Pain speaks through the face. Whenever you experience pain, your face takes on a contortion. It just happens. You cannot stop it from happening. The message comes from your reptile brain over which you have no control. Take some of that soft skin on your upper arm between two fingers and twist until it hurts, you will automatically put on an agonizing look. Do that now. Pinch and twist until it hurts. Twist some more. As you increase the twist, the look on your face will change to impart an even more contorted look. The facial expression can be described as a mixture of frowning, grimacing, distorted expression, or rapid blinking. Your body may also become rigid or tense or shake. You may fidget. You act to minimize the pain but you cannot prevent the agonizing look. You can override the look sometimes. You can even create the agonizing look by thinking about pain. For example, imagine you are about to pull a sticking plaster from your skin. You create the agonizing look before the pain starts as you say to yourself: “This is going to hurt!” You can even imagine pain and an agonizing look will automatically appear on your face.
Pain is just a message. It is a message from your reptilian brain saying that something is wrong. Pain is an unpleasant sensory experience associated with actual or potential damage. Pain is a perception, thought or feeling that has the important role of preventing further damage. The pain may not appear immediately after damage which enables you to run away. Later, a pain message is developed in the region to encourage you to avoid use. So it is not the broken rib that generates the pain message, after all, it is the rib that is broken. The pain message comes from the reptile brain to give you a ‘feeling’.
The headache is the strange one because we have the brain creating a pain. In the words of Charles Flippen, MD: “We know what areas of the brain are generating pain...” [1] I explain this as the reptile brain detecting something wrong in your body and sending an unpleasant signal to the neocortex so that you will do something about it. So, in the case of my damaged shoulder, my reptile brain detects a problem and sends a nasty message to my neocortex in the form of a sharp pain and my logical self ceases to use the shoulder until it has had time to heal. If I was stuck in a strange land where no-one spoke English, I would mimic the pain look on my face and point to my shoulder. Pain is also mimicked by others in empathy. If someone cuts their finger badly and blood is dripping everywhere, you may give a look of pain on your face in sympathy for their pain in a form of nonverbal message indicating that you are aware of and concerned about the pain being suffered. Before we invented language, this was our way of communicating in the relationship. I tell you this so you can see that facial expressions are crucial for communication and for the creation of relationships. Just because you can mimic pain does not mean that you can communicate other important emotions.
A baby uses facial expressions to communicate with its mother. It cannot speak, but it communicates. When I ask mothers whether they can tell what is wrong with their child from the looks and noises, they tell me that they just “know”. They can read the expressions. They are not using a textbook or the logic of the neocortex. They are using the instinct of the reptile brain. Discomfort in the infant is detected by the mother by observing the facial expressions. There is no textbook to teach the interpretation of facial expressions. We are born with a reptile brain that has the meaning of expressions built in with DNA. Without speech, this is the only way the child can communicate with its mother to request a change to its environment. Facial expressions were crucial for our social communication before the arrival of speech. All humans have this ability to communicate their feelings to others and it is independent of nation or language. My physiotherapist, Ellie, today asked me to do the impossible and watched my face to determine the level of pain. She said: “I can tell by your look. You are not ready for this.” She needed no pain meter. She suggested that the facial expression started at about a pain level of three out of ten. I have laboured the explanation of the facial expression of pain so that you will understand the facial expression of the smile. We cannot restrict our expression of pain but we can restrict our expression of smile. In the ‘educated’ world, we restrict our smiles. Your smile is crucial to your interaction in society so it is a must that you comprehend the creation and operation of the smile. It is a primary tool in your arsenal. Your smile is your primary communication. Speech is your secondary means of communication. Education tries to put speech ahead of emotional communication. This is a disaster for girls.
Facial expressions are created by individual facial muscles or muscle combinations.
Some of these muscles cannot be directly controlled. You cannot ‘will them’ to move. You cannot control them with your neocortex, your conscious brain. Those scientists in white coats at the Neonatal Facial Coding System (NFCS) identified these specific facial movements: brow bulge, eye squeeze, nasolabial furrow deepen, open lips, vertical mouth stretch, horizontal mouth stretch, lip purse, taut tongue and chin quiver. I just asked a young Maori mother at the next table if she could detect what was wrong with her child from the facial expression. After a little probing, she said: “Well yes, sort of. Yes, Mmmm. Yes. I can.” A mother’s intuition is ahead of the scientists and mothers have been doing it for three-hundred million years.
Children use a lot of facial communication.
