“Shame is a painful feeling or experience of believing we are wrong and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” ~Brownie
I used to call myself a “Bicheng tree.” It was a sign of scarcity that my inner criticism screamed at me every time I felt a warmth in my cheek. For many years I lived with erythrophobia, the intense and persistent fear of redness that silently shook my world from the inside out.
Most people are depressed. Warm water rises before the first appointment or public statement, and then it is over. For me, it has never been that simple. Redness is not a problem. It’s the meaning I associated with it. Every time my face turned red, a ruthless inner commentary started: everyone can see it. They are judging you. You are weak. You are so funny. You are broken. It took me years to try to get beyond that, and I could not control it.
I want to share what that experience really was, and more importantly, what eventually changed. Because if you ever find yourself hiding from life to escape feelings, I think it might happen to you.
Social death sentence
The first time I remember having this fear was during elementary school meetings. I won the prize unexpectedly. When I was called in front of five hundred children, my face turned bright red and my legs began to tremble. I am not proud of the award. I was dead. I want the floor to open and swallow me whole.
The next embarrassment was so much that I started skipping school whenever I thought I could get another reward. In the end, I decided it would be safer to stop doing all the rewards. I opted for invisibility on recognition, and I was not entirely aware of what I was trading so far. I was a kid defending myself the only way he knew how.
This pattern followed me in adulthood with calmness and relentless perseverance. Job interviews have become difficult. Group meetings at work feel like a minefield. I escaped new people, struggled with work, and eventually became so lonely that I had almost no close friends. Loneliness is real and it is very heavy.
I was in a vicious cycle where I could not find my way out. Fear of redness creates anxiety. That anxiety made my face red. The smile confirmed my worst belief in myself. And so the wheel kept spinning. The harder I try to stop it, the faster it seems to spin.
Why do I struggle so much?
For a long time I did not understand why the fear of arresting me like this? I just knew it did. I tried to hide my face during the conversation, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I spoke quickly to end the interaction before the face could arrive. I beat myself up after every social encounter by running an autopsy every time I turned red. I researched therapies, read the forum two mornings, and tried breathing techniques that helped for about thirty seconds.
What I have finally come to understand with the help of a lot of conscientious treatment and honest self-reflection is that self-redness is never a root cause. The root cause is shame, and this shame has a long history before the first auditorium entered the picture.
I grew up in a dysfunctional environment where I was often despised. The error is amplified. Feelings were ridiculed. Sensitivity is considered a responsibility. Unknowingly, I embedded those messages inside and created internal criticisms that sounded like people that made me feel unlovable and worthless. When I smiled, the critic did not say, “Your cheeks are a little hot.” It says, “See? You’re as pathetic as I always tell you.”
The face has become a symbol for everything I believe is wrong with me. That’s a lot of weight in a physiological response that takes about three seconds and does not harm anyone.
From Disability to Sensitivity
The turning point did not come much. It came quietly in a moment of exhaustion as I ran out of combat. I remember sitting alone after another social event that I left first and thinking I could not continue to do this. Not sad. The war against it.
I started reading about the nervous system about what actually happens when a person smiles. The veins on the face enlarge in response to social or emotional stimuli. It is involuntary. It is in a strange way a sign of the adaptation of the nervous system that is alert and responsive to the world around it. People with high mood are more likely to smile. That sensitivity is also what makes them empathize, perceive and be deeply present with other people.
I came across a story about a monk who easily turned pale and approached his teacher in shame. The teacher simply points to the outside of the maple tree, which has a red light in the fall, and says that the maple tree does not turn less red by wishing it. Its nature is to burn in front of everyone without apology. Something about that picture came to me. I have spent my entire adult life blessing my nature away, and what it used to do is make me miserable.
Just as a maple tree does not apologize for its bright red leaves, I do not need to apologize for my physiology. I have no problem. I am sensitive. And sensitivity, I begin to understand, is not the same thing as weakness.
Choosing Compassion for Judgment
So I made slow and imperfect choices to stop the fight. I started treating my face the way I could treat a frightened friend: Patience rather than contempt. When I felt the heat rise instead of disaster resistance, I simply tried to notice it. It’s here. That’s okay. It will pass.
This sounds deceptively simple. It is not. Years of conditions do not melt overnight. But the direction of the effort has changed, and that is very important. I no longer try to eliminate any part of myself.
I have found that when I am kind to myself, I am also kind to others. I began to notice how many people in any room looked a little uncomfortable, a little conscious, a little worried about how they were going through. Almost everyone is afraid of rejection. Almost everyone wants to belong. My shyness, which I consider embarrassing, is just my nervous system being honest with how I care.
Gradually, loneliness begins to increase. I stayed in the conversation a little longer. I accepted an invitation I had previously declined. I let people see me confused without immediately devising a strategy. And the world, as it turned out, did not end there. I noticed that I was less worried about the redness, I was more depressed.
The search for peace
If you are reading this and you struggle with any part of yourself that you have spent years cracking or hiding, I want to make it clear that you are not broken. Your sensitivity is not a design disadvantage. It is one of those moody times where he would break into endless soliloquy with himself.
The mind that creates the most shame is the mind that has the same effect that can redirect to healing. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes the will to sit comfortably rather than run away from it. But it is possible.
When we stop seeing our sensitivities as weaknesses, we open the door to real relationships and lives where we no longer feel the need to hide. We stop implementing our own version, which has been carefully edited for the comfort of others, and we start showing it as we are. That, in my experience, is where the real connection begins.
Sometimes beetroot is still here. But he no longer runs the program.
About Mark Stubbles
Mark Stubbles is a dermatologist, author and course creator who specializes in helping others overcome anxiety and trauma. Having walked the path from social isolation to self-acceptance, he now guides others through the fear of shame and regains confidence. You can find more of his work at markstubbles.com Or find his comparison. Hypnotherapy versus speech therapy for fear of blushing.
