Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Diary of a Human Lie Detector with Annie Särnblad

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. Annie Sarnblad is a global speaker and an expert in reading facial expressions, in particular micro-expressions. She speaks to CEOs and massive Fortune 500 companies and also teaches individuals like us how to use awareness of micro expressions, meaning the tiny, teeny expressions that most

Starting point is 00:01:05 of us aren't even aware we're making, how to use those to tell, is someone into you or not? Are they honest right now or not? Are they someone who's trustworthy or not? Is it possible you're dating a narcissist or not? If you're curious, you are going to love this conversation with Annie Sarnblad. Annie Sarnblad, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

Starting point is 00:01:39 Human lie detector. Everyone needs one of those in their back pocket. Or not, right? Or not, right? If you're the one, all of us who want to not be taken advantage of, not get it, not accidentally fall into relationships that are toxic or get manipulated. For me in particular, and I talk about this a lot with my peeps here, is I'm a recovering codependent. I've been in recovery 15 years now. So discernment is really always been a challenge for me. Yeah. And so I was really interested in reading some of the stuff you've written and watching some of your interviews because I know I'm not alone in that. I think some of us struggle with difficult to trust. Lots of us tend to trust way too easily, but at a certain point we start realizing that maybe we need some assistance and really being able to discern when someone is

Starting point is 00:02:43 being authentic when someone has good intentions when someone is telling the truth and one of the themes that I saw you speak about again and again which makes it so simple and it makes total sense and we're going to walk through this and guys you can watch I mean Annie will describe this but you can also watch the video while putting it on YouTube but is this idea of like okay so how do you know whether someone is telling the truth or whether they're honest or not. Their facial expressions match what they're saying. I mean, you would think that would be an obvious one, but you study micro expressions, which are extremely subtle to most of us. And as I was thinking about it, one of the things, and we're going to get into how you know whether someone's,

Starting point is 00:03:34 how you can match up their facial micro expressions with what they're saying. But before we even get into that, I'm really curious how one finds themselves a micro expression expert. Like how did this develop for you? I had abuse in my childhood. So just along the lines of what you were saying, I became obsessed with the difference in what I perceived in the world and what I saw and knew to be true with what people were saying they saw or the gaslighting that happened in my life as a child. Nope, that didn't happen. You know, even things that happened to me and were done to me became untrue by some of the, according to some of the grownups around me, even days after that

Starting point is 00:04:31 didn't happen. And, oh, Ann, you're so judgmental and, you know, you need to stop seeing everything in black and white and people are flawed and family loyalty, et cetera, et cetera. And so when I first heard, maybe I've been 10 or 12, I don't remember my exact age, that microexpressions were a thing and that there was science behind facial expressions, that was fascinating to me. And I don't think I revisited it for a long time, but I tended to attach myself to other humans

Starting point is 00:05:08 that I knew in my gut were extremely trustworthy. And I found that it was very sensitive to betrayal. if I felt betrayed I let that relationship go completely I had this ability which I think some people could consider a flaw and for me it was a survival mechanism that I still sometimes use and that is if somebody is really awful to me multiple times in in a row I just that person's gone out of my life that's been instrumental to my emotional and even physical survival and I ran away from home when I was 16. The way I did it was I started looking into exchange programs foreign exchange programs when I was 14, because I knew I had to get out. I had to get out of my

Starting point is 00:05:54 house. And I received two scholarships to different programs. I eventually went to Sweden for my junior year of high school on a Rotary scholarship. And I was rarely back in the US for an extended period of time for the next 25 years. I was back for half of my senior year of high school and then I went abroad again. So I've lived in nine different countries. I've studied eight languages, mostly through immersion. I'm not particularly good at languages.

Starting point is 00:06:25 So I've spent years of my life not understanding what people are saying. And so that ability of just having to understand the facial expressions and being completely and utterly reliant on those facial expressions. I've even had the long romantic relationships where I was living with a man in Switzerland and didn't speak French.

