RELAX YOURSELF – Imagine a situation in which you tend to blush and let the blush happen. Then imagine a thin, flexible film of cooling ice, covering the skin of your face and neck. Really concentrate on the sensation of cold ice. Just as we can bring saliva into our mouths by imagining the bitter taste of a lemon, so we can direct blood away from the face and neck if we create for ourselves the sensation of cold. Try this in your imagination until you can achieve the effect reliably without closing your eyes. (Check it out in the mirror). Then apply it whenever you are in a situation in which you feel a blush rising.
Another approach is to imagine a situation that makes you blush with embarrassment or anxiety and then ‘instruct’ your brain to signal for even more blood to come rushing to your face and neck. Get yourself blushing redder than you have ever blushed before (If you dare do it in public once or twice, even better). What happens if you do this is that, when the thinking, rational part of your brain instructs the brainstem to make you as red as a post box (when usually, at the first flush, you would turn and flee), it grabs on to the fact that the situation can’t be dangerous after all, so gradually it turns off the blushing response altogether. ‘Griffin & Tyrrell’
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