Another group of scientists in white coats with nothing better to do discovered that mice exhibit facial expressions in response to a range of tests. [2]
Even Darwin had his say on the subject. He wrote a book in 1872 called: “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals”. Charles Darwin claimed that we cannot understand human emotional expression without understanding the emotional expression in animals. He reasoned that our emotional expressions are determined by evolution. He pointed out that there are certain emotional expressions that are common across species. I wonder if you can see a smile on the face of a shark just before he eats you? Here is page from Darwin’s book:
Darwin’s observations of facial communication lay dormant for most of a century. Darwin’s claims were supported by Tomkins (1962, 1963), who suggested that emotion forms the core of human motivation and that the expression of emotion was in the face. There are facial expressions for anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. This next image is from Charles Darwin’s 1890 book which demonstrates ‘contempt’. These pictures show why it is sometimes called “looking down the nose”.
You need to rid yourself of the ‘contempt’ look. Or at least know when you are using it on purpose. Tompkins statement mirrors my ideas. Emotion forms the core of human motivation and that the expression of emotion was in the face. Emotion is our driving force or better: The reptile brain gives us all of life’s driving force and we express our emotions in facial communication. Words are simplistic logic, or often illogic.
As I travel the world, I find that these emotional expressions are not culture specific. This is my housekeeper at a bungalow in Vignales, Cuba. She could speak no English. I could speak no Spanish. We got on brilliantly. In fact, we had more fun because we could not communicate with words.
I conclude that these expressions at least predate the time we left Africa. They predate the time that we invented speech. If we did not have speech but lived communally, we needed to communicate. Facial expressions were the way of doing so. We also had to mate, and this we did without words. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone that is utterly straight-faced? It is difficult to talk for long. Even when talking using this new-fangled invention called language, it is difficult to converse if some emotional facial expression or other indication is not occurring. It feels like talking to a tree.
Our involuntary emotional expressions are coming from our subconscious and would generally be described as “genuine”. We have the ability to override these facial expressions using our conscious brain, the neocortex. The override is not perfect. We can also mimic these facial expressions as when the cameraman says: “Smile”. However, these mimicked facial expressions would generally be described as “fake” or “false”. So a cameraman elicits a ‘fake smile’ from his subject. An ability to read these expressions is built into us but it may have fallen into partial disuse in some individuals. I notice that the children in a class with a straight-faced teacher do not elicit smiles easily. Worse than the inability to read the facial expressions is the failure to give facial expressions. I call this “straight-facing”. In our logical world, we are overriding our expressions. We are using words rather than nods and smiles. In our modern society, males and females are becoming emotionally distant. They are communicating with straight-faced words rather than emotional connection. Whenever I communicate with someone, I try to create an emotional connection. Well, nearly always. There are some people, with whom I avoid an emotional connection. Every communication you make with someone should have some level of emotional connection, almost without exception. The French might call it an exercise in ‘seduction’. Every communication you make should be a seductive event.
This article in front of me talks of trainees being trained to observe facial expressions and how to use these ‘new found skills’ for business purposes. They called them ‘new found skills’ even though we have been doing this facial communication for three-hundred million years. Now I show you this picture of hunter-gatherers again. Now examine it a little longer.
They have expressions. Have a look at the next one. When do you see a smile like this one in a city?:
This next image is of a city girl who has forgotten how to smile. A friend, Robert, describes them as ‘walking zombies’. Some faces are seen as expressionless and others are quite off-putting? In the cities, you will see genuine expressionless faces with occasional blips of emotion. There is even an expression called ‘Resting Bitch Face’ which was appropriately described by one punter on Urban Dictionary: “Originally meant to describe a bland or emotionless facial expression (resting) that unintentionally appears angry or grumpy (bitch face), the phrase has devolved and is now often used to shame women who have the audacity to not smile cheerfully every moment of every day for other people’s enjoyment whether they feel happy or not.” Facial expressions are expected from women far more than from men. RBF may not occur more in women, but it may be that we may notice it in women because we expect women to be happy and smiley. Taylor Orci says: “Bitchy Resting Face is a disorder that affects millions of women every day.”
I sometimes stop and chat to girls like this. It can take me quarter of an hour to get a recognisable smile out of them but by the time I say goodbye, they often give one of those gleaming beaming smiles that only younger girls can give. That extremely unforgettable smile that is given whilst walking away and smiling over the shoulder. It is a ‘don’t ever forget me’ smile.
Some of our expressions can pass in a fraction of a second. We may wish to hide our emotions, using our neocortex but they can slip through. Our general facial expressions may be subconscious or forced but we will have difficulty completely hiding our emotions. Someone is liable to detect your doubt, your disappointment, and more. The face has provided a universal system of signals in the form of facial expressions for many millions of years and we have been able to interpret these throughout this time. In the modern world of education and work, we are using logic and words to extreme levels. We are becoming straight-faced. If you went through a government ‘education’ system or you work in an office or went to university, you will be affected. You will need to re-train yourself to put emotional communication before logic.
