amn0270
New member
You can see more about me in the Introductions forum but I figured I'd elaborate on this one aspect of my social phobia. I am a 36 male and have had this problem since my teens but didn't really become fully conscious of it until my 20's. I am and always was a very shy, introverted person until I get to know someone real well. I only can recall one incident of FB from my teens that I know now was facial blushing, though there were probably tons more. I was sitting in the high school cafeteria and I repeated a funny dirty line from a movie I had seen the night before to my friends sitting with me and I remember my face getting this warm tingly feeling. I don't recall anyone saying I had turned red but knowing what my face feels like now when I get it that it was the same. For some reason in my 20's people I would talk to, strangers or whoever, made it a point to tell me I was turning beet red which is what really made me start to associate the feeling in face with the fact I was blushing and thus making me very conscious of it and thus made my very self conscious it and really made it worse. Now when interacting the anxiety of it happening makes socializing which had been hard enough for me already that much worse. So now whenever I am out in public or socializing I am careful about what I talk about since certain subjects tend to make it occur more than others. The worst is when someone asks me an embarassing question. That always triggers it. Along with the warm tingly feeling in my face, my eyes and ears burn as wel. When I feel it happening I tend to rub hands over my face like I was wiping the sleep out of my eyes so's to try and hide it. Or I immediately try and walk away quick, sometimes ending conversations abruptly in the process. Now understand, I have no problem sitting in a restaurant and ordering food from the waiter or waitress and maybe making some quick smalltalk or talking to a clerk in store. And not all other types of conversation with other trigger it either. Its hard to pin down all the triggers. Embarassing questions, or ones that I perceive as embarassing cause it. Me trying to tell a joke saying something goofy tend to as well. But there are other things that don't fit either criteria that do it to. I remember one incident a couple of years ago at my job. Someone had brought their 5 year old in for "Take your kids to work day" and I remember the kid was walking around mingling with people. I happened to be walking by him going back to my desk and as I passed him I simply said "hi there" to him the way someone might talk to a 4 or 5 year old. Kinda a goofy way. Nothing unusual. Almost immediately as I continued walking by him I felt the FB happening and then I turned the corner and one of my coworkers was walking by, and he said something like, what happened back there, why are you blushing. This all occured over the course a maybe 10 seconds tops. He never even saw my interaction of the kid or what I said to the kid but for whatever reason the FB happened. So this FB cripples me so much that I can't even talk to a 5 year old without it happening. I have very low self-esteem, not only because of it but also because of some other issues I suffer with. Everything seemed to snowball as I got older.
Adam
Adam
Guess that's the idea tho! Do you ever think that if you didn't blush you wouldn't have any probs chattin to folk, I know I do. That's the main thing that ever holds me back, even tho I know I'd still be a bit shy & reserved. If I didn't blush I'd do a lot more social things, like join societies, etc.