Starting point is 00:06:48 And we both decided that I was going to learn to speak French. So there were months when we had this relationship and only communicated non-verbally. Wow, working together. And we were great with the non-verbal communication. And then once I started to understand what he was saying more and more i was like oh you're not so great and you lied to me and these things these pieces are not good so i eventually did a certification which is called the facial

Starting point is 00:07:17 action coding system it's called fax and fax is a system developed by paul ekman and wallace freesman and i believe it was the 1970s and they started to get and it's been updated since then. And they took the 10,000 different muscle combinations in human expression, and they started to code this and simplify them in muscle movements, groups of muscle movement, and they call those action units. And so that's what I'm certified in. And most of the people in my field have much more mathematical brains than I do. But because I have spent so much of my life not understanding what people were saying, the expressions made sense to me innately. So I could see these minute changes of these tiny, tiny different changes of muscle movement

Starting point is 00:08:05 in facial expression because I just spent so much time. And so my obsession was and continues to be two pieces. It's who can I not trust at all? Who is dangerous or predatory or unsafe? And who genuinely wants me to be well and healthy and happy. So my best friend who is a clinical psychologist, she always says, you know, you're not a lie detector. You're a truth detector. You're more obsessed with who you can trust than who you can't. The ones you can't trust, nope, that's red flag. Nope, can't trust them. But you're obsessed with the idea of who are these people that are reciprocal and loving and flawed like everybody else, but genuinely want the people around them to thrive and be happy and succeed. Yeah. And you tell that through facial

Starting point is 00:09:00 expressions, which is... I can. Because the facial expressions don't lie. They precede the thought process. And just to go back to the science, Darwin, Charles Darwin was one of the first people to write and categorize all these different facial expressions. And so he traveled from tribe to tribe and noticed that humans, regardless of language, and even if they had very minimal or no contact at all with other tribes, they were making the same facial expressions. And we know now that even people who are born blind make these facial expressions. They are universal to our species. Wow. I didn't realize that, you know, and it was interesting because when I was watching them i had anyone and i have found this to be true like i know a lot of people who are psychic

Starting point is 00:09:41 intuitives and they all started out in adaptive mechanism those of us who have who are highly attuned highly empathetic highly aware of maybe we don't realize we're even noticing the micro expressions, but, but, and you, you operationalized it or joined operationalization. I put the words on it. I put the science on what people are seeing. So to describe it, that people who are hyper aware of their surroundings and hyper vigilant, I think it's less that we have learned. I think it's more that we all, the majority of neurotypical babies have this ability There are humans that don't. We're blessed as a species to have differences in brain wiring. And I think that's a beautiful thing. We're good at different things. I'm dyslexic. I've got lots of flaws, but I'm really, really good at pattern recognition when it comes to human behavior and facial expression. I believe, and the science backs me up on this, that babies are born with this innate ability and that we track facial expressions.

Starting point is 00:10:54 And those of us that grew up in abusive or dangerous situations, my childhood wasn't always dangerous. I was lucky to get a lot of love as well. But those of us who couldn't afford to lose that innate ability, we didn't put it away. Yeah. We didn't lose that ability. And I think you may be heightened that. I mean, I certainly did. Because I think you have to know, like walking into the house, is this or do I need to turn around and get back on my bike and go to the park for a couple of hours?

