Posted on:Dec 14 2020
So how’s communicating while wearing a mask going these days?
Have you figured out your “What Works?”
Mine’s a WIP for sure.
In this blog, let’s up our awareness around how wearing a mask impacts social interactions, and not just sort of - these impacts are very real. Our interactions can be comical, but they can also be frustrating, unsatisfying, isolating, depressing.
Wearing a mask, concealing half our face, is disorienting - we’re missing soooo many cues!
Just the other day, when I was trying to place a multi-item order at my favorite bakery, I had another one of those candid camera-worthy encounters that, yeah, we managed to get through, with laughs and all, but it also struck me all over again: in the normal course of social interaction, we take so many things for granted.
This bakery is always busy so it can be hard to hear even when we’re not challenged by mask-wearing. The mask and poor acoustics combo, however, is a double whammy for me and it usually goes kind of like this: I have trouble calibrating my volume (frustration for me), and routinely undershoot a time or two (frustration and self-consciousness for me, impatience for them?), before I crank it up, probably overshooting (embarrassment for me, annoyance for them?), and fervently hope we both see the humor in my clumsy overshoot (forbearance, please).
To compensate, for better or worse, I even throw in some hand signals - like pointing, holding up how-many fingers or a thumbs up - and nod or shake my head like one of those bobbleheads on the dashboard of your car !
Sheesh !
Reset breaths.
I’m lucky - I get to walk out of the noisy bakery having survived the temporary discomfort of a mask-induced awkward social interaction.
This is not the case, however, for people dealing with hearing loss; they face these challenges all the time and now masks are covering up the very thing they rely on when interacting - facial cues and speech-reading. It’s a near-impossible situation and I ache for them...eyes and eyebrows offer some facial cues but are still woefully insufficient.
Well before the pandemic hit, my dad was dealing with hearing loss. He did the best he could, used the latest technology, and would position himself strategically to hear better, but he knew he was missing out and I could tell by his expression. It broke my heart, to watch him feeling unjoined to the world. I responded to his hearing loss with loving-kindness...it never crossed my mind to be impatient or angry with him...it’s not like he wanted to lose his hearing.
In my dad’s final weeks, I never wore a mask when I was with him - I wanted all cues available when we talked. I also wanted him to see my smile - the kind of smile that says, “I know you’re leaving soon, I’m so grateful for having you for my dad, I love you, we’ll be together again someday.”
The human smile is such a powerful thing.
I think it’s safe to say we’re all missing them and the good energy they generate.
Consider the “social smile.” You know, it’s that little smile of acknowledgment - “Hello, fellow human” - that eases social interactions, that signals social pleasantness. I employ this regularly, I love to lead with a smile. Unfortunately this kind of smile is hard to detect behind a mask because it doesn’t involve the whole face.
I pass people on the street or at the grocery store and wonder if they can tell I’m social-smiling at them, that I’m friendly. Research has shown that smiling, or not, shapes how others perceive you - a smiling person is perceived as more trustworthy and sincere.
This matters to me, to my personal mental-health vibe, because I like being that kind of human - one who spreads social smiles and maybehopefully elicits one in return. Maybe I’ll start throwing in a hand signal - an air smile, a little swoosh motion in front of my hidden mouth...
Or we could all do more of what’s known as the “Duchenne smile” - the whole-face smile that reaches all the way to the eyes (think crinkling crow’s feet) and that we generally recognize as the ultimate authentic expression of happiness. Because this kind of smile is one of the most influential of human expressions, it has been studied extensively.
The Duchenne smile is named after Guillaume Duchenne, a 19th century scientist whose major contribution centered on mapping the muscles of the body, especially the muscles that control facial expression.
In case you're wondering, the Duchenne smile is produced by the joint action of two facial muscles - the zygomaticus major muscle lifts the corners of the mouth while the orbicularis oculi raises your cheeks, which causes the crinkling crow’s feet laugh lines at the outside corners of your eyes.
It is this constriction of the eyes that marks the smile as one of true enjoyment.
Go ahead, take a moment and practice - feel the difference in your face as your social smile amps up to your Duchenne. For a fun prompt, look at your favorite baby photos or youtube a baby laughing - those toothless grins are proof that it’s not perfect pearly white teeth that make the smile!
I love the Duchenne - it literally changes how I feel, my blood chemistry - what an awesome spontaneous emotional experience regulator! And - bonus - it’s contagious! Precisely the kind of contagious we need right now. 😊
Best of all, the Duchenne smile is detectable behind the mask and can even be heard in our voice.
So. Some tools in my “What Works?” toolbox :
- loving-kindness when having difficulty hearing
- more smiling with the eyes
When we’re all wondering what pandemic-induced work-arounds might stick around post-pandemic, surely these two will make the cut.
Thank you in advance. 😉
