Have you ever seen a picture of someone who has had anorexia for a long time? The image usually reflects someone who is really just skin and bones, yet continues to starve him or herself. To someone who has never had anorexia, it is hard to look at such an image and comprehend how the person who is in the picture looks in the mirror and sees a fat person who still needs to lose weight.
Without understanding the psychological aspects of anorexia, it is impossible for someone who sees themselves accurately to understand how distorted the body image of an anorexic is. Because a major part of anorexia is an obsessive and overwhelming fear of being overweight, those with the disease develop a distorted body image. They truly do not see their bodies the way they really are. If you tell an anorexic person that he or she is too thin, the person will believe you are lying to them.
Someone with problem blushing behaviour is not likely to immediately see the connection between problem blushing and anorexia, but there is an important similarity between the two conditions. Problem blushing behaviour has psychological ties as well. Because people who have problem blushing tend to be overly sensitive to the opinions of other people, any time they feel that they are being judged, they start to blush even more.
If you experience problem blushing, you know the overwhelming feeling of shame that sweeps over you when you feel a blush starting to creep up your neck and over your face. But, here is a question to ask yourself. Do you know how your blush looks to someone else? Do you think you look like a sunburned crab to the other person? Or, is it possible that your blushing really isn’t as bad as you think it is?
Before you answer that question, remind yourself that an 80 pound anorexic woman honestly believes that she is fat. She looks in the mirror and sees an obese person. She thinks that when you look at her, blushing or not, that you see someone who is morbidly overweight.
How do you know how you look to other people? When my girlfriend found out that in my audio book, Blushing Free, I comment that my blushing problem reached an all-time high when I first met her, she was surprised. She never even noticed what I thought were the worst episodes of excessive blushing I experienced in my life.
Just like anorexics have an excessive fear of being overweight that distorts their body image, problem blushers have an excessive fear of blushing that distorts their perception of what blushing does to their appearance. I’m not saying that problem blushers don’t blush too frequently. As a former problem blusher myself, I know that problem blushing is real. What I am saying is that as a problem blusher, your perception of what problem does to your appearance is worse than the reality.
As a problem blusher, a great first step toward getting over your problem is to recognize that part of your problem is tied to your fear of blushing. I’m not saying that you are making it up, but I am saying that it is partially in your mind. When you realize that your blushing problem isn’t as bad as you think, and that other people are likely to not notice or not care about it, you’ll be a little bit closer to putting the problem of excessive blushing behind you once and for all.