My Ekman Deficiency

I never know what face it is appropriate to pull in pretty much any given situation. Christmas and birthdays becomes exponentially more stressful than they should be, because presents happen. This shouldn’t even be a thing. Presents are nice - unless you’re given used soap on a rope or syphilis I suppose. However, if I get handed a gift, my mind automatically clicks into an over-reflective doom cycle and my facial expression freezes.

Probably the true villain here is the desire to be polite. My mind rushes to project a scenario where the gift is something that you don’t like. However, this isn’t something you want anyone other than you to know, so you need to express joy! ecstasy! appreciation! no matter what. Despite not having even gotten remotely close to any sticky tape or wrapper removal, the mind then whirrs ahead as to what face you should be pulling in order to hide any potential disappointment (or even perceived disappointment, just to wrap you up into further knots). In my case this generally means that I look like I’m in pain no matter what it is I’ve been given because I’m so anxious to not seem rude. 

Unfortunately, I then notice that I’ve gone too far the other way, and so make the mistake of trying to cover my awkward with dialogue. Dialogue which also goes too far the other way and tends to be something along the lines of “oh cool, that’s...yeah” which serves to rectify nothing other than the conversation which ends in uncomfortable silence until one or both of you leave the room. You don’t want to sound disinterested, but in focussing so hard on how to say something, you pause too long and, as a result, sound disinterested. This also seems to happen sometimes when I'm just talking to people. No-one wins in the social interaction paradox of awkward.

I didn’t really know whether facial expressions are the product of biology or society, but if Paul Ekman, the psychologist on whom the show Lie to Me was based, is to be believed “facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures and thus biological in origin.”

He’s built a multi-decade career on this, and I’ve only been thinking about it for the last 20 minutes, so I think I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Probably. His studies suggest that the areas we all share facial expression reflexes for are anger, disgust, fear, shame, joy, sadness, and surprise.

Maybe I have wrong wiring, or a side link psychobabble diversion circuit, because it seems when situations should prompt a joy or surprise reflex, the signal gets fired off and shunted into the fear realm, prompting the wrong face. Or a frozen face. Or a blushing face. Which will later probably either progress into an anger or sadness face. Or, as sometimes happens, an Edward Scissorhands face. Oh well.

I don’t really know what the reason is. Maybe my brain just has an army of mini-Gandalfs fighting the Balrog of neural emotive reflexes whilst someone accidentally over-bleaches their robes.

Either way, if I’ve ever seemed disinterested or strangely blunt in response to ‘normal social interraction’ or ‘receipt of a gift’, chances are high that if you came back after five minutes you would find me smacking my forehead. Or watching Angel. 

Anyway, it’s not you. It’s my Ekman deficiency.