Women whose lives are blighted by BLUSHING

ALL it takes is a ‘good morning’ at the supermarket checkout and Susan Hughes feels a familiar burning sensation in her cheeks.

The same happens when she opens the door to a delivery person at home, or if someone catches her eye at her exercise class.

Within seconds, a creeping heat spreads up her neck and into her face, leaving her crimson and with beads of sweat on her forehead.

Like thousands of women, the 40year-old from Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, is an extreme blusher.

‘I do it everywhere — walking into a restaurant, being introduced to people at parties, even greeting my hairdresser, whom I’ve known for years,’ says Susan, a married mumof-one who runs a catering business.

Blushing has blighted her life. ‘It makes me feel like an embarrassed little girl who’s done something wrong instead of a grown-up. It usually goes away in a few minutes, but if someone draws attention to it I go even redder.’

Susan is a redhead like her father, who still blushes at the age of 80. She blames it for her shyness growing up and, more recently, for prompting a change of career.

‘I used to be a company manager and had to chair meetings, half of which I spent bright red,’ she says. ‘People didn’t comment, but it felt like the elephant in the room.

‘When I decided to leave my job and start my own business last year, it was a huge relief.’

What baffles her most is that her blushing seems to have no cause.

‘A friend asked if she could breastfeed in front of me the other day and I said of course,’ recalls Susan. ‘But as soon as she started I turned postbox red. I was fine with it, yet my face was telling a different story. I just can’t understand why.’

Scientists seem flummoxed, too, though Charles Darwin considered blushing ‘ the most peculiar and most human of all expressions’.

At any rate, most of us do it. According to a study of 2,000 adults, the British blush on average four times a day. ‘It happens when your body releases adrenaline, which causes the blood vessels in your face to open up and there’s a resultant rush of blood and redness, as if you’re overheating,’ says Dr Helen Webberley, GP for The Oxford Online Pharmacy.

Some experts say redheads like Susan, or at least those with pale skin, are more prone to blushing, but Dr Webberley says this isn’t entirely true.

‘Most of us blush, it’s just less visible on darker skins. Redheads tend to have thinner, paler skin so the flush is more noticeable. This may trigger people to make comments, which tends to make you more self-conscious and blush more.’

So the more you worry about it, the more adrenaline you make and the more you blush.

For Iva Hajzler, this blushing cycle makes her feel as if she is having a panic attack.

‘I once forgot my PIN number at the supermarket, so now whenever I go to any cashier, I feel my face begin to redden and my heart rate speeds up,’ says Iva, 33, a warehouse manager from Milton Keynes.

‘ I can feel the eyes of the cashier and the people in the queue burning into me, and I feel breathless and start to panic. I have to grab my shopping, pay and run.’

HER blushing forces her onto a sunbed once a week for a tan. ‘It slightly masks the redness of the blush, but not completely,’ says Iva, who first started to blush as a teenager and finds it most embarrassing at work. ‘I wish it would go away, but I don’t know what causes it or how to stop it.’

Psychotherapist and hypnotherapist Sarah Wall says excessive blushing is mostly a woman’s problem: ‘Women have thinner skin than men, so when the blood vessels dilate, it’s more noticeable. Most of how we behave is controlled by our subconscious mind — blinking, breathing and digesting food.

‘It’s those who become aware of blushing in their conscious brain who have a problem.

‘Research has shown that the more you think you’re blushing and try to suppress it, the more you’ll blush.’

Sarah says blushing should be embraced as a ‘ superpower’, though, citing a 2011 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which suggested that appearing flustered makes you come across as more honest and trustworthy. ‘Blotchy cheeks at work, where you want to be seen as in control, can feel like you’re waving a flag that you’re insecure,’ says Sarah.

‘But, in fact, they makes you far more likeable.’

According to Sarah, the first step in tackling the unwanted flush is to appreciate its power.

‘Blushing is nature’s way of revealing your true feelings — it shows your excitement and your nerves and that’s OK,’ she says.

‘Once you realise that and relax, the blushing has nowhere to run and simply peters out.’

Sarah also uses hypnosis to teach clients how to control and redirect body temperature.

‘I ask them to imagine their hands heating up in front of a fire, so they can transfer the blushing out of the cheeks and into their hands,’ she says. ‘I will also advise doing more exercise, particularly highenergy workouts, to get them used to their heart rate speeding up, so they feel more relaxed when the same thing happens before they blush, which lessens its impact.

A two-and-a-half hour session with Sarah costs £ 240. She claims 100 per cent success in ending problem blushing.

For those on a tighter budget, Dr Webberley suggests keeping a cold, damp flannel in a plastic bag in your handbag for any blushing ‘ emergencies’. ‘It will dampen down the redness, though it won’t tackle the root of the problem,’ she says.

Susan has one last quick fix for a crimson face: make-up.

‘If you can’t beat it, then try to hide it with a good layer of foundation,’ she advises. ‘ You won’t need blusher!’