Starting point is 00:11:24 Correct. And you learn your coping mechanisms, right? If I say something flattering or if I soften my voice or if I accommodate, acquiesce and adjust to this person. The problem is that especially for women, men too, but especially for women, we're so wired to please and nurture. and then it's really hard to let go of those skills that were instrumental for our survival. We know this from your work. You could probably explain it better than I can. Yeah, no, it is. It's true. And I think what we're going to talk about here is, and one of the first things I want to dive into, since this is a show that's primarily about how to love and be loved better, that there are so many of us who have, myself included, I mean, who have found ourselves in relationships with people who they turned out to be, who turned out,

Starting point is 00:12:13 obviously, the classic example that everybody talks about was ending up with a narcissist and not necessarily recognizing it in the beginning. Or you're somebody, and hear from so many people here who, you know, just we repeatedly get into these kind of toxic relationships or cheating relationships. And despite making a plan, I will never date another addict, no matter what I am not going to, I'm not even going to date someone who drinks. That's not going to be an addict. And then you end up being attracted to and attracting in someone who turns out to be gambling or something, you know, something that was, but this is what we see happen as we aren't because we're sort of, you know, therapists call it repetition compulsion,

Starting point is 00:12:59 Exactly. Right. It's familiar and we want to repeat it and we want to solve it. And it feels like family. And that's what our experience of love. But sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So but at the same time, you're wanting to break that cycle. Right. And you're really clear. Like, I don't care. I don't care if it feels familiar. I want some guidance. OK, so I feel like your wisdom would be really, really helpful here in many places. But here to start with how do you know when you're dating, right? Let's say you've gone on a couple of dates and you're just getting to know someone.

Starting point is 00:13:35 How, what are some of the telltale signs that this is someone who isn't gonna take care of my heart, whose dimensions aren't good? Yes, so the first thing that I would say, and I would write it on a giant banner and put it up on the wall is trust your gut. Yeah. Especially we women, we know in our gut

Starting point is 00:13:57 when something's off. and we dismiss it. And we dismiss it often when the words are wonderful. But there's something little prickling in our solar plexus as saying, Oh, this is off, this doesn't feel right. And that's our primitive brain, our paleo mammalian brain or subconscious saying, alert, alert, alert, because we are wired to receive these signals are instrumental for our survival. So if you can't get the facial expressions, I'll teach some of the facial expressions. But if you're unsure, trust your gut and make a note of it. Maybe even say it out loud to yourself when you're by, when you're alone or mention it to a friend, there was something off and here's what

Starting point is 00:14:36 I think it might be. The other thing is, as you know, with narcissists in particular, they do the love bombing. They do, they figure out what words and often I call it parroting. I sort of have my own vocabulary for some of these things and feel free to add the scientific terms because I know in your field that you've, that you've studied all these phenomena. What I look for is the words matching the facial expressions. Okay. I'm, you know, we're in the middle of filming an online course in micro expressions and we're giving a separate course for people who want to learn about love and dating. And so I teach the facial expressions for arousal, how to see if somebody's attracted to you because we're all interested in that. Yeah. But the really important piece that

Starting point is 00:15:22 you're asking about is, does this person care about me? Yeah. Yeah. Right. And even if it's not a narcissist, even if it's a nice person, if I feel myself starting to fall in love with someone or to get really strong feelings for them, I would like to know that they're on the same page to protect my, and certainly there are some people that just want a physical relationship, but that's not what I'm looking for. It's never been what I'm looking for. It's not in my wiring to go for shallow or casual. So if I'm a romantically interested and I want a physical relationship, I damn well want it to be with somebody who cares about my feelings. Right. So the way I test it myself is anytime I show vulnerability and I talk about something

Starting point is 00:16:08 that is emotionally, physically, or financially difficult and painful, I would like that person to care about that. I'm going through something difficult. My loved one is sick. I'm worried about holding on to my job. I'm worried about signing with a particular client. I've been struggling with being sick, COVID, et cetera, et cetera. When we feel someone else's feelings, we pucker our chin. It's crazy that we haven't been taught this. And one of the ways I teach it is to you know go to youtube do a compilations of babies crying and you'll notice that every time before they cry when they're starting to feel vulnerable yeah they pucker their chin we need to get that pattern recognition into our brain so if i for example say

