Words… Useful, non-constructive, violent, kind, hurtful, helpful… words that build trust and words that destroy relationships.

But words are definitely not the only way we express ourselves. We express ourselves with our whole being – verbally and physically, but also energetically. It could be the way we walk, the way we move, the expression on our faces, the shrug of the shoulders, the rolling of the eyes, hanging your head. And I’m sure you know expressions like: ‘If looks could kill’, ‘You’ve got a stormy face’, ‘His eyes were like daggers’, ‘She wears her shoulders like earrings’. The list is endless.

I’m guilty as charged. I am sure that everybody in my family is well aware of me expressing certain things with my face. It’s ’that look’ I give them, that tells them that I am now seriously fed up and I’m not taking no for an answer any more and I want it done now. And I reserve ‘the tongue’ for my husband to express the ‘ultimate displeasure’ about something – I have perfected it during our 20 years together and it is usually in a jokey way and he comments something like: ‘Ah, that deserves ‘the tongue’, does it?’

The vocal chords are the tools we use for talking and making other sounds. We can make things sounds sad, happy, soft or loud. But in the end they are physical tools, they are not the words, the thoughts, the feelings. It is the thought or emotion that will define the sound the vocal chords are making. When we are sad, the sound is more likely to be soft, sometimes inaudible, and when we are happy or angry we produce louder sounds. But that is not the only way we communicate – we say a lot with our facial expressions.

The face communicates many things without making a sound

When thinking about communicating with other people, we don’t always need to make sounds. We can choose to use sign language in a conscious way, but when it comes to the communication through facial expressions this is most often an unconscious phenomenon – most of your facial expressions are fleeting and you are unlikely to be aware of them all.

Opinions differ on the number of muscles involved in facial expressions, but let’s say that there are around 43 facial muscles and they work together in producing thousands of messages each day about our emotional state, our mood or personality, about the immediate feelings we have about our surroundings and our well-being on a mental level. We even express things like credibility, trustworthiness, and kindness with our face, as well as malice and distrust. And the other way around is true as well: we ‘read’ other people’s facial expressions, and only too often we draw conclusions based on our interpretation of what we see. Rightly or wrongly so we pay a lot of attention to people’s facial expressions and we decide whether we feel safe or not, whether we can trust the other person or we should be wary and careful.

So even when the vocal cords are not the tool used to communicate, your facial muscles and tissues will be. Many of your thoughts and feelings will be expressed with the help of your facial muscles; your face will express your disappointment, your excitement, your anger, your joy, your disagreement, your pain, and anything else that might be going on for you.

And now it is the weekend (or maybe even half term)

I would like to invite you to pay some attention this weekend to how many things you are saying with your face. And when you catch yourself expressing something without words, what is the response from the people around you? What are they saying to you without even making a sound?

Happy Friday to you!

Renny