Watch for signs of fight, flight & freeze
The 2 Minute Tip is covering body language this week. Monday, we discussed listening to ourselves & looking for congruence, Tuesday we established a baseline. Wednesday we looked for signs of comfort and discomfort. Today, we’ll discuss how people show signs of fight, flight, or freeze, and how you can interpret those signals.
Thanks go to FBI interrogator Joe Navarro, author of What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People for these examples.
People freeze when they feel threatened
Have you ever been to the circus?
When the lions and tigers come into the ring, what do the people in the front row do? They stop making any unnecessary arm or hand gestures.
No one told them to be still. Their limbic brain has over five million years of training in how to avoid being seen by a predator.
How does this play out in conversations?
If you’re in a meeting, and someone suddenly stops moving, maybe even fixing their legs to their chair, anchoring themselves, they may be experiencing fear.
Their next response is to get out, to flee
The second limbic response to danger or threat is to get away.
Most of us aren’t going to go running out of an office when we feel emotionally threatened, but people may shift their feet away from someone they don’t like, or point their feet towards a door in a conference room, indicating they want to walk out.
Fleeing could include blocking behaviors that limit the information we don’t like from coming in. This includes closing eyes, even briefly, putting a purse in a lap (creating a barrier), or leaning away, etc.
“I don’t like what you’re saying, so I’ll block it out.”
Parents, the next time you put a meal in front of your child you know they don’t like, watch their body language.
Blocking, leaning away, or looking for the exit are not necessarily behaviors of deception but could signal that the person may simply feel uncomfortable and is unhappy with what is occurring.
If they can’t freeze or flee, they might fight
Navarro says, “In our evolution as a species, we—along with other mammals—developed the strategy of turning fear into rage in order to fight off attackers. In the modern world, however, acting on our rage may not be practical or even legal, so the limbic brain has developed other strategies beyond the more primitive physical fight response.”
Trying to make yourself look bigger or more threatening may indicate the need to “fight” and overcome something you don’t like.
People can be very aggressive without physical contact, for example, just by using their posture or eyes, by puffing out their chest, or by violating another’s personal space.
Watch for flashes of aggression and you’ll uncover attitudes of consternation, disbelief, or disagreement, disdain, etc.
So what comes after the signals of freeze, flee, or fight?
Something we all do, self-soothe. Let’s discuss that tomorrow.
