Showing feelings

Dear reader,

German readers are probably still remembering Arno Funke, who under the name “Dagobert” (the German name for Scrooge McDuck) extorted big stores between 1988 and 1994. He worked as a painter of motorcycles and sport cars. To finance a start as self-employer, he extorted money from the stores. Later he said that the fumes from the workplace damaged his brain and lead to depression. In his autobiography (only available in German as “Mein Leben als Dagobert” (My life as Dagobert)), he writes that he wasn't aware of the slow process to depression and the numbness at that time. His arrest and therapy lead him to gain access to his feelings again. Only then was he able to paint again and be creative.

Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft are portrayed as rather cold. In the BBC series “Sherlock” there is a scene in “A Scandal in Belgravia” (Season 2, episode 1) in which Sherlock and Mycroft stand together at the morgue of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Sherlock just identified a corpse as Irene Adler. In the hallway he hears crying people pass by. “They all care so much. Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?”, Sherlock asks his brother. Because although Sherlock has met Irene Adler earlier and was somewhat fascinated by her, her death at Christmas Eve doesn't seem to move him or Mycroft at all. “All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage. Sherlock”, is Mycroft's reply. He does show some feelings for his little brother though, because he gives him a cigarette, although Sherlock endeavours to quit smoking.

Sherlock Holmes is certainly a fictional character. So it's questionable how realistic such a cold person actually is. Although sociopaths indeed have no empathy for others, are in a way cut off from their feelings, especially feelings for others.

Hard and annoying as it may be sometimes, to be overwhelmed by our own feelings. In the end it's probably better still and more human, to have feelings and to show them. There is a German saying literally “An Indian knows no pain.” Meaning that one must be brave and not be over-sensitive to pain. It's totally absurd. Girls and women are probably more emotional generally. They, after all, are mainly responsible to take care of the children. So it makes sense that they can show feelings easily and read them in others, in the children and react accordingly. That doesn't mean that consequently the boys and men have to be “tough” and mustn't show any feelings at all. Feelings are part of life. Feelings are part of being human. Whether we like it or not. In the long run, it's not good to hide feelings or swallow them. As shown in the case of Arno Funke, something like that is likely to lead to something negative and we lose something. Even though feelings sometimes keep us from doing things and overwhelm us and we can't think straight, although we wish we could. Feelings are like a river, they change. A situation totally wears us out at one point, but in time we'll get over it and we move on.

In case you do want to feel down or depressed once, follow Charlie Brown's lead:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTeUoxESw_oxFbTBn55jRstKMrG9z1PsQrZJHeEmF3ZYEKHJK_Z6Dvjj_FBOZa_1tyN6cXTs7Og5lGMGnefUDTPlww5proAa6qdQjXpXshGu7khPNcKq90i1eWMtBMXWWbBOk-vpKNLM/s400/snoopy.gif

Until next blog,

sarah

Postscript: Stop feeling sorry, but be compassionate!

Dear reader,

Susanne was so kind to point me to something very important about my last post: there's a difference between pity and compassion. I want to elaborate on that more now. Many thanks to Lisa as well for the stimulating chat!

For me pity is what I described in my last post. The professor has no arms. In my view, we need arms. She doesn't have arms, so I pity her. But as I already wrote, the professor at least seems to be happy, even without arms! So there is no reason to feel sorry or shocked or whatever for long. She's fine the way she is. It seems to me that pity has a lot to do with assumptions we make. Those assumptions should be tested and if possible lead to action of some kind or another afterwards. A bit like Sherlock Holmes. It would be bad to be stuck in an assumption and that was it.

Compassion is something different. With compassion someone might be shocked or startled at first. For example to learn that I'm missing my right foot. An important next step could be to ask, if or how I needed help. When I explain that I can walk, run and ride a bike fine, it's okay that I have got only one foot. I would need help swimming. Because I have to take off the prosthesis for that. That means that I have to get to the edge of the swimming pool or as close to the sea as possible with the prosthesis on, but then the prosthesis should be away from the water so it doesn't get wet all over. Then when I get out of the water I need the prosthesis back and someone either has to get it for me, or help me get to the prosthesis.

That's important and necessary. Generally speaking the professor and I are fine with our handicap. It's also fine to feel sorry for a moment that we lack arms respectively a foot. The important thing is how to react and deal with that in the longer term. That if we need help, we don't only have people around us who feel sorry for our situation and don't dare helping us or for whatever other reason don't act. When we need help some time, it's important for us to have people around, who understand and help us.