Beware: Working in an unhappy environment is detrimental to your health.
We are becoming ‘cold’ and expressionless in our communication. This will create a problem when you wish to create a relationship. You will fail to interpret emotional signals. You will fail to give appropriate emotional signals. In your analytical approach to life, you will analyze whether the male fits your list of appropriate attributes. The male will detect your doubt. He will run. He may lay you, if invited, but he will run. Without realizing, you gave out negative emotional signals. You were thinking: “I like this. I don’t like that. I like this. I don’t like it when he does that.” He read your negative thoughts in your smile and ran a mile. Our subconscious brain is wired to search for and interpret these facial cues. The reptile brain does this automatically and passes its results to the neocortex.
Laughter creates endorphins which are our body’s natural painkillers and ‘feel good’ chemicals. They assist with the relief of stress and the healing of the body. Norman Cousins was diagnosed with the debilitating illness ankylospondylitis. The doctors told him they could no longer help him and that he would live in pain until death. Norman rented a hotel room and set about watching funny movies including the Marx Brothers and many more. Whist watching, he laughed hard and loud. With six months of this laughter treatment, his illness was completely cured. Research started into the function of endorphins which are the chemicals that are released when we laugh. Their chemical composition is similar to morphine and heroin. The result is that happy people tend to be sick less often.
The ‘Communicative Smile’ is your most important tool. Most persons completely forget to use it. In the days before we learned to speak, we must have communicated without words. How did we do this? Do we still have this skill? By accident, I discovered that we still have this skill. I was put through a fairly heavy education system. I studied engineering. I was ‘Mr. Logical’. Everything was logic. Communication was logic and often a bit irreverent. In my younger days, they were only making the males logical. But now the girls are becoming logical. They are analyzing everything. “I like him because this.” “But I don’t like this, but I like that.” This is no way to make a relationship.
Girls tell me they are looking for a boyfriend but they put unreasonable conditions on the future meeting. They have lost the plot. At twenty-eight, how long is it going to take to find a man and then how long is it going to take to get him to trust you enough to ask you to marry him? This is not World War One where couples met and got married within a fortnight. One example from New Zealand: “We bought our engagement ring and our wedding ring in the same day, and it was the day after I met her.”
Much of this boy-girl meeting is silent. I was explaining this topic to a girl this evening and she said “That is exactly what I did. I was at a venue. I knew males were looking at me. They always do. But this one boy was looking at me differently. His occasional glance in my direction was telling me something. I went across to him and said: ‘You want to have me. Don’t you?’ ” I forget what she said next but she told me they have been boyfriend/girlfriend for ten months. They have the occasional argument but she says to him: “We don’t do this.” This is logical as we could not argue before we had language. Deaf people have problems arguing. She told me that his look told her that he had fallen for her. His look said: “He wanted her.” It wasn’t a look that said he wanted a one-night-stand. His look told her that: “He liked looking at her. He wanted to get to know her and he wanted a relationship with her.” She told me that she could detect this in his look from the other side of the room. She was brazen enough to challenge him with: “You want to have me. Don’t you?” Besides her ability to recognize the message in the facial expression, she chose a man because she could detect that he was showing the first signs of falling in love with her. He was already falling under her spell and that is the prime requirement. She wasn’t choosing someone that fitted a fairy-tale list. Tear up any fairy-tale list that you have put together. The man you choose has to have one prime requirement before you even think about other characteristics. He has to have fallen for you in a big way. He will not tell you this in words because society has drummed this out of him. You have to use a ‘third sense’ to detect it. You have to read his facial expressions. You have to read the way he talks to you rather than the words he says. You have to read all the other signals that he will give. A male may say that he “loves you” and not actually mean it, and a male may love you totally whilst not being able to say the words. You need to pick up the subtle signs. Besides the subtle signs such as his look and gaze, he should talk about a future with you. Males are taught to hide their emotions and so saying “I love you” may be impossible for him, so you will have to detect it in other ways. He may even think that showing emotion is a sign of weakness. He may love you with all his heart but be unable to express it. His ‘inability to express’ may be his tough upbringing and not a character ‘fault’. Your task is to detect his love. However, that gets more complicated, as in the push to get women to emulate the activities of males, you may have become more logical than him and you may also be hiding your emotions. So you, yourself, may have both lost the ability to detect the love emotions and to give the love emotions. You will be reading articles that are a logical analysis of something that is not logical. This is as hopeless as an engineer attempting to write a love song. An engineer may be capable of great love, but he won’t be expressing it in poetry. But the poet may write you a great love song without reciprocating your love. He may never tell you that he loves you but this does not mean that he does not love you. You need to enter his consciousness to the level that he wakes up thinking of you. His world will start to revolve around you. You will become his weakness. Which creates a beautiful conundrum. You supply him with the strength to overcome his weakness, but his weakness is you! He may be tough, but he is putty in your hands!
