Blood Rushes ^w^

Today at work, my boss kindly advised me that we are able to give out food to go, after my turning a customer away. She told me I should always find a way to please the customer and that next time, I should give out food on paper plates. While she was telling me this, I felt my face turning bright red. My skin started heating up and I could tell that she noticed. Instantaneously, I turned my face the other way and avoided eye contact. In my thoughts, I tried to calm myself down, so that maybe she wouldn’t notice. When she was done giving me advice, apologised to me, saying that she may have been too harsh with her wording. This honestly is the reason I still get a little anxious before and during work. I work together with my boss, and while I’ve already been working there for a while, I always will see my boss as my superior. She’s super kind and we’re on a friendly basis, but whenever I talk to her, I become hyper aware of what I’m saying, subconsciously worrying about whether what I’m saying could offend her (and lead her to fire me— exaggerated, but that’s how it is).

I think it is a reaction to the unspoken wall of authority there definitely still is between us. She often lectures me (prime time for blushing!) and does occasionally get frustrated with me, especially when my Type-B personality traits are showing. I really enjoy the coffee shop as a working space though, which really adds value to her opinion of me.

I don’t blush that much around friends or family, it really just is in certain situations in which I feel inferior to others. Be it a social gathering in which all of a sudden all eyes are on me, or when a guy I like talks to (or sometimes even only looks at) me. It also happens when I sputter, while holding a presentation or say something that may jeopardise my image to someone who doesn’t really know me well.

As a kid, I used to think blushing was just a thing in movies, until I started observing my class-mates and consequently myself becoming victims. This is a topic not many people talk about, at least not within my friendship circle, because it’s kind of a topic that would make you blush when you talk about it. But today I’d just like to let off my raging anger I have towards this useless bodily function, that should have been abolished thousands of years ago no thanks to evolution! But no, it’s still here and it has no function, well, at least that’s what I thought.

I often like to compare blushing to the occasional boners that boys get during puberty. From what I’ve heard, it happens to boys a lot, and a lot of the times for no reason at all. Well same goes for blushing. You’d think you only blush when something embarrassing happens, but sometimes there’s literally no reason to blush and it happens anyway. Why?? Then, just like the boner, blushing can make an already uncomfortable situation even more uncomfortable. It’s enough that I’m blushing as a reaction to being embarrassed, but then I just become embarrassed about blushing, and it makes the situation much worse. The only difference is, is that boners actually have a function. They actually serve a very important and useful purpose. Blushing… does nothing.

This goes out to all my fellow blushers. If you would like to know why this happens, how to combat it and what the few benefits of blushing are, stay with me.

Why do we blush?

Yes, you can probably find this immediately on the internet like I did, but I would like to share the most interesting theories I’ve found. Yes, ‘theories’, because nobody really knows why we blush, as it seemingly has no function.

1. It is a cooling mechanism as a response to stress. Adrenaline (the same hormone that makes my hands shake while talking to my crush) causes a ‘fight or flight’ response, which causes your capillaries to dilate, causing the blood flowing through them to be seen through the skin easier. Furthermore, it could be a by-product of your body trying to cool your brain down when blood rushes to your head.
2. It shows that you are sensitive, trustworthy and generous, which yes, can be a good thing, but it can also simply be a symptom for being self-conscious, which leads your body to subconsciously respond like that. You are probably more self-aware in social situations, which makes it easier to subconsciously stress about any minor inconvenience. This could be because you are in situations in which you feel socially inferior to others or simply not entirely comfortable with who you’re with (yet), like how I feel working at the café.
3. It may also be a response directly to threat, which in this case is the threat to social acceptance and self acceptance, when something happens to you and you don’t know how others will judge you based on how you respond to it.
4. Evolutionarily explained, this response may have been developed in oder to better express your emotions, which links to being more sensitive. It may mean that your body is more in-touch with it’s emotions.

How to combat this problem:

Self confidence!

There’s a range of bizarro ways to combat blushing. All the way from make-up to life-threatening operations, but really we all know that the only way to fight blushing is to accept it, own it and eventually it will stop occurring. Once we realise, that we’re never really inferior to anyone and are completely happy with who we are in social situations, we won’t be blushing anymore. But for now, the answer is to try to accept it. How? Focus on the good aspects of blushing.

The “Pros” of blushing:

• It makes you more likable, which can cause people to feel guilty when they bring you into Verlegenheit (a German word, perfect for this feeling), which consequently can get you out of trouble.
• I mean… it cools your body…
• forces you to be more honest- people will be more inclined to trust you, because they think they know when you’re lying.
• you’re communicating your emotions, strengthen your case when people don’t believe that you feel regret about something.

Good luck!

Sources: The Atlantic, Psychology Today, Time Magazine