In the social field or among people working in communications there's a word often used: empathy. Recognise and understand what the other person is feeling. That may sometimes mean crying along with them. That's important and right. However it should happen for a limited time only. After that it's important to think it through together how things can go on from there. That's very important. Because if someone is really in a bad situation, that person needs help and not only someone to cry along with them. Even though the saying goes: A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. It's even better if this sorrow has an end and one can get out of a bad situation easier and faster with others than alone.

Until next blog,

sarah

Stop feeling sorry!

Dear reader,

many people, especially those I meet on the internet, feel sorry when they learn that I was born handicapped. I'm missing my right foot from birth. But, as I keep telling those people all the time: I can walk normally, run, ride a bike with a prosthesis. Still the first reaction from many is, “I'm sorry.” Why anyway? Sometimes I say or write to them that probably they feel more sorry than I ever feel for myself. I was born this way. I don't know any other way. I don't miss my right foot. I never had it, but I always had a prosthesis.

Years ago, during my studies, I had some seminars with a professor with no arms. Although I never dared asking her directly, I assume she doesn't have arms because of Contergan. Once her son was in the seminar and she told us she's got a second son. In one discussion group in a seminar, she told us that she never had the need to put her arm around someone. The reaction of all of us at first certainly was shock. We're so used to hugging someone. Be it as a form of greeting or to comfort. And she has got two sons! Of course would I have the need to hug my sons, comfort them, put my arm around them, and cradle the little kid in my arm. Wouldn't I? And yet she seemed at the very least content with her life. She had said it herself, she never had had the need to put her arm around someone. Why then do I feel sorry for her, that she, especially with her two sons, could and can never put her arms around someone? I think, we're feeling sorry very quickly for others when we see or learn about something that's existing for us or possible for us, but not existing or not possible for them. But what good does it do to feel sorry then? Not at all.

My landlady and friends of my parents, consequently also mine, I guess, told me the other day that she was to give one of her sons money. That money was to come from another person, who didn't give it to her on time for her to give the money to her son on time. So when the son asked her about the money, she had to tell him she didn't have it... and said to him that she was sorry. Talking to me and thinking back about it, she questioned, why she had felt sorry about it. It hadn't been her fault that the other person didn't give the money on time!

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and especially stop feeling sorry for others! That's not helping anybody. When someone is in a bad situation, he or she needs help, not pity. If you want to help and the other person genuinely needs help, help them. That's all you can do. Everything else ends in you feeling sorry and then what? Then you feel bad yourself. That's not helping you or the other person.

Until next blog,
sarah

Let there be Lightman

Dear reader,

part of doing hypnosis and especially hypnotherapy, is to observe the client. Something very important is to look for incongruence. That's when the body contradicts the spoken word. You may have experienced this in your daily life before. Usually, I guess, we get a strange feeling. "Something" isn't quite right. It's when I'm with a friend and ask him if he wants to come over to my flat. His mouth says "yes", but he's shaking his head "no". So which is it now?

A certain Albert Mehrabian did an experiment and found out that if someone is incongruent, we break down his non-verbals and what he says. According to Mehrabian, about 55% is body language as such, 38% is speech (how fast it's said and that kind of thing) and only 7% is what's actually said. This means that when we're in doubt and someone is incongruent, we tend to trust the non-verbals and body language more than the actual talk. Mehrabian found that out in 1971. People still like to quote that study. But they misquote it badly actually. They leave out that his study was for incongruence and say that we trust the words only 7% all the time. That's wrong! I guess this misquoting and misinterpretation happens when people take out of the study what they like and other people quote the people quoting that study. I believe that rather few people actually read the original story, but (mis)quote it all over the internet. That's so sad.

Another person worth mentioning when the talk is about body language, incongruence and lies is Paul Ekman. He's the lead expert on deception and lies. According to Ekman, there are 7 basic emotions, which are the same with every human around the globe. They are:

anger: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5708.htm

contempt: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5709.htm

disgust http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5710.htm

fear: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5711.htm

happiness: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5712.htm

sadness: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5713.htm

surprise: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5714.htm

The pictures above show Tim Roth and the pictures have been made as part of the tv series "Lie To Me", where he plays the deception expert Dr. Cal Lightman. He's modelled after Paul Ekman, who also worked as consultant for the show. So "Lie To Me" isn't just any wanna-be-science show. Much of the science on that show is actually true and really works. FOX, which by now has cancelled LTM in the middle of season 3, has since taken away Paul Ekman's blog where he explains aspects of his science on almost all episodes. There are only a few exceptions, for episodes in which nothing special regarding his science came up. You can still read it here now: http://www.paulekman.com/lie-to-me/

Personally I have so far only read "Why Kids Lie" by Paul Ekman. It's a nice read. Especially I found it interesting that the book was a family project really. Paul started of, then his son took over to write from a child's point of view, including some advice for what parents should be doing or can do. And then his wife, who worked as an attorney, wrote the last chapters.

