How your eyes behave when you're not watching.
Who you looking at? More importantly, who you not looking at?
What does it matter?
It can be important to know. When we take a second look at what and who we ordinarily overlook, we discover some very interesting things about ourselves.
In our public and private lives, we are all susceptible to blindspots. Cognitive, emotional, physical, vehicular, we are all vulnerable to ‘not seeing' aspects of ourselves or the world around us.
When it comes to our social visual behaviors, it's not as if we don't know what we do with our eyes with other people. In our interactions, we are aware, sometimes hyperaware, of what our eyes do and how we want them to appear. We can choose to look in some directions, more closely in others, and not at all in certain situations. That we have conscious control over our ocular activities is evident.
However, it is just as true that sometimes our eyes move outside our direction, before we have a chance to think about it. In these blindspots, when we are not aware, our eyes can act as if independent entities, pulling us to some sights, occasionally against our will, and pushing us away from others. Who we end up looking at in these instants, and how, is not necessarily under our conscious control.
It's a great evolutionary gift, this design that allows our eyes to take over in the heat of the moment. Our saccadic eye movements keep us safe by roving quickly, detecting threats and opportunities too fast for our slow processing. In these instants, information from our eyes bypasses the slower pathway to the visual cortex (where we actually think about what we're seeing) and instead speeds directly to the Hypothalamus. For quick action. So fastballs can be caught, dodgeballs ducked, toddlers restrained, and cars controlled.
Our social saccades allow us to survive and thrive in fast-paced social environments. However, because they tend to lie outside our awareness, these rapid eye movements can also get in our way, occluding certain information and preoccupying us with the obvious and superficial. While helping us gain our bearings, these sudden eye actions sometimes speed us in the wrong direction. All of a sudden, in snap vision, we can find ourselves looking away when we don't mean to, or looking too long, or not looking at all - on the basis of incomplete information or faulty assumptions.
Think of a time when you looked before looking - when you inadvertently did what you hadn't intended to with your eyes, and created a problem for yourself. When your eyes got you in trouble. When you looked too quickly and missed a critical detail, when you looked away and wished you hadn't. When you misjudged someone and it showed in your narrowed stare, your eye roll, your fast glare. There are big consequences to these sorts of blindspots, generally seen only in hindsight.
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Referred to as microexpressions, our social saccades are often discussed as out of our awareness. However, just as we are able to bring our patterns of emotion, thought and breath into the here-and-now, so too can we become familiar with, and even anticipate, our micro eye expressions.
Mindfulness of our negative visual habits can be useful in lots of social situations. Particularly when we feel uncomfortable - stressed, angry, hungry, frustrated, nervous, confused - our REMs can educate us. Acting as signposts (look here!), our unplanned reactions reveal flashes of inner motivations, emotions and judgments of others not otherwise visible. Suddenly, under duress, our true colors show: hidden prejudices, denied anger, concealed envy, desires for revenge - in our plain sight.
My clients bring their eye awareness to bear in traffic tie-ups, business functions, crowded planes and family dinner tables. They use them to spot ‘danger' situations when they are apt to fall into negative saccadic routines, recognizing primitive reaction patterns that surface in times of tension. In this way, they can anticipate when, where, and with whom they are likely to use their eyes in ways that are unwise -- and avoid careless expressions of disrespect, dismissal, and hostility.
What they come to realize in these instants is that their eyes not only take in information and communicate non-verbally, but they also act as transmitters of attention, or powers of intention. While invisible to the naked eye, experiences of 'eye energy' with others are actually very common. Often resulting in strong emotions, our positive eye exchanges can be amplified and passed on to others - just as the negative may ripple away from us to infect and inflict pain. This transmission capacity is important in light of recent research on positive social contagions. The healthful consequences of friendship networks involve viral connections that move between people. Succinctly, how we look has an impact that echoes back to us.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/337/dec04_2/a2338.pdf
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-source-healing/200901/medicinal-friendships
This kind of insight that offers real split-second options: To respond rather than react, to be thoughtful not thoughtless, to walk our talks even when it's not easy, and (paraphrasing) become the change we want to see in the world.
Exploring our social visual blindspots is a powerfully personal journey - no experts needed. Just the will to look into yourself for something you may not yet see.
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