Blushing, Flushing, Turning Red Anxiety Symptoms
Blushing, Flushing, Turning Red in the Face, are common anxiety symptoms, especially anxiety and panic attack symptoms. Blushing is a common response to feeling embarrassed, inferior, or guilty. This symptom often occurs on the face, but can also occur anywhere on the body.
Many anxious people blush as it is a common anxiety symptom.
This article explains the relationship between anxiety and blushing, flushing, and turning red in the face.
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Blushing, Flushing, and Turning Red Common Anxiety Symptom Descriptions
- Your skin feels flushed, turns red, or blushes.
- You experience uncontrollable blushing, flushing, or turning red.
- Your face turns red and looks like you are blushing or being flushed.
- You have a sudden redness in the cheeks that can extend to other areas of the face.
- Your skin feels hot, warm, or clammy and looks red.
- It feels like blood has rushed to your face.
- Your skin can also look red, inflamed, flushed, or blushed.
- While this symptom is most associated with “looking embarrassed” or “blushing” (increased redness on the face, head, or neck), it can occur anywhere on the body, including the hands, arms, legs, back, ears, and scalp.
This symptom can persistently affect one area only, shift and affect another area or areas, and migrate all over and affect many areas repeatedly.
This blushing can:
- Occur occasionally, frequently, or persistently.
- Precede, accompany, or follow an escalation of other anxiety symptoms or occur by itself.
- Precede, accompany, or follow a period of nervousness, anxiety, fear, and stress, or occur "out of the blue" for no reason.
- Range in intensity from mild, to moderate, to severe.
- Come in waves where it’s strong one moment and eases off the next.
- Occur for a while, subside, and then return for no reason.
- Change from day to day, moment to moment, or remain as a constant background during your struggle with anxiety disorder.
All the above combinations and variations are common.
To see if anxiety might be playing a role in your symptoms, rate your level of anxiety using our free one-minute instant results Anxiety Test, Anxiety Disorder Test, or Hyperstimulation Test.
The higher the rating, the more likely anxiety could be contributing to or causing your anxiety symptoms, including feeling like impending doom symptoms.
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What causes blushing, flushing, and skin turning red?
Medical Advisory
Talk to your doctor about all new, changing, persistent, and returning symptoms as some medical conditions and medications can cause anxiety-like symptoms.
There are many reasons why this anxiety symptom occurs. The most common are:
1. Stress response
Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, causing many body-wide changes that quickly prepare the body for immediate emergency action – to fight or flee. This survival reaction is often referred to as the fight or flight response.[1][2]
Visit our “The Physiological Effects Of Stress” article for more information about the many changes caused by the stress response.
Some of these changes include:
- Increases blood sugar so that we have an instant boost of energy.
- Stimulates the nervous system.
- Increases activity in the fear center of the brain (amygdala and others) and decreases activity in the rationalization areas of the brain (cortex and others). This change in brain function occurs to immediately react to danger rather than remain in danger as we figure things out.
- Heightens most of the body’s senses.
The higher the degree of stress response, the more dramatic the changes.
Regarding turning red when anxious, the body contains a finite amount of blood (3 to 6 quarts, or 2.8 to 5.7 liters—the amount depends on the body’s height and weight). To equip the body for emergency action, the stress response also shunts blood away from parts of the body that aren’t vital for survival to those that are.
For instance, blood is moved from the skin, hands, and feet and sent to the brain (so the brain has more fuel to think), heart (so the heart can pump suitable quantities of blood to the vital areas), and muscles (to make the body stronger and quicker), to name a few.
The body shunts blood around by dilating some blood vessels (vasodilation) and constricting others (vasoconstriction).
Because different types and degrees of fear can cause the body to manage its blood flow differently, stress responses can cause differing blood flow effects.
At this time, it isn’t known exactly why these differences occur, but that they do.
For example, while some fears cause blood to shunt away from the skin, other fears cause the blood vessels in the face to dilate, allowing more blood to flow to the skin on the face.