Starting point is 00:17:01 yeah i'm good but i'm you know i've just had a really hard time i haven't been sleeping at all for the last two weeks and i'm going to immediately as i'm talking about my pain i'm going to pucker my chin. And the person across from me should also pucker their chin. We have mirror neurons. So if we're involved, emotionally involved with the other person, we feel their feelings to a certain extent and we mirror their expressions. What if they have a beard? Okay. Great question. All right. Look at this. When I pucker my chin. So my obsession is finding each piece of a physical of the emotion that is only unique to that specific emotion that's why i talk about vulnerability so much because vulnerability is really on the chin you'll

Starting point is 00:17:48 see that i try to explain it and simplify it i'm really good because i've studied eight languages mostly through immersion i'm really good at translating and finding like what's the core of this idea that i can quickly teach so that you and i can communicate and be on the same page so that we take this grape this smooth grape that's our chin it's nice and kind of oval and we turn it into a raisin it gets all okay yeah one of my international clients said that's like cellulite on the chin yes see okay but when we pucker our chin we pull it in and up yeah and that forces the middle of the lower lip to pop up and out it moves this all the time so we're looking at their lip too right yeah so i teach initially

Starting point is 00:18:37 especially when i'm first teaching because i i like the instant gratification of teaching and so i teach the basic that the the easiest to learn the piece that you can go out and use immediately that afternoon and then as my students get more advanced i teach the the rest of the facial expression. And so vulnerability is a piece of sadness. It's a piece of love. It's a piece of empathy and compassion, but there's always this piece of tenderness and understanding and caring. So that is the most important piece. If you're trying to gauge if someone is genuinely interested in your emotional life. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years

Starting point is 00:19:30 ago. As a therapist who understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way, but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources, letting you know how to support others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone. Okay. And how do you know if someone is not telling you the truth? So let's about their

Starting point is 00:20:27 relationship status or about their finances or about who they are. How can you tell? They will leak. They will leak. The facial expressions won't match the words. So if somebody says i'm so sorry that happened to you there's no facial expression or i'm yeah i'm so that happened to you or they're showing joy like in in genuine pleasure our cheeks pop up that's really it has really very little to do with the mouth the mouth is almost this social construct when we smile but when we're genuinely happy with the balls of our cheeks pop up and this skin gets really fat because it's usually flat and it has nowhere to go. Yeah. So if you have larger bags, because you're 90 years old, you'll just get a bigger bag. So we're looking for the change,

Starting point is 00:21:16 but you know, I'm 50 something years old. And so you still see how, when I show you genuine joy, you get these smile bags. Now I should not be showing my smile bags when I'm talking about you having a hard time. You know, I was so sorry to hear that you went to the hospital. right you heard you got fired yeah it's so upsetting so that's a mismatch between the facial expression and the words and so for example if i hear that somebody got a promotion i'm so excited for your promotion yeah i shouldn't be showing micro expressions of disgust and growling at them yeah our whole body knows that's off we can't necessarily put the words to it So if somebody is saying, yeah, I'm really happy about getting divorced.

Starting point is 00:22:07 Well, no, they're not. They're just showing disgust. We're looking for the positive words with the positive facial expression, the negative words with the negative expression. It's kind of going back to kindergarten. Which of these things match? And what you're showing is sort of the snarl next to the nose kind of, right? So the full macro expression you discuss actually shuts off our sense of smell up to about 80%. Oh, that makes sense, Evelyn.

Starting point is 00:22:33 So that's a physiological response to, no, you can't, do not come here. I don't want to, no, no, no, no, no, discomfort, disgust, ill. And we do that facial expression when we experience something as physically toxic, like we don't want to eat something, something's gross or smells bad. And when something's socially toxic or we don't want to do it. And we're trained out of the macroexpressions. These are biological across genders, ages, cultures, languages, geographical areas. They're hardwired into our human species.

