YOUR FACE SHOWS YOUR INNER FEELINGS

YOUR FACE SHOWS YOUR INNER FEELINGS

 

Patients ask me why their face gets flushed, why they blush, and how can they hide their feelings.  Your face can show your inner feeling and can cause changes in your feelings as you talk, its not the words, it’s the dance of emotions, that trigger a particular emotion in the other person.  

   Any stimulus can become emotional, as the financial crisis, and the upcoming elections.  Feelings are the subjective aspects of emotion.

 

The bottom of the face dominates the expression.  A sad mouth with smiling eyes implies sadness.  A smiling mouth on sad eyes implies happiness.  Why do you clench your jaw when you are happy?  See my blog "Your face tells it all' 12.01.07.

Emotional gestures help restore and regulate the vascular system of the head.  Your face can trigger many emotions. When you blush, there is danger of blood flooding the brain.  The blood is shunted away from the brain and hence the face gets flushed.

Body temperature affects all the biochemical processes.  The brain can’t tolerate variations in the brain temperatures.  The brain cools itself by heat exchange. Facial muscles can change venous blood flow.  This changes the blood temperature in the brain.  The temperature changes affect the neurochemicals of the brain. 

Nose breathing is not just to get air.  The cavernous sinuses can become severely restricted.  Blood that goes through these sinuses is warmed 0.3 degrees centigrade.  Your forehead is like a thermometer.  Its temperature is very diagnostic of your brain’s temperature. 

Thumb sucking is an unlearned action hard to break.  Sucking forces nasal breathing.  This effectively cools the brain.  Kissing also forces breathing through the nose.  Screaming release opiates that act as analgesics.  Weight lifters and tennis players scream to relieve pain.

CONCLUSION

Feelings, both good and bad, are a result of your neurochemical brain activity.  This emotional activity is temperature sensitive.

Brain temperatures control the neurochemical activity of your brain.  The brain makes a lot of heat and requires cooling.  The cavernous sinuses cool the arterial blood to the rain.  All the facial veins and nasal airway brains drain into your cavernous sinuses.  Your face muscles and your breathing patterns control the brain temperature.

Source: Robert Zajosc, Charles Cooley LSA lecture, 1989

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