I’ve recently noticed that I seem to blush in different regions of my face depending on which emotion I’m feeling.
When I’m embarrassed but in a way I could laugh off, like when I make an inadvertent sexual innuendo, I feel like my whole face is hot, or at the least, I feel heat along the sides of my cheeks (on either side of my mouth) and on my ears.
When I’m embarrassed and angry, like when someone picks a fight with me in public, I feel like I’m blushing only on the apples of my cheeks, under my eyes.
Has anyone else noticed this about themselves or witnessed this in others? I suspect I may be imagining things, but I want to hear your reports.
When I get very angry, I feel my whole body get “taut,” for lack of a better word, and yes, I think my face gets warm along with it.
When I’m actively embarrassed–which is very rare–the “rush” of heat is quite specific. It starts somewhere on my chest and rushes all the way up to the top of my head. My whole face turns bright red. It’s noticeable even in a very dark bar. (I say that because I bartend, and I hear a lot of “trash talk,” and it’s very rare that I have any reaction to it, being thick-skinned at this point…but occasionally somebody hits a button with me and I get horribly embarrassed in spite of myself.)
I guess the difference is that nobody notices when I’m very angry that I’ve changed color, because my expression is all that’s apparent. Whereas if I’m embarrassed, people have said “God, Audrey, you’re bright freakin’ red! YOU’RE BLUSHING!”
It sucks. I hate it. Can’t help it, though.
And FWIW, I’ve apparently blushed when I’m not even aware of it. Like somebody says something and I think I’m cool with it, but people will notice that I’ve turned red even if I haven’t yet.
That sucks, too.
I have this horrible, horrible anxiety reaction – my entire chest and face gets these enormous blotch marks that last for close to 30 minutes.
The minute I feel any sort of anxiety I get this adrenaline rush – my legs get weak, my breathing gets heavy, I feel very out of it – on top of this VERY visible sign that I am anxious. It is hell.
How do you other blushers stop it or at least make it go away faster??
I’m going to bump my own thread, if I may, because this just happened to me again. I work at a library, and the other day I had to show my boss a book that had been defaced – it was a book of still shots of sex scenes in film. As we were flipping through it, I felt my whole face and ears start to burn. I was embarrassed, but it wasn’t a painful embarrassment; I just felt awkward because I was looking at soft-core porn with my boss (we’re both straight women).
But then, on another day, another co-worker did something that made me feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry, and I felt heat only on the apples of my cheeks.
I was thinking that if anyone was particularly observant, they could tell exactly what I was feeling depending on the location of my blush.
So, current roster of Dopers: do any of you experience different kinds of blushing depending on the quality of emotion?