Are Narcissists Happy? Body Language Expert Patti Wood
Why we need to improve our gun safety laws.
Why we need to
improve our gun safety laws.
When I was in my
20's in my master's program and teaching at Auburn, I got a call at 7:00 in the
morning from the father of my brand-new boyfriend, Shane Ford. He said, "Shane
was shot in a hunting accident. He is not expected to make it, and he is
calling out your name and wants to see you." The pain in Shane's father's
voice was the worst sound imaginable. I had lost my father a few months before this,
and I knew that pain.
I was home with
the flu and 103-degree temperature, and there was an ice storm, and I had never
driven in snow. So I got in the car and drove on an ice-covered deserted road
to the hospital. I masked up and went into the intensive care unit to say goodbye
to Shane. When I first saw Shane, he was covered in blood and hooked up to many
pieces of equipment. (I didn't know some was the deer's blood.) So there, surrounded
by his family, Shane and I said our goodbyes.
That morning a young
boy, I believe he was 14, who had never hunted or held or shot a rifle, was
handed a gun and instructed how to shoot it by some men that knew the boy came
from a troubled home. Their intent was the teach him to be a man and help him
bond with other men. The boy and the hunters laid down in line at the deer
stand with their guns and Shane ran the deer (chased the deer in front of them)
The body saw movement and shot Shane.
The Bullet went through Shane's spleen and his kidney bounced off his
spine and lodged in his heart. He lost 37 pints of blood in 24 hours. In the
first surgery, they couldn't find the bullet. They stitched him up and we said
our goodbyes as he was bleeding to death. But just by happenstance there was a
visiting physician there to teach at the hospital and he asked us if we were
willing to have Shane be a research patient since he was going to die, they
would continue to look for the bullet, but they didn't have much hope. We said
yes, and the visiting surgeon found the bullet lodged in his aortic value and
was able to replace it with a pig's valve and save his life. With his blood
loss, this was a medical miracle and in fact, Shane's case was written up in
three medical journals. Over 400 people
donated blood at the hospital that week in Shane's name.
Shane, according to the doctors, was not supposed to live, and when he survived,
they said he would never walk again, as the shock trousers they had put on him
to push the blood to his heart and brain had cut off the blood supply to his
legs for too long. He had a long recovery; that recovery was difficult and
painful for him and all of us. I saw firsthand what that one rifle bullet did
to his body. The long deep red scar down the center of his body. The hole in
his back. I know how many people worked to save him; I see the love it took to keep
him motivated to fight for his life. I know all the work it took for all of us
to help him recover and walk again. I wouldn't wish that agony of a journey on
anyone.
How can your space negatively impact your relationship? Decoration, Clutter and Your Relationships
If you have for example the clutter of too much stuff or
merely make design and purchasing or decorating items that may mean something to
you and give you pleasure, but have no meaning and nor give pleasure to you
partner you may be sending the message I have all the power over this space and
or my stuff is more important than you and your needs and pleasure.
How do things like clutter, not compromising over the interior
decor, etc. affect your relationship? In addition to what I shared above
clutter may create a barrier between you and your partner. Sometimes that
barrier is obvious such as pillows that keep your partner from sitting next to
you on a sofa or getting near you in a bed. Or more subtle such as a collection of
salt and pepper shakers Dolls or Star Trek or Sports memorabilia that take
over the house and create clutter and dust and space for the other partner to
mark his or her territory and or that take up the attention and time of a
partner.
What are some solutions to overcome these negative effects?
What are some other surprising home-related factors that could
have a negative impact? Lighting temperature and sound and size Some people like dark cool small quiet spaces that they can retreat to like a cave and recharge and relax.
So people like bright light airing large spaces filled with happy music. So creating spaces that give both partners their own happy space or that compromise on those needs is important for the overall mood of the members of the relationship. Again in my relationship, we had a cool lower lighting space to watch TV and the kitchen brighter. As a side note, when we were dating I painted my kitchen floor with bright colors like the partridge family bus. My sweetie was not overly fond of that floor, but to show me how much he loved me, he got down on one knee and proposed on that very floor!!! It was very symbolic of him embracing my happy bright personality!
Safety Tips for Concert and Festival Attendees, How to Deal With Crowds, Recommendations for Crowd Safety From Body Language Expert, Patti Wood
These are tips that I not only recommend as a body language expert but also as 5 foot one
petite blonde concert, and music festival attendee use.
Tips
- Know your territory. That may
involve getting a map and studying it carefully before the event begins so
you know where the stage or stages, exits are. If you can rather than just
knowing that there’s a map somewhere on your phone if you can print out
the map too.