A baby will communicate with you in a variety of ways. Your baby will smile at you and wait for your response, and respond to your smiles with a new smile. It may be that your baby may try to copy your facial expressions. The smile will remain a method of communication until the education system with un-smiling teachers or even an un-smiling parent knocks the skill out of them. If this has occurred to you, you need to re-learn it. Practice on children and old men. Middle-aged and young men may misinterpret your communicative smile. However, you should use your communicative smile with younger males. The procedure is to think the messages into your mind. The messages need to be truthful and should be of the nature:
If he is a young male that you may have interest in, it may include:
The thoughts must be truthful. However, your brain is not over fussy about any legal exact definition of truth. But the thought must be exactly what you intend to convey. Then you give what I call a “communicative smile”. In my case, I look straight into the eyes of the girl without flinching and give a small nod. The nod may be five millimetres or it may be exaggerated. I let my subconscious brain make the decision. A frown must be avoided. You must train yourself not to frown and do not raise the eyebrows. As a male, the message always includes:
If you have any sleazy thoughts, they will be passed as well. So no inappropriate thoughts. Your thoughts must be very honourable. It has to be a fairly switched off woman not to respond. However, I am sixty-six, so I am not in the game. The girl can see that it is a happy old man playfully using his communication skills. The girl practices her art and explores my mind so that she might learn. I am no threat as I am completely out of the game. Girls regularly use me and my mind to hone their skills.
Using logic or words to express emotion is difficult. Many can put emotion into phone text messages. A poet can manage it. Some songwriters manage it. My mother can express it in the written words as in this email when I announced that I was to returning home for Christmas:
: “ WHOOPEE!!!! That’s good news! See you at Christmas😀📣🍓🍓🍓🍽🍬🍬🏔🛩Love from MumXXXX”
When girls are adjusting their hair in the mirror, I tell them to practice their smile. The trick is this. You practice your smile in the mirror until you can put as close a natural smile on your face as possible. You then give the other person this practiced smile and they will respond with a genuine smile. Your smile will then become genuine. In the future, when you give a smile, your smile will more commonly be a natural smile depending your mood. You need to think happy things to try to get your mood closer to happy. Before long you should be giving a genuine smile on most days. People will accept a smile if it is genuine or it is well intended. So you smile that was practiced will be accepted not for its genuine nature but because it was well intended. Once you have obtained a smile from the recipient, you can try to elevate the emotional connection to a higher level. This requires that you work your facial expressions and nod as they talk. You have to magnify your emotions. Some people are good at this. They feel an emotion and detect what expression is being created and magnify the expression. The facial expressions are magnified and they sometimes add hand gestures and other movements into the mix. If you put ‘silent movies’ into an internet video search, you can watch the old actresses magnify their expressions and hand movement to express shock, love, fear and other emotions.
The next stage I call: “speak for effect”. Talking is fairly easy. The task is to ensure that your words are effective. It is not a matter of: “I’m human. I have ‘rights’. I want fifty percent of the talk time. Sod your ‘rights’.” When you speak, you must obtain an ‘effect’ on the other person. You must demonstrate interest and excitement. So when you express disappointment, you put your hands to your head. When you express ‘shame’ for something you messed up, you cover your eyes and look down and away with a strange smile on your face. Every voice communication should be an emotional exercise. I often say: “Speak for effect!”
When they are talking, you talk back to them with facial expressions, nods, and hand gestures. Show shock, empathy and pain in your facial expression, all the while with a faint smile. Use two thumbs up for agreement. Use nods to show you understand or agree. If it is someone you might be interested in, do not disagree, just look puzzled or perplexed. Do not use the face in the next picture.
When you speak, the words come out before you know what you are going to say. My father once said to me: “Think before you speak”. Years later, I realized that this was wrong. You don’t think before you speak. The words just come out. You can request some modification by telling yourself: “Don’t use swear words.” or “Only say positive things.” or “Keep it interesting.” or “Don’t just talk about yourself.” For pleasant conversation, you need to have things to say, so you need to study many odd topics in your spare time. Take up strange activities in your local district so you can mention them. People often ask: “How has your day been?” So go roller-skating for an hour before going out in the evening, so that you can say: “I went roller-skating.” You got exercise, a topic of conversation, and your brain is a bit more hyper from the activity. Or you can say “I went for a walk and had a look at the gravestones in the churchyard.” Again you got exercise and a topic of conversation. “I watched a tree full of birds and they all flew off as I got there but they circled above. ...” So those of you that never know what to talk about — create some things to talk about. Do not talk about what you saw on Satan’s Pulpit.