You say, “It’s okay,” but your shoulders tense and your arms close. Without knowing it, your body has just told another story. According to behavioral science expert Dr. Abbie Marono, interviewed by VeryWellMindour body language constantly sends bodily signals that can contradict our words and disrupt our relationships.
Reading your own body language signals is not like learning a dictionary of magic gestures. It is rather a self-observation of one’s posture, gestures, gaze and voice.
Observe your body language signals
You are invited to separate three stages: observation, interpretation, clarification. Applied to oneself, this gives a factual sentence like “my arms are crossed” Or “I look at the ground“, without judgment. Then comes the hypothesis: maybe I feel in danger, embarrassed or exhausted. Clarification comes when we ask ourselves internally what, in the situation, triggers this bodily reaction.
Another useful rule for decoding non-verbal communication: habit, change, beam, verification. We start by observing our “baseline”, that is to say how we stand when everything is going well. Then we identify what deviates from this habit in the context of a job interview or difficult discussion. When several clues match, we take the time to check our feelings rather than denying them.
Posture, gestures, gaze, paraverbal
Crossing your arms or avoiding eye contact can reflect discomfort, even when you say you’re relaxed. The stooped posture, the receding bust, the raised shoulders reflect physical tension. The gestures also speak: hands moving, feet moving under the table. These movements signal inner turmoil or a desire to cut things short.
The look gives other clues: shifty eye contact, rapid blinks, eyes looking for the exit rather than the interlocutor. The paraverbal channel completes the picture: higher pitch, accelerated delivery, sudden silences or nervous laughter. We read an emotion better by seeing the whole body and the context, not an isolated gesture.