I’m assuming the blushing is due to stress or embarassment, not some medical condition. Some of the advice I’ve read on the internet is to use relaxation techniques, since blushing is thought to be caused by an overactive sympathetic nervous system that allows excess capillary blood flow into the face. But that would be the normal approach, not the approach of hormesis, which emphasizes increased tolerance to stress and desensitization to emotional triggers.

In my Psychology article, I discussed the use of desensitization techniques to combat anxiety, which may be related to your blushing triggers. This is the overview that I linked to that discussion:
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sysden.htm

The methods I mention in the article relate mainly to voluntary behaviors like eating or other habits that have some voluntary component. Blushing is different in that it at least appears to be an involuntary reaction. And yet, it has been shown that classical conditioning can be used to extinguish “involuntary” reactions. In fact, that is precisely what Pavlov did in getting his dogs to stop or delay salivating — which is quite involuntary. So I think it may still be possible to apply classical conditioning techniques to extinguish blushing!

One approach is to consider the very specific triggers that cause you to blush. Not general circumstances like being in a public place, but very specific conditions like seeing certain people, speaking at meetings, etc. Spend some time carefully noting the triggers that lead up to the blushing, as well as how it feels when you blush, how long that lasts, etc. Write this down and keep good records for a week or so.

Now think of a “reward” you can use for successful avoidance of blushing. It must be something you can do for yourself within an hour, or at most several hours, e.g. treat yourself to a nice lunch, call a friend, buy something on-line, whatever. Make a deal with yourself that everytime you avoid or at least delay or significantly reduce the blushing in response to a trigger, you will reward yourself. The key to reward is immediacy and consistency, not necessarily how big the reward is. It could even be chewing a piece of gum or eating a small candy if that’s what you like. The key is to withhold any of these rewards from yourself except for when you succeed in not blushing or reducing blushing.

If you do blush, don’t punish yourself, but by the same token, don’t do anything nice or special to reward yourself that day. The absence of reward is much more effective than punishment, according to the research of behaviorists.

Another approach is the EXACT OPPOSITE of the above approach, based on a principle called “paradoxical intent”. I would use this only if you find the above conditioning approach fails to work. It is based on the idea of paradoxical intent, and it sometimes works to get rid of embarrassing reactions or reactions that get worse when you try to avoid them. What you do is to intentially try to elicit the unwanted reaction! For example, to get rid of bed wetting in small children, parents can pay them a dollar every time they wet the bed. Strangely, this often works quite well, though it is hard to explain just why. It may have to do with the fact that the reward encourages the subject to try achieve the effect rather than avoid it. This at least “avoids the attempt to avoid”, which may be the root problem. You probably don’t have to use reward on yourself. Just see if you can make yourself blush on demand. You can try this first without the normal triggers, and then try to blush deliberately when exposed to the trigger situations.

If you find you can “blush on demand”, then you might try putting blushing under stimulus control. Try blushing only in response to very defined cues that you make up yourself. For example, do it while looking in the bathroom mirror and brushing your teeth, and only then. At that point, it will be under sufficient voluntary control that it is less likely to happen involuntarily at inconvenient times.

These are just some suggestions. If you are up for it, I encourage you to visit the Discussion Forum (http://forum.gettingstronger.org/index.php) for this blog, where you’ll find many people like yourself posting problems or ideas in order to get suggestions from other forum members. It’s a wonderful way to get ideas and start a dialogue. So why not start a topic called “How to stop blushing” and see what people come up with?

Todd

just struggling a little bit to try and figure out how to apply the techniques you outlined at the end of your article to deal with this problem of mine.If you would have any suggestions i would be eternally grateful for your time.

thanks,liam