- Get there early. That way you
can see the space and again study your territory the stages in the
exits.
- Introduce yourself and your
friends to security. Make sure you feel safe and comfortable with them and
ask them how things are going how they’re reading the crowd. I use to train law enforcement officers so I go a bit above and beyond and ask if they need a soft drink or a snack.
- Make plans with your friends
for what you would do and where would you meet should someone get lost or
some emergency happen. Have a backup to that plan.
- When you get to your seat or
to the stage look around again. Note the different exits from your seat or your standing position. Note any barriers that may be in your way.
Always look for exits to your side in front of you and behind you.
- Read the crowd. Your central
nervous system is your best friend in potentially dangerous situations.
Check-in with how you were feeling in your body to note whether there is
danger. If you see agitated or angry people move away from the space as
quickly and calmly as possible to somewhere safe, knowing that may be the
exit. Aggressive behavior usually involves people not only raising their
energy level but forming nonverbal cue gesture cues that are sharp-edged
elbows out weapon-like hands in our motions and fast unpredictable motions.
Your primitive limbic brain picks up on these cues before your neocortex.
You may not be able to formulate words as to why you’re feeling uncomfortable
but your body knows. Move away from danger. Every crowd has energy and
crowds that are dangerous or recognizable if you’re paying attention.
There’s a difference between excitement and being pulled into that
wonderful uplifting excited dancing singing together crowd energy and
dangerous energy. If you feel it flip and you feel scared move away and
out of the crowd.
- Know that the response to
danger is not just flight or flight it’s also freezing in place faint or fall. If you
find your body wanting to freeze in place that’s a sign you’re in danger
move away from the danger. Override whatever social norms there are about
having to be “cool” or not look afraid or be nice to dangerous aggressive
or rude people. Move away from them.
- If you are small or if you
stumble in a loving mob, tell those around you I need help shout, "Lift me up" "I
need help lift me up."
- In preparation, if you can
bring a clear plastic case for your phone in some sort of lanyard that you can wear around your neck it can be helpful. In a dangerous crowd, situation trying to hold your phone as you move through the crowd can be
dangerous you may need both hands.
Alec Baldwin's Body Language in Interview about the Tragic On Set Shooting with Real Bullet by body language expert Patti Wood
Is Alec Baldwin Telling the Truth?
Body Language Notes from Interview by Patti Wood
Tonight, the Alec Baldwin ABC interview is being aired as he opens up about what happened on the Rust movie set. I am doing body language analysis of the interview for the media and I have already done one of the clips below.
I would say overall
that Baldwin feels real grief, and he is truly sad, and he does not feel he is
responsible for the death of Halyna and the injury to the other victim.
As part of a
body language read, you consider what would be normal for anyone in the circumstances
and what would be normal for that particular person. What is that person's
normal?
Alec Baldwin is a
strong, confident man with a big ego. Power and confidence are communicated in
three ways, the amount of space you take up, whether your body windows are
opened or closed, and with you are relaxed or tense. He takes up space, opens
his body windows, and he is fairly relaxed. I know his baseline body language
is expansive. He takes up space. He often sits with his legs apart. At the
beginning of this interview, he's sitting in an alpha posture, legs apart, arms
slightly out from his side. He shows his Baseline normal body language of
confidence, perhaps in an effort to feel confident in this stressful interview.
In preparation for and
response to the question, how could this have happened? You see Baldwin again,
legs apart with his hands between his leg in a downward steeple. A steeple is a
hand gesture that indicates a desire to gain control over the situation. This
downward steeple is a symbolic representation of powerful masculinity.
All of this communicated nonverbally he wants to be a strong alpha man in
his response.
I also do content
analysis as part of my reads for interviews like this (I teach how to analyze
interrogation videos and detect deceit ). Some phrasing that I found odd is his
emphasis on why he's doing this is about because he doesn't want to be the
victim. He keeps saying that this is not about him being a victim. I call this
"He does protest too much" verbiage. The very act of saying this is
not about me snd repeating that statement several times in different ways makes
it about him being the victim.
As Baldwin begins to
describe Halyna and says, she was "….loved liked and admired." On
the word admired, he starts to cry. We see his Squeezed brow, the bowed head,
and his hand over his face. Everyone, of course, wants to know if they are real
tears if he's truly crying. He's an actor. I can say that this was the moment
that if he was going to cry, he would begin to cry because he has to recall, to
go back into his memory about the way she was as a human being.
And the aspects of
real crying or there. You see his face crunch, That is, the eyes, nose and
mouth and forehead pres down and towards the center of his face. You hear the
sound of his sobbing. The intake of breath as he tries to stop the touch to his
nose that the crying is distasteful to him (symbolically indicating that this
crying doesn't smell good) and yet he comes back and continues speaking.
