The Use Of Emotional Body Language

Our human bodies are programmed to have emotions, to signal - both internally and externally - when something wonderful happens and when something awful happens. A love relationship will almost certainly include both of these extremes of feeling.

It's relatively easy to spot when either you or your partner is overwhelmed with emotion, particularly the 'classic six' emotions that have the same body language all over the world, from Japan to Argentina: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear. You'll signal happiness to each other through your smiles; sadness through your tears; anger through your raised voices or strong gestures. (However, you may never see real fear in each other unless you're involved in a traumatic incident together.)

Where real body language skill emerges, however, is not in spotting these obvious signs of emotion, but in noticing the much more subtle manifestations of feeling that everyone experiences every day. Satisfaction, regret, irritation, distaste, confusion and anxiety are the toned-down versions of the full-blown feelings. If you are able to spot the signs of these in yourself and your partner early on, you'll be well equipped to cope with them in you both.

The first sign of an emotion you may well notice in yourself will be some kind of internal rush of energy. This is because emotions were originally designed as a way of resourcing you to cope with an outside threat, as well as signaling to others in your 'tribe' that you needed help with whatever was affecting you.

Emotions are real physical events, just like hunger or thirst, with your entire autonomic nervous system moving into action. On the inside, adrenalin pours into your bloodstream, your heartbeat and blood pressure soar, your breathing rate rises, your nervous system is flooded with sugar to give you energy, your digestive system slows down so as not to waste that energy and your coagulation rate rises in case there's blood spilled.

Parallel to this, each particular emotion will have its own specific effect within your body. Anxiety might make itself felt by a churning in your stomach that is so common that it has a special word in English - 'butterflies.' You may also get tightness down the center line of, your body, a faster heartbeat, a dry mouth, a slightly cold sensation and perhaps a sudden need to go to the toilet. If you are experiencing regret, you'll feel your eyes prickle, a vague precursor of tears; your nose or throat may feel slightly blocked, and there'll typically be a heavy feeling down your center line. The earliest sign of irritation may be a sudden tingling, a movement in your stomach, a rushing in your head or hands, a sudden clenching of your jaw.

Be aware of your emotions as you feel them day by day. That way, not only do you gain more communication with your own body, literally encouraging it to 'tell' you when it thinks there is something to be wary of or angry about, but you also have more chance of responding to your emotions, which is a skill useful not only in love relationships but also throughout your life.