ERYTHROPHOBIA (fear of turning red): symptoms, causes and treatment

"It's that I turn red". This famous phrase that you have surely heard at one time or another, or perhaps you have said it, a priori does not go beyond the simple fact of blushing. What happens if it is not like that and that feeling of turning red, either in a specific situation or in any, it gives you increasing fear to the point that you try to avoid blushing at any means, medium?

You could end up avoiding all those situations that cause you to turn red, no matter what they are and the reason behind it. Normally it is a reaction that occurs due to interaction with other people, which could cause you to end up developing agoraphobia or a social phobia as a result of this erythrophobia. If you want to know more about it, in this Online Psychology article, we explain what is the Erythrophobia: Symptoms, Causes and Treatment.

Index

1. What is erythrophobia
2. Symptoms of erythrophobia
3. Causes of erythrophobia
4. Treatment of erythrophobia
5. How to control facial redness

The term erythrophobia refers to excessive and irrational fear of blushing in front of others. Pierre Janet (1903) included the fear of blushing, or erythrophobia, within the group of phobias of social situations. This fear generates in the person a feeling of being overwhelmed every time his face turns red in public for some reason.

People with erythrophobia show different clearly identifiable signs. Let’s see what are the main symptoms of erythrophobia:

• facial redness: especially of the cheeks, ears and neck and, on other occasions, other parts of the body disproportionately.
• feeling of shame whenever this redness appears visibly
• sweating
• Palpitations.
• subjective feeling of warmth in the affected area.
• Negative thoughts about blushing. In this article, we tell you how to eliminate negative thoughts.
• situation avoidance that cause visibly reddening of the skin.
• Feeling of suffering.
• There are interference in social development.

Symptoms of erythrophobia related to social anxiety disorder

The latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5)^[1], characterizes social anxiety disorder as a persistent and marked fear of different social situations or public performances for fear that they will be embarrassing.

In this version it is maintained for the first time, unlike previous versions, that blushing is a physical response what constitutes a seal of social anxiety disorder, which does justice to a largely ignored symptom. Thus, the symptoms of social anxiety disorder related to erythrophobia are:

• irrational fear of blushing that interferes with the functional capacity of the individual
• Exposure to being seen red-faced almost invariably causes a immediate anxiety response.
• The person recognizes that the fear is excessive and irrational: sign that would help us differentiate it from delusional ideas.
• The avoidance behaviors, anxious anticipation, or discomfort caused by the situation interfere significantly in the affected person's life. Social situations or performances are either avoided or experienced with great anxiety.
• persistent fear by one or more social situations or performances in public in which the subject is exposed to people who do not belong to the family environment. That is, it is exposed to the judgment of others.
• Exposure to the social situation almost invariably provokes an immediate anxiety response due to the fear of blushing.

If you are not sure if you suffer from this disorder, we recommend this social anxiety test.

The cause is not only a stressor or an experience, but we will always keep in mind the interaction between genetics and the environment. The individual suffering from erythrophobia surely has a widespread biological vulnerability which, together with the stress that will create a feeling of false alarm, which will end up becoming a learned alarm, will generate a psychological vulnerability.

This vulnerability is influenced by learning, either directly or vicariously from other real alarms. This cycle gives rise to the appearance of anxiety disorders and phobias. Furthermore, the causes of erythrophobia also derive from ruminative thoughts as the following:

• What would others think of me?
• They're going to notice that I'm turning red.
• I do not want somatic symptoms to appear, such as palpitations, sweating, tachycardia, etc.

How to overcome erythrophobia? The treatment of the phobia of blushing has two or three specific methods that we will see below.

Task concentration training

This method to treat erythrophobia is based on the premise that people who blush pay more attention to themselves in social interaction, and little attention to the tasks they are performing, the people they are with at the time, and the environment.

The therapy is about encourage the change of focus of attention of the patient, to move from an interoceptive focus of attention to an external attention focused on the development of the interaction. This method consists of three phases:

1. Familiarize yourself with care processes and become aware of the negative effects of increased self-focused attention.
2. focus the attention out in non-threatening situations, such as watching television, making a phone call, walking through a square or listening to the lyrics of a song.
3. focus the attention out in threatening situations.

Exposure therapy and cognitive restructuring

Another recognized treatment of erythrophobia is cognitive behavioral therapy. Specifically, exposure therapy and cognitive restructuring of the idea of: “what will people think of me”. The goal of this therapy is that the subject normalizes anxiety and blushing, and not suffer them. For this it will be important to change the perception that the patient has.

Exposure therapy is based on Maurer's bifactorial theory and habituation/extinction models. Its effectiveness in treating erythrophobia lies in prevent avoidance from becoming a safety signal. In this article you will find more information about the exposition technique in psychology: what it is and characteristics.

For this specific disorder, the use of interoceptive exposure therapy is recommended, that is, the one that provokes the bodily sensations typical of the moment the fear appears. For this, it would be necessary to carry out exercises to elicit bodily sensations that can appear in social situations that would cause blushing. Next, we will see an orderly proposal of how to do it:

1. Provoke internal sensations in a controlled way through, for example, turning on the heat and dressing warmly, drinking hot fluids, or exercising vigorously before entering the session. Although it is true that, when performing these exercises, they may not be well associated with the symptoms that appear in social situations, they are necessary and sufficient for a first therapeutic approach, especially when the degree of phobia is very high.
2. Work in small groups so that the reactions that appear due to social interaction can be more realistic. could be done exercises such as eye contact kept from the whole group to a single member, where no one can look away for a minute and, after about five or six sessions, increase the time to two minutes. With this exercise, we try to generate a cognitive change. making the person see that the beliefs that cause the phobia are irrational

Why pharmacological treatment of erythrophobia should be avoided

In cases of erythrophobia, the use of psychotropic drugs is not recommended while undergoing psychological therapy, since these cause a decrease in anxiety symptoms, making it impossible for it to appear in situations that cause anxiety, but neither in a controlled consultation, so exposure therapy could not be performed.

Although, if it is necessary to administer them, beta blockers, selective inhibitors of the reuptake of serotonin (SSRI), and especially clonidine or other anticholinergics. At the moment, The efficacy of ibuprofen is being studied in the control of the reddish coloration, since it decreases the formation of prostaglandins.

Finally, in those cases in which none of the therapies is effective, there is the possibility of performing the following surgical treatment: endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy.

How to combat erythrophobia? To control redness on the face it would be convenient consult a specialist that could determine the specific cause. If the cause is psychological, the solution would lie in reducing the thoughts that cause this reaction. In this article you will discover how to control negative obsessive thoughts.

If facial flushing has an endocrine cause or a medical condition, the specific condition causing it should be treated.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Erythrophobia (fear of turning red): symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

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