This again, it's him
"manning up" He is showing his strength. He wants to be seen as a
powerfully strong man.
This is his normal.
The viewer may compare his behavior to what they think would be normal for
someone who shot and killed someone and injured another and think he should be nonverbally
smaller, hold his limbs closer to his body, his legs together.
Baldwin is asked,
"Do you think she (The armorer) was up to the job?" Baldwin shakes
his head no as he says he assumed she continued to shake his head no as he
finishes his response to the question. Clearly, he didn't think that she was up
for the job.
Later in the
Interview------
When asked if safety
and security were at risk because of the budget, Baldwin stutters and looks
down and away as he says no and continues to deny that with a facial expression
at one point that's full of tears. I believe he feels conflicted and perhaps
will always feel conflicted about that. However, he recovers quickly and goes
to what we call a media interview to speak a talking point. They planned a statement.
He says something to the effective didn't see any security issues. But though
his voice is strong, it's a prepared statement, but he is looking down and away
and not at the interviewer.
The next part of the interview
is all about him. The focus is on him and not the victims. If I were his media
coach, I would have said, stick to a tight fifteen-minute interview with the
emphasis where it should be, on the victims and their family and the ideally
with a call to action to change the way guns and other amour are taken care of
on sets.
Also, because of this
next moment, the emphasis on him and his feelings and his victimhood shows. As
he continues and he talks about how he loves moviemaking, and he discusses what
it was like when they called him to work with "Tony" Hopkins and
Merrill Street, he begins to cry again, but this time the crying is more
expressive; it's louder he doesn't cover his face. We see the furrowed brow,
the lines of focus at the bridge over the nose, we see the quiver of his chin,
and we hear the tears, The clearing of the throat is verbalized whispered
sorry, it's quite traumatic yet feels and shows as utterly real. The nonverbal
delivery for his feeling of loss for those special unique moviemaking
experiences is stronger and longer and more specific the ones that he grief. He
showed earlier in the interview when he spoke of the victim, Haylana, The
person that died.
In response to the
statement/question from the interview about pulling the trigger, Baldwins
responds, The trigger was not pulled did not pull the trigger. His statement
"The trigger was not pulled." does not contain a pronoun. There is no
I or me. That is a way for someone to distance themselves from the act.
Usually, that's all we
hear from the person speaking that they are distancing themselves from the act.
It can be an indication of guilt about the action,
He recovers fairly
quickly from that lack of pronoun statement and says I did not pull the
trigger. But we have another odd word usage. Baldwin says I did not pull the
striker trigger rather than I didn't pull the trigger. Typically when somebody
is innocent, they usually speak and naturally use contractions, and guilty
people Think of their words more carefully with a vocal emphasis on the word
not.,
Then we hear him say
when I ask again, "say no no no no-no-no."
Here are the rough
notes I sent out to my media contact for a story on Baldwin's Body Language in
the interview about the Shooting on the set of his movie.
They are my rough
notes. He emphasizes the first three no's, and if it had just been those three
no's I would've found him to be honest as people when they're in a highly
charged emotional state like a missing child or a missing spouse will often say
things in triplicate. "My daughter, my daughter, my daughter or my Sara,
my SARAH my SARAH."
Here the repetition
seems more admonishing as if he is saying, "how could think that that's
incorrect." Get admonishing of the interviewer no no no no no . not just a
no I didn't do it.
When Baldwin begins to
describe what happens after Haylana and the other victim are shot, his normal
behavior becomes unemotional and detached. This can happen in someone that's
experienced a trauma who needs to emotionally detach, or he could be just
re-experiencing how he experienced it at the time that he didn't think that
there was a real bullet in the gun and didn't think that she'd been shot. But
even with those two justifications for his detachment, it seems odd. If I was
his media coach, I would've coached him to be sensitive to what was really
happening. Halyna, the victim, was dying.
His apology statement.
I have written extensively and even have a chapter in one of my books on the
proper way to apologize. Here he makes a common mistake and says to Haylana's
husband, " I don't know what to say, I don't know how to say. I don't know
how to convey to you how sorry I am."
This is a
distancing tactic. It distances him from the act. A more direct and proper
apology would be to say simply, "I am sorry. " I know that there are
legal issues in that statement, and some lawyers advise not to use the words
"I'm sorry," and people in Baldwin's position in preparation for
court cases and legal action are advised in this manner.
However, emotionally for the husband, in this case, a true, sincere proper apology even
for an accident has a greater impact a greater Comforting factor for the person
the apology is offered to. It seems much more true, much more heartfelt, much
more real."
Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.