Since blood is normally regulated at 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit (37.056 degrees Celsius) and contains red blood cells, an increase in blood flow to the face causes an increase in temperature and redness, causing the “flushing” or “blushing” effect.
Common behaviors associated with blushing and flushing include the fear of being embarrassed, the fear of what others think of you, the fear of making a mistake, the fear of rejection, feeling inferior, feeling like you are the center of attention, and feeling guilty, to name a few.
Anxiety and an acute stress response are common causes of acute blushing and flushing.
2. Hyperstimulation
When stress responses occur too frequently, such as from overly apprehensive behavior, the body can remain in a state of semi-stress response readiness, which we call “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are stimulants.
Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “hyperarousal,” “HPA axis dysfunction,” or “nervous system dysregulation.”[3][4]
Hyperstimulation can cause the changes of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated.
Visit our “Hyperstimulation And Its Effects” article for more information about the many ways hyperstimulation can affect the body and how we feel.
Hyperstimulation is a common cause of chronic involuntary blood shunting and blushing.
As the degree of hyperstimulation increases, so does the likelihood of having involuntary symptoms, such as blushing. This is also the reason blushing and flushing can occur “out of the blue” and persist for no apparent reason.
Hyperstimulation is also why blanching and looking pale can occur involuntarily, as well as blushing and flushing.
Hyperstimulation can cause either of these and can cause swings back and forth between blushing and blanching.
For more information, visit the symptom “Blanching.”
3. How the body manages body temperature.
The body also shunts blood around to manage its internal temperature.[5]
For example, when the body is too cold, blood vessels in the skin constrict, so less blood is exposed to the cooler external elements, reducing heat loss.
Alternatively, when the body is too warm, blood vessels in the skin dilate, exposing more blood to the cooler elements and cooling the body.
Blushing and flushing can also be caused by overly warm body temperature and how the body manages it.
4. Other Factors
Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:
- Medication
- Recreational drugs
- Stimulants
- Sleep deprivation
- Fatigue
- Hyper and hypoventilation
- Low blood sugar
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Dehydration
- Hormone changes
- Pain
Select the relevant link for more information.
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Treatment: How to get rid of Anxiety-caused Blushing, Flushing, and Turning Red
When this symptom is caused or aggravated by other factors, addressing those factors can reduce and eliminate it.
When blushing, red skin, and feeling flushed are caused by anxiety and stress:
1. Stop the stress response
When this symptom is caused by an active stress response, containing anxious behavior and calming yourself will end the active stress response and its changes. As your body recovers from the active stress response, anxiety-caused blushing will subside.
Keep in mind that it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. This is normal and needn’t be a cause for concern.
2. Eliminate hyperstimulation
When this symptom is caused by hyperstimulation, eliminating hyperstimulation will end this anxiety symptom.
You can reduce and eliminate hyperstimulation by:
- Containing anxious behavior.
- Reducing stress.
- Regular deep relaxation.
- Relaxed diaphragmatic breathing.
- Regular light to moderate exercise.
- Getting regular good sleep.
- Eating a healthy diet of whole and natural foods.
- Avoiding stimulants.
- Passively-accepting your symptoms until they subside.
- Being patient as your body recovers.
Visit our “60 Natural Ways To Reduce Stress” article for more ways to reduce stress.
As your body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops exhibiting involuntary stress-caused symptoms, including blushing and flushing.
Eventually, symptoms of chronic stress completely disappear as the body regains its normal, non-hyperstimulated health.
Unfortunately, there are NO quick-fix cures for this symptom when it is caused by hyperstimulation. Eliminating it requires regularly practicing the strategies mentioned above and for a long enough period for the body to recover.
As with all hyperstimulation symptoms, hyperstimulation-caused blushing will subside when hyperstimulation has been eliminated, and the body has had sufficient time to recover and stabilize.
