What do you say when you start blushing?

Mar. 07, 2024

Reddening of a person's face due to emotion

"Erythrophobia" redirects here. For fear of the color red, see Chromophobia

A woman blushing and covering her face.

Blushing or erubescence is the reddening of a person's face due to psychological reasons.[1][2][3] It is normally involuntary and triggered by emotional stress associated with passion, embarrassment, shyness, fear, anger, or romantic stimulation.

Severe blushing is common in people who have social anxiety in which the person experiences extreme and persistent anxiety in social and performance situations.

Description
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Blushing is generally distinguished, despite a close physiological relation, from flushing, which is more intensive and extends over more of the body, and seldom has a mental source. Idiopathic craniofacial erythema is a medical condition where a person blushes strongly with little or no provocation. People who have social phobia are particularly prone to idiopathic craniofacial erythema.

Physiology
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A blush is a reddening of the cheeks and forehead brought about by increased capillary blood flow in the skin. It can also extend to the ears, neck and upper chest, an area termed the 'blush region'.[4]

There is evidence that the blushing region is anatomically different in structure. The facial skin, for example, has more capillary loops per unit area and generally more vessels per unit volume than other skin areas. In addition, blood vessels of the cheek are wider in diameter, are nearer the surface, and visibility is less diminished by tissue fluid. These specific characteristics of the architecture of the facial vessels led Wilkin in an overview of possible causes of facial flushing to the following conclusion: "[...] increased capacity and greater visibility can account for the limited distribution of flushing".[5]

Evidence for special vasodilation mechanisms was reported by Mellander and his colleagues (Mellander, Andersson, Afzelius, & Hellstrand. 1982). They studied buccal segments of the human facial veins in vitro. Unlike veins from other areas of the skin, facial veins responded with an active myogenic contraction to passive stretch and were therefore able to develop an intrinsic basal tone. Additionally Mellander et al. showed that the veins in this specific area were also supplied with beta-adrenoceptors in addition to the common alpha-adrenoceptors. These beta-adrenoceptors could exert a dilator mechanism on the above-described basal tone of the facial cutaneous venous plexus. Mellander and his colleagues propose that this mechanism is involved in emotional blushing. Drummond has partially confirmed this effect by pharmacological blocking experiments (Drummond. 1997). In a number of trials, he blocked both alpha-adrenergic receptors (with phentolamine) and beta-adrenergic receptors (with propranolol introduced transcutaneously by iontophoresis). Blushing was measured at the forehead using a dual channel laser Doppler flowmeter. Subjects were undergraduate students divided into frequent and infrequent blushers according to self-report. Their mean age was 22.9 years, which is especially favorable for assessing blushing, since young subjects are more likely to blush and blush more intensively. The subjects underwent several procedures, one of which was designed to produce blushing. Alpha-adrenergic blockade with phentolamine had no influence on the amount of blushing in frequent or in infrequent blushers, indicating that release of sympathetic vasoconstrictor tone does not substantially influence blushing. This result was expected since vasoconstrictor tone in the facial area is known to be generally low (van der Meer. 1985). Beta-adrenergic blockade with propranolol on the other hand decreased blushing in both frequent and infrequent blushers. However, despite complete blockade, blood flow still increased substantially during the embarrassment and blushing inducing procedure. Additional vasodilator mechanisms must therefore be involved.

Psychology
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Charles Darwin devoted Chapter 13 of his 1872 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals to complex emotional states including self-attention, shame, shyness, modesty and blushing. He described blushing as "... the most peculiar and most human of all expressions."

Several different psychological and psycho-physiological mechanisms for blushing have been hypothesized by Crozier (2010): "An explanation that emphasizes the blush's visibility proposes that when we feel shame we communicate our emotion to others and in doing so we send an important signal to them. It tells them something about us. It shows that we are ashamed or embarrassed, that we recognise that something is out of place. It shows that we are sorry about this. It shows that we want to put things right. To blush at innuendo is to show awareness of its implications and to display modesty that conveys that you are not brazen or shameless. The blush makes a particularly effective signal because it is involuntary and uncontrollable. Of course, a blush can be unwanted [but the] costs to the blusher on specific occasions are outweighed by the long-term benefits of being seen as adhering to the group and by the general advantages the blush provides: indeed the costs may enhance the signal's perceived value."[6] A number of techniques may be used to help prevent or reduce blushing.[7]

Salzen (2010) suggested that blushing and flushing were manifestations of the physiological impact of the instinctual fight/flight mechanism, when neither confrontation nor retreat is possible.[8]

References
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Further reading
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Vickers, S., MyBlushingCure.com: Free Information from a former blusher, Australian Publisher, 2012
Crozier, W. R., Blushing and the Social Emotions: The Self Unmasked, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ISBN 1-4039-4675-2
Miller, R. S., Embarrassment: Poise and Peril in Everyday Life, Guilford Press, 1997. ISBN 1-57230-247-X
Jadresic, E., When Blushing Hurts: Overcoming Abnormal Facial Blushing (2nd edition, expanded and revised), iUniverse, 2014. ISBN 978-1491750285.
Daniels B. W Understanding Uncontrollable Facial Blushing, Neptune, Elizabeth Stewart, 2010.
ESFB Channel Archived 18 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine - The online community for people suffering from facial blushing, excessive sweating, rosacea and social phobia
[1] - Blushing in Plato

I have always been a blusher. Early on, as a kid, it was considered cute: When my face burned up as I unwrapped birthday presents in front of my ice cream–stained peers? So sweet. When my cheeks went into flames as I delivered my bat mitzvah speech? Precious. When I reddened onstage at my fifth grade spelling bee after I added an E to the word laundry? A-d-o-r-a-b-l-e.