What fascinates me about body language and lie detection is the aspect of so called micro-expressions. That's very quick expressions you make showing your real emotion and then hide it with another expression. Paul Ekman is better at explaining this, so I'll let him talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXm6YbXxSYk

I think it's helpful to know the science of facial expression. Probably we don't need to bring it to perfection to see micro-expressions. Knowing the science of facial expressions as such, does help though. Lightman makes that point at the end of the second episode of season 1. In the pilot episode they get a new staff member, Ria Torres, who is a natural. She can see and correctly read facial expressions, including micro-expressions, without formal training. Lightman seems a bit annoyed by her and teases her quite a bit in that second episode. There are scenes when Torres says nothing, but Lightman reads her face and she shows negative emotions. She pays him back in the final scene when she reads his face. However he shrugs it off. When she calls him a liar, he simply tells her to get used to it. Seeing things is one thing. He tells her that without the science, she's unable to see the whole picture and people get hurt. I have to agree with him, that with the science of it in mind, we get a deeper understanding.

Paul Ekman also created programs to train yourself in recognising facial expressions as well as micro-expressions. If you're interested in those kind of things, check out his website.

One thing about detecting lies: It's a widely accepted myth that liars would break eye contact with you. The idea being that the liar can't stand looking you into the eye for a longer time. Probably for fear of you seeing he's lying. Actually eye contact says nothing about whether someone lies or tells the truth. As Lightman and his colleagues repeatedly state: The important thing is to have a base line. Some sort of reference point which tells you what the person is like in a fairly relaxed state. If you don't know what a person is like in a relatively relaxed state, you're unable to tell anything about him. If he has a twitching hand, even when you're talking small talk, it's likely to be a normal behaviour for him and has nothing to do with nervousness or impatience or anything like that. If that person has calm hands in a small talk situation and the hand twitches when the talk gets to more serious matters, it's likely that something is going on now. But a twitching hand as such means nothing. Similarly, if someone crosses his arms and legs, it doesn't necessarily mean disagreement. Notice what the person is like when you think he's fairly relaxed and telling the truth. Once the person does something else and breaks this behaviour in some general way, these may be signs of holding back informations and/or telling lies.

The british magician, or self-proclaimed "psychological illusionist" Derren Brown makes those points of how to tell a lie in his book "Tricks of the Mind" as well. He also explains a trick/experiment you can do with anybody willing to take part. If you go for the three main sensory systems we have visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Ask a person five or so questions for each of those sensory systems. They should tell you the truth. It can be really simple questions. Notice how they move their eyes. If you think you know their pattern, you can ask them to tell you a number of things (say five again) and one should be a lie. The lie is when they don't keep their usual pattern of "truth telling", as you established before. Derren Brown makes it seemingly even more interesting and mysterious as he tells the person only to think of the answers and not say them aloud. Here's a video of Derren Brown doing this trick with car salesmen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2cvop3vbM

Go with Derren and make your choice about which facts are lies. Again: don't just go for eye contact or breaking eye contact. Eye contact or not are no indicators for lies or truths!

The blog title today comes from... you guessed it, Cal Lightman. In episode 2, season 3, we see him having problems starting to write his new book. Instead he procrastinates big time with making beans on toast at 4 a.m. and even sets off the fire alarm when he burns the toast. He's distracted with a video he watched on his laptop. So his daughter Emily comes down to see what's going on. She suggests writing just any sentence. Lightman rejects her first line, so he types into the laptop: "Let there be Lightman." and presents it with his arms stretched in a "ta-da!" kind of fashion. Emily tells him to hire a ghost writer and decides to go to bed again. I love the scenes with the two of them. Sometimes Emily seems much more grown-up than her dad. He often does what he feels like doing, which isn't always appropriate and sometimes even dangerous. See for yourself.

Well, I think that's it for now. My take on body language, truth, lies and those kind of things.

I'll keep you posted! Stay tuned!

Sarah