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\u201cShame is the deeply painful sensation or experience of thinking that we are flawed and thus unworthy of love and belonging.\u201d ~Bren\u00e9 Brown<\/p>\n
I once referred to myself as a \u201cbeetroot.\u201d It was a mark of inadequacy that my inner critic yelled at me whenever I sensed warmth rising in my cheeks. For many years, I dealt with erythrophobia, a severe and overwhelming fear of blushing that gradually tore my world apart from within.<\/p>\n
Most individuals blush. A subtle flush rises up the neck before a first date or public speaking, and then it fades. For me, it was never that straightforward. The blush itself wasn’t the issue. It was the significance I had associated with it. Each time my face turned red, a relentless internal dialogue commenced: Everyone notices. They are judging you. You are weak. You are absurd. You are broken. I spent years attempting to escape that voice, but I could never fully succeed.<\/p>\n
I wish to convey what that experience truly entailed, and more importantly, what ultimately changed. Because if you have ever found yourself avoiding life to evade a feeling, I believe this might resonate with you.<\/p>\n
The Social Death Sentence<\/p>\n
The earliest memory I have of this fear taking over was during a primary school assembly. Unexpectedly, I had been awarded a prize. As I was called up before five hundred children, my face flushed bright red, and my legs began to tremble. I was not proud of the award; I was horrified. I wished for the ground to open up and consume me.<\/p>\n
The shame that ensued was so crushing that I started skipping school whenever I thought I might receive another award. Eventually, I concluded that it was safer to avoid doing anything that deserved recognition altogether. I opted for invisibility over acknowledgment, and I didn\u2019t even fully grasp what I was sacrificing. I was a child shielding himself in the only way I knew how.<\/p>\n
This pattern trailed into my adult life with a sort of quiet, unyielding tenacity. Job interviews turned into trials. Group meetings at work felt like dangerous terrains. I shunned new acquaintances, struggled to maintain jobs, and ultimately became so isolated that I had nearly no close connections. The solitude was palpable, and it weighed heavily.<\/p>\n
I found myself ensnared in a destructive cycle that I couldn\u2019t escape. The fear of blushing triggered anxiety. That anxiety made blushing more probable. The blushing validated my most dreadful beliefs about myself. Thus, the cycle continued. The more fervently I tried to stop it, the faster it appeared to whirl.<\/p>\n
Why I Fought So Hard<\/p>\n
For a considerable time, I did not grasp why the fear held such power over me. I just knew it did. I attempted to conceal my face during conversations, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I spoke rapidly to conclude interactions before the blush could strike. I berated myself after every social encounter, dissecting every moment I had flushed. I sought remedies, explored forums at two in the morning, and practiced breathing techniques that aided for only about thirty seconds.<\/p>\n
What I ultimately came to realize, with the assistance of hypnotherapy and a significant amount of sincere self-reflection, was that the blushing itself had never been the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem was shame, and this shame had a history long before the first assembly hall ever came into play.<\/p>\n
I had grown up in a dysfunctional setting where I was often belittled. Mistakes were magnified. Emotions were ridiculed. Sensitivity was regarded as a weakness. Without being aware of it, I had absorbed those messages and cultivated an inner critic who echoed an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cShame is the deeply painful sensation or experience of thinking that we are flawed and thus unworthy of love […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9665406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9665405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9665405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9665405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9665405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9665406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9665405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9665405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritualjourneydigest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9665405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}