The difference between normal blushing and excessive blushing
Facial blushing is a normal healthy physiological response. The problem occurs when this blushing response creates feelings of anxiety which in turn fuels the blushing which in turn fuels the anxiety etc. Also, some people suffer from blushing much more than others, having built, unwittingly, 'conditioned reflexes' over the years. Sometimes the blushing is situational, such as when the person has to speak in front of groups of others, or feels that they are 'on the spot'. Sometimes a person will often blush even with just their immediate family.
Many will be happy to teach you how to breathe easily and to try to calm down and control the blushing when it occurs. This is NOT our approach.
How do I learn to control my blushing problem?
We will work with you to literally reprogram the response ahead of time. A crucial difference between someone who suffers from excessive blushing and someone who does not, is that the person who blushes excessively, imagines, or worries in advance, that they will be blushing when they are in certain situations. The person who doesn't worry, or imagine, they are going to blush in these situations, tends to do so far less often.
Worried about blushing too much
One of the problems for many people is that they try not to worry about blushing, but they can't NOT worry about it. This is just the way the brain works. You can't NOT think something. Try, for example, not to think of Elvis Presley. Don't think about him, dressed in white. Don't think about him, in a big white hat. Are you not thinking about him yet?
The brain automates everything you repeat enough times, from doing up a button, to typing your name to changing gear in a car. The brain automates patterns of thinking too. For those who blush excessively, their brain has automated worrying about blushing. Someone, for example, who always blushes when they meet new people, always worries ahead of time that they will be unable to control their blushing when they meet someone new.
Training the mind to take control
One powerful NLP approach to get you to stop blushing so much is to train your mind to move FROM the worrying thought that you are 'going to blush' TO a thought of only being cool, calm, collected and resourceful instead. There have been many occasions when this alone has been enough to stop the person from blushing.
However, we also tend to augment this type of work with a whole range of hypnotherapeutic techniques and approaches, each of which has worked in and of itself to recondition the old unwanted blushing response into something more useful.
The problem sorted directly
Because we work directly with the way that blushing manifests itself in your neurology (and waste no time going over the past to find out WHY you blush), we haven't got to spend ages talking to you about your past because however the problem started, blushing is now just an automated habit that can be unlearned and re-patterned directly.
By utilizing the models of NLP and Hypnosis we have radically reduced both the blushing response and associated anxiety for many clients.
How long is it going to take to reduce or stop my blushing?
By using this combination of NLP and hypnotherapy the average number of times we see someone is 2 - 3 hour long sessions.
