Understanding Body Language
We grow up with an excellent understanding of body language
. The development of that understanding begins in infancy with our communication with care givers.
If you have ever held a lively animated baby, and looked and listened to them, they work very hard to connect with care givers. Those babies know there is survival value in keeping the people who feed them connected. So they look and act charming to keep the oxytocin flowing. And stress hormones flow quickly when the baby indicates a need to be changed or hunger, and a fear cry will motivate movement by a parent in an instant.
The nonverbal communications amplifies the verbal communication, and we all learn to describe what we counselors call congruence or incongruence in the match-up between verbal and physical communications as we gain some life experience.
Oftentimes we say the person who is incongruent is lieing about whatever question we have asked them because of how we feel when observing an incongruence, because we are not aware of the nuances being developed by the researchers in this field.
I think a good example of this is communication with our own children.
My son is working hard to mask his non-verbal facial expressions, which tells me to be alarmed and explore a bit, but I need to regulate my own physiology, because my over arousal turns this communication into a power struggle.
The one thing to remember about understanding body language is that your body language is constantly changing, especially in intimate relationships.
For example, have someone videotape you and your mate having a casual Sunday morning conversation and watch the very subtle communications indicated by facial expression and tone of voice later on.
You will see the give and take involved in conversation about what are usually mundane events.
When people are feeling a stronger feeling, then the body language and tone of voice can be amplified of course.
Another way to observe body language is to watch TV with the sound turned off. The problem with this tool is that the actors are acting, which feels a bit irritating to me because they are not really emotionally involved in the situation they are acting out, but it does demonstrate body language.
There are a number of experts out there who are offering us their body language guide, but even the experts can only observe and catalog an anomaly, and then they have to ask a question about the anomaly, which is what I do when I ask my son about the stony face I mentioned above.
I have enjoyed studying the body language work of Paul Ekman,Ph.D. who has been studying facial expressions for a long time, and has even created a CD with his model demonstrated on it, and it is amazing that I can do so poorly on his model naming the feeling a subtle change in facial muscles demonstrates.
I think that taking the change in expression out of the context of the conversation makes it difficult to identify the feeling, which is my mea culpa, Dr. Ekman, but I study his work anyway, and I use it with my domestic violence folks so they get a sense of how they respond to the non-verbal communications from their partners and children.
The many models for using nonverbal communication in interrogation are less applicable I think to conversation and relationship than our life experience, and all I know when I am suddenly aware of an incongruence is that something happened that I need to check out maybe.
For example, I talk to my male domestic violence clients about how they felt when they received a nonverbal communication from a woman that was what we would describe as coy or seductive, and since she had not said anything, how could they know what was being communicated?
The next question of course is, did you choose to demonstrate a behavior based on the feeling that followed your perception of her communication?
Maybe next we explore the consequences of that choice.
As a counselor, doing group work, it is easy to demonstrate how a change in feelings is communicated nonverbally by pointing it out as it happens in group.
Men will move when asked to respond to a pointed question, facial expressions will change, which are obvious, and sometimes my feelings about the response I get cross the threshold of awareness a moment or two later, so its almost like an interpretation of energy.
If, for example, the feeling is anger, I will ask the men close by how they felt about an angry man that close to them. Most men do not feel danger if they interpret the object being described as someone else. Other men have described gathering energy for an escape even though they remain sitting quietly.
Understanding body language is a very fluid experience, and I have the best feel for it in interaction with others, where feelings and behaviors can change incredibly rapidly.
If you are in need of a tool that helps you pay attention more closely, then I recommend training with the dual n back brain fitness program which will truely impact your attention, memory, and even increase your IQ.
It does take a good memory to pay attention to the ebs and flows of communication, making you an expert in understanding body language.
by: Michael Logan
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