Ideas to Help Prevent Blushing In Public

Blushing is an awkward problem. It never appears at the right time (not that there often is a "right time" to turn an odd shade of red) but blushing in public is even worse. You feel that everyone around you has instantly noticed you change color and is staring at you. Which makes the problem even worse. So what can you do to prevent blushing in public or - at the very least - reduce the frequency that your face turns red?

Learn to relax

Quite often when we blush it's the result of stresses and strains elsewhere in our life literally coming to the surface.

Relaxing is an art that we've mostly forgotten as we've grown older. So we actually have to re-learn it.

Short term, start by taking a few deep breaths when you feel that a blush is about to take over. This will generally help your body to relax and will reduce the tension you're feeling.

Longer term, look into one of the many different relaxation techniques that are around. Have a play with them to see which works best for you. A lot of people use music to help them unwind. Even teenagers find the random white noise that passes for music as relaxation - go figure!

Other things such as yoga or meditation or hypnosis are also worth investigating as methods to help you to relax more often.

Splash cold water on your face

Not exactly a high-tech solution. But if you're able to excuse yourself for a minute or so, finding a cold tap and splashing cold water over your face will reduce the heat you're feeling and can help to get your blushes a bit more under control.

Realize that not everyone is looking at you

Oftentimes we feel that the whole world is staring at us at the first sign that we're starting to blush.

Which is miles away from the truth.

Most people are more pre-occupied with their own worries than they are to be worried about you. Which is why they often don't notice even glaring problems like a bad hair day, let along your face changing to a deeper shade of red.

Our own self-consciousness is often the biggest thing to notice that you've even blushed at all.

So chill out a bit and don't let the thought that other people might be looking at your embarrassment bug you. There's a very high chance they haven't even noticed unless you've drawn their attention to your problem.

Rehearse

OK, there'll probably still be occasions where your mind goes blank. But if you can spend a bit of time rehearsing how your next public appearance will pan out, that's a good way to reduce the chance of blushing taking over the whole proceedings.

Top athletes do this kind of thing all the time but the benefits aren't just reserved for them.

Plan out what's going to happen in a decent amount of detail. Without letting yourself get bugged if things don't go totally to plan.

If you're going to talk, run it through in your head first. Or talk out loud - most people will think you're on the phone nowadays.

Practice will help you get through whatever situation normally causes you to start blushing and at the very least will help reduce the problem even if it doesn't prevent your blushing completely.