Because blushing is just a symptom of chronic stress (hyperstimulation), it’s harmless and needn’t be a cause for concern.
3. Move to a cooler environment
When blushing is caused by warm temperatures, moving to a cooler environment will eliminate this symptom.
Wearing cooler clothing can also help prevent blushing caused by feeling warm.
4. Avoid hot and spicy foods
Hot and spicy foods can increase the body’s metabolism, aggravating hyperstimulation and its symptoms, including blushing. Avoiding hot and spicy foods can reduce and eliminate this symptom for some anxious people.
Recovery Support
The Recovery Support area of our website contains thousands of pages of important self-help information to help individuals overcome anxiety disorder, hyperstimulation, and symptoms.
Due to the vast amount of information, including a private Discussion Forum, many of our Recovery Support members consider it their online recovery support group.
5. Therapy
Unidentified and unaddressed underlying factors cause issues with anxiety. As such, they are the primary reason why anxiety symptoms persist.
Addressing your underlying factors (Level Two recovery) is most important if you want lasting success.
Addressing Level Two recovery can help you:
- Contain anxious behavior.
- Become unafraid of anxiety symptoms and the strong feelings of anxiety.
- End anxiety symptoms.
- Successfully address the underlying factors that so often cause issues with anxiety.
- End what can feel like out-of-control worry.
All our recommended anxiety therapists have had anxiety disorder and overcame it. Their personal experience with anxiety disorder and their Master's Degree and above professional training give them insight other therapists don't have.
If you want to achieve lasting success over anxiety disorder, any one of our recommended therapists would be a good choice.
Working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist is the most effective way to treat anxiety disorder, especially if you have persistent symptoms and difficulty containing anxious behavior, such as worry.[6][7][8]
In many cases, working with an experienced therapist is the only way to overcome stubborn anxiety.
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Common Anxiety Symptoms
Additional Resources
- For a comprehensive list of Anxiety Disorders Symptoms Signs, Types, Causes, Diagnosis, and Treatment.
- Anxiety and panic attacks symptoms can be powerful experiences. Find out what they are and how to stop them.
- How to stop an anxiety attack and panic.
- Free online anxiety tests to screen for anxiety. Two minute tests with instant results. Such as:
- Anxiety 101 is a summarized description of anxiety, anxiety disorder, and how to overcome it.
Return to our anxiety disorders signs and symptoms page.
anxietycentre.com: Information, support, and therapy for anxiety disorder and its symptoms, including blushing, flushing, turning red anxiety symptoms.
References
1. Chu, Brianna, et al. “Physiology, Stress Reaction.” StatPearls, 7 May 2024.
2. Godoy, Livea, et al. "A Comprehensive Overview on Stress Neurobiology: Basic Concepts and Clinical Implications." Frontiers In Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, July 2018.
3. Elbers, Jorina, et al. "Wired for Threat: Clinical Features of Nervous System Dysregulation in 80 Children." Pediatric Neurology, Dec 2018.
4. Teixeira, Renata Roland, et al. “Chronic Stress Induces a Hyporeactivity of the Autonomic Nervous System in Response to Acute Mental Stressor and Impairs Cognitive Performance in Business Executives.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2015.
5. Hedrick, M S, et al. “Effects of Temperature and Physical Activity on Blood Flow Shunts and Intracardiac Mixing in the Toad Bufo Marinus.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine.
6. Hofmann, Stefan G., et al. “The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-Analyses.” Cognitive Therapy and Research, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Oct. 2012.
7. Leichsenring, Falk. “Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the Gold Standard for Psychotherapy?” JAMA, American Medical Association, 10 Oct. 2017.
8. DISCLAIMER: Because each body is somewhat chemically unique, and because each person will have a unique mix of symptoms and underlying factors, recovery results may vary. Variances can occur for many reasons, including due to the severity of the condition, the ability of the person to apply the recovery concepts, and the commitment to making behavioral change.