Excercising away your emotional poker face
I used to have a very expressive face. Not anymore. But why?
Was it the time my mom saw how much I was moved my eyebrows while I talked and asked, “Are you trying to give yourself wrinkles?”
Was it an adaptation to getting picked on/rejected, thinking that if I locked away my feelings, I’d be safe?
Or am I now simply unimpressed with the world? Well, not unimpressed. Just neutral and always observing rather than experiencing?
I’d like to think it was my mom’s wrinkle warning. I know I made a conscious effort not to move my eyebrows after that, and it seems to have worked. I’m not doing too bad on the wrinkle front. For now at least.
However, there are times when my face conveys an indifference to what’s going on around me when it should more accurately be conveying joy, horror, or sadness. It’s no good for someone to say they love you, and to stare back at them blankly. I was wondering what to do about this.
Then I remembered the time my brother asked me (when we were teenagers) if I made funny faces in the bathroom mirror whenever I was in there, because he did. “No,” I said.
A lie. I was doing that all the time. Back when I had an emotion-displaying face. So then I thought, “I wonder if making funny faces in the bathroom mirror will help me bring the emotion back to my face.”
Then, a few nights later, I had a dream in which I asked someone what to do about my emotional poker face. The dream person told me to make funny faces in the bathroom mirror. Great, thanks for the new insight, my mysterious subsconscious.
6 years ago