Did you know that your eyes really are the window into your soul? Or at least, a window into your current emotional state? By understanding how your eyes connect to your emotions, you can learn to tap into curiosity to help you let go of anxiety and fear. I’m Dr. Jud Brewer, addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in anxiety and habit change. Let’s dive right in.
Have you ever wondered why many professional poker players put on dark sunglasses during televised tournaments? I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t because of the glare of the camera lights. They do this so nobody can read their eyes to gain an advantage over them. For all you non-professional poker players out there like me, there is even a term for this: “a tell.” A tell is a change in a player’s behavior or demeanor that gives clues to the cards they hold in their hand. These changes are often unconscious, so they can be telling other players whether they have a good hand or a bad one without even knowing it. If you watched the James Bond movie Casino Royale, you might remember how Bond was trying to figure out the bad guy’s tell during a very high stakes game. I won’t spoil it by telling you how he did. And of course you can read about common poker tells on the internet. Many of the tips on how to spot a tell have you focus on your opponent’s eyes. It’s really hard to stop or mask involuntary eye movements and expressions that we’ve learned our whole lives, and much easier to simply wear a pair of dark shades so we can focus on our poker hand and reading other peoples’ body language. I don’t know if the eyes are really a window into our souls, but they certainly are a doorway into our pocketbooks during a card game.
Here’s some of the science. What do we instinctively do when we’re afraid? We open our eyes really wide. Charles Darwin theorized that in the face of uncertainty, we open our eyes to literally gather more sensory information about whether there is danger out there. Eye widening, when combined with other facial cues of fear also serves as a social signal to let others know that we are afraid. Someone can look at our face and quickly read, “Hey there might be danger out there” without us saying a word.
Opening our eyes really wide isn’t just for fear. You can see this with other types of information gathering as well. We see this in the popular phrase, “my eyes are wide open,” meaning that we’re not ignoring something, we’re seeing it clearly. How about when you’re really interested in learning something? What do your eyes do when you are really curious? They get big and wide don’t they? This may be where the phrase, “wide-eyed wonder” comes from.
In an earlier video on how we can use curiosity to conquer fear, I talked about associative somatic memories. This is how we learn to pair body sensations and positions with emotions. For example, from a survival standpoint, if you are in danger, let’s say something is about to hit you, what do you instinctively do, open up or close down? You close your body, making yourself as small of an object as possible and also use your arms and legs to shield and protect your head and vital organs in your body. Guess what? Your eyes do the same thing. Let’s play with this together now.
Open your eyes really wide, and now think of something that made you frustrated or angry. Try to keep your eyes really wide and see how angry you can get. “Oh, I’m really angry!” How well did that work? Not well, I bet. When we’re angry, we’re laser focused on doing something. We’re not out there asking, hmmm, what really happened, let me gather more information. No. Our brain is not in information gathering mode, and instead intent on acting on whatever provoked the anger. Hence our eyes are narrowed when we’re angry, not wide open. This narrowed eye expression of anger is so locked in, that when you open your eyes and try to get angry, your brain says to itself, “does not compute” because there is a mismatch between your facial expression and your emotions. It’s very hard to get angry with your eyes wide open.
Now let’s do another exercise. Narrow your eyes as much as you can, and then try to get really curious. “Oh, I’m really curious!”
How well does that work? Also not so well! The same thing is happening here: your brain is used to pairing your eyes being really wide open with curiosity and wonder. Remember, with curiosity, you’re in information gathering mode. So that’s why it’s hard to narrow your eyes and get curious: your brain says, “hey wait a minute. If you’re really curious, your eyes should be open, are you sure you’re curious?”
The eyes are a great tell for expressions in general. We’ve linked eye expressions with emotions for so long the two are really tightly coupled. And knowing this, we can hack this simple system to help us move from frustration and anxiety into curiosity. Here’s how.
The next time you are frustrated or anxious or whatever, try this three step process:
(1) See if you can stop and simply name the emotion (e.g. “Oh, that’s [X emotion]”).
(2) Check to see how narrow or wide your eyes are
(3) Simply open your eyes really wide as a way to jumpstart your curiosity. Keep them really wide for 10 seconds and notice what happens to the anxiety (or whatever difficult emotion you’ve just identified). Does it get stronger or weaker? Does it change in character, or shift in some other way?
Once you get the hang of this, see how much you can repeat this exercise, short moments many times throughout the day whenever a difficult emotion arises, to see if it can open you up a bit to leaning into them and learning from them (and about yourself), while at the same time helping you solidify the habit of being curious.
I’ll end with a quote from Alice in Wonderland:
“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”
So see if today, you can use this little trick of opening your eyes wide. Surprise yourself with the simple power of curiosity.
Onward, together. See you tomorrow.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797612464500?casa_token=2NqjhX43b9wAAAAA%3AKrDE7EaRgxb0H7BmP8s1PkCq1fohCY5jsXbLMEPMljvBn4qQ_xEPN_zADQnFhuNglXewI2FNHSv8uA