I never wanted to be someone who blushes, though. I dreaded each instance. It always started the same: an itching under the skin first, then a feeling of heat, and then that terrible color, starting at my neck, then climbing up my cheeks and into my scalp: red, red, RED.

My blushing wasn’t so severe as to require medical intervention, but it was a regular source of discomfort—especially when well-meaning but nosy adults would make comments. I was too young then to understand what triggered the sensation, and though as I grew older the frequency diminished, my anxiety surrounding it only grew. When a professor called on me to answer in class, when a friend said I looked nice, when I tripped on the stairs at Fort Greene Park and split my knees open and caused two other joggers to stop to offer help, I begged my face to cooperate, but against my will, every time, the heat rose to my cheeks. Why, why, why, I begged that stupid, burning face, why are you doing this to me? And then I’d blush even more.

Of course, that question—why we blush—is much trickier to answer than how. The former involves the psychological, and the latter merely the physiological. Physiologically speaking, blushing occurs when the adrenal glands are triggered to release adrenaline, which dilates the blood vessels in the face and neck. Even for a nonscientist like me, that’s pretty straightforward. But the events that cause that inciting adrenaline rush? Well, that’s a bit more complicated.

According to the ever-kinky Freud’s theories on psychoanalysis, blushing is a displaced erection, the flushed admission of our repressed sexual desire. In Renaissance paintings it’s literal disgrace, as when Adam and Eve nosh from the tree of knowledge and first recognize their own nakedness. In Shakespeare’s most syrupy play, blushing appears on the imagined cheeks of pilgrims to indicate Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden desire. Across the novels of Jane Austen, blushing reveals her heroines’ unadmitted romantic proclivities, stepping in where words fail.

The unifying theme among all these, of course, is shame: “Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to,” as Mark Twain famously said. He’s right about its uniqueness to humans; even our chimpanzee cousins—who, like us, scream, cry, laugh—do not blush. Charles Darwin, while not busy chasing finches on the Galapagos, was likewise fascinated by the phenomenon: In his lengthy research, he marveled that at the earliest, children only start blushing around 3 years of age. The physical requisites are in place from birth, but not until later the necessary emotional dexterity. More than poetry, music, or taxes, Darwin considered blushing, and the intricate sense of shame that evokes it, to be “the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions.”

When I blush, however, it doesn’t feel like an expression of shame. Or at least not always. (Knocking over wine glasses at nearly every party I’ve ever attended, falling out of crow pose in a $27 yoga class, buying just tampons and nonfat Cool Whip alone at 2 a.m.—OK, yeah, those are shame blushes.) But we blushers also experience flaming cheeks when receiving compliments, which should fill us with pride, not shame. Is it from insecurity that we are unworthy of the praise—that we are not the great comic, the beautiful face, or the spectacular baker we’ve been characterized to be? Or is it provoked by a sense of vulnerability, of actually being seen as we see ourselves, and thus left exposed as if we had been naked?

But then, that’s the thing about blushing: It ultimately reveals how we feel about our own actions and how we feel about those who bear witness to them. I had a lot of time to consider the issue: Each time my face burned up, I probed it for meaning. If I couldn’t stop it, I hoped I could at least understand it. Recently, I blushed while officiating the wedding of my two closest college friends. When I stopped talking and the groom kissed the bride, I realized the flush was one of worry: I’m a professional writer, and what if people thought I hadn’t brought fresh enough perspective to the concept of marriage in my remarks? When the other guests congratulated me during cocktail hour on a great job, I blushed again; it was nice to hear the kind words, but part of me didn’t believe I could have done the occasion justice. Blushing, for me, has become something of a litmus test: I can now always tell whether I’m into a date when he says I look “nice.” If I blush on receiving the compliment, I know that I must like its deliverer, and if my face remains calm? We’re doomed from the start. I’ve finally realized that the words alone aren’t the source of the shame, the glory, the blushing—it’s wanting to believe them, or worrying that I don’t.

In that way, though it’s uncomfortable to expose our inner thoughts to an unforgiving or indifferent public, our faces also have the power to show us what we, too, did not previously know. When we blush, we bear the physical evidence of caring what others think, of caring what we think about ourselves. It’s horrifying to experience, a dermatological scarlet letter revealing our innermost thoughts, and yet it’s also enlightening: our body’s insistence on leaking our truths, audience be damned.

While I was finishing the writing of this essay, I mentioned it to someone I both admire and love. He said he couldn’t wait to read it, and of course my cheeks turned bright red. (I know: Blushing about an essay about blushing? C’mon!) I can’t control what my face reveals, but sometimes it feels nice to be reminded of our vulnerability. I felt OK showing him, showing myself, and now showing you what my face refuses to hide, perhaps the ultimate vulnerability: that I care. I care a lot.

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