Doing this allowed me to meet my wife. We had children, my world expanded and my social anxiety defined me less.
I advanced at work, started writing for a big advertising agency and ended up doing things I never dreamed of, like giving talks to big audiences.
While I know my social anxiety will probably never go away, I’ve made my peace with it, which is enough for now.
‘‘ I took little white pills for the rest of the year but I felt like another person ‘‘ At one point I was drinking absinthe before arriving at my desk at 9am
■ Redface: How I Learnt To Live With Social Anxiety by Russell Norris is published on April 1 (Canbury Press, £9.99)