Starting point is 00:23:08 The microexpression still leaks as we get older and actually precedes the thought process and is necessary for the emotional processing of an idea. We have to make the facial expression to process that emotion. Well, that's interesting because I was just thinking, you know, my husband, it's like this ongoing joke. If we're ordering food, he'll find, you know, the restaurant online or whatever we're ordering from. And then he hands me his phone and he watches me and he knows. And I try so hard not to show any signs. And he knows. He's like, oh, you don't like it. Like it's become this. He swears I flare my nostrils, but I really try not to. And I'm like, okay, don't flare, don't flare. So the little micros we do anyway, we can't stop ourselves. I can't stop myself from making them.

Starting point is 00:24:00 My nose flares up. The other thing one really can't, it's specifically line detection. So micro depression shows the feeling, not the thought process. And so we do the repetition. We, you know, every time I mention you getting together with Tim and Linda next week, you should discuss. I don't know if it's because next week you're so busy or it's because you have family coming to stay and you just don't have space for Tim and Linda to come over and have dinner or if it's Tim and Linda that you don't like or just Linda or just Tim. So we repeat the

Starting point is 00:24:35 experiment. It's a poking. If every time I mentioned Linda, you do this, there's a problem. There's something more going on. Shows the feeling, but context is everything. I'm not a thought breaker. I can just tell exactly what you're feeling at every moment. Now with lie detection, there's a couple of pieces that I add and I like to talk about nodding and shaking your head. Now that is cultural. It is not universal to our species. There are certainly some cultures where there's a variety of different head movements and they mean different things and nodding is not always yes and shaking your head is not always no. But in Western society and Western Europe and the, in the United States and most of North America, this is yes. And this is

Starting point is 00:25:20 no. And we're so trained as children that this is yes. And this is no. So we see with a lot of our politicians, when they lie, they'll say, no, I didn't do that. I wasn't with that woman. I did not have relations with that woman. I am totally loyal to my wife as they're shaking. I'm absolutely on board with this yeah yeah so the facial expressions don't match what they're saying now what if you are because there are a lot of really brilliant people who aren't bad people but are just kind of on the spectrum and so they don't really read social cues they're not really attuned to social cues they're thinking about other things yeah so what are you how do you know if someone is like a sociopath narcissist or maybe just someone who is kind, but on the spectrum.

Starting point is 00:26:16 Yeah. Okay. So there is a complete misconception in the world that people who are on the spectrum have, don't have empathy. And that's crazy. I have a lot of loved ones in my life that are on the spectrum that have empathy in, in leaps and bounds. They have a lot of empathy, Too much empathy, but they're shut. Right. Sort of like a shut. Overwhelming. Yeah. And some of them have limited field of mind or what I like to sometimes paraphrase as situational empathy. They sometimes need. I have a lot of people in my life, both clients and students and and personal relationships where I sometimes translate context and say, OK, this is how I'm feeling or this is how I envision this other person feeling. And we talk about that and what that can feel like. My students who have been on the spectrum have been my best students. So my very best students that I've ever had are either on the spectrum or mathematicians or books. And to be fair, I know that there's a huge range of differences in people that are on the spectrum, but the people that I have been working with over

Starting point is 00:27:27 the course of my career have in particular been very, very good at pattern recognition. And so they would tend to be better at the pattern recognition than their neurotypical peers or their neurotypical family members. So for example, if I'm working with a 13-year-old boy, I don't take individual clients anymore. I just don't have the bandwidth, but I had a client who was 13 years old, his parents were neurotypical and he was on the spectrum. And when, when we finished our training, we, you know, we'd start with still pictures on work our way up to the videos so that you could see really the like minute micro expressions and he would get them all right. And his parents, we'd sometimes let his parents go first and this is what this person

Starting point is 00:28:13 is feeling. And he'd say, no. And I had trained parents as well. And the parents would, the neurotypical parents would be stuck in what the person, what they feel the person should be feeling. Whereas the person that my student with autism would say, no, this is what the facial expression says. Clear as day, this is what they are feeling, not what they're supposed to be. He was much better at rec, which makes- Much better. And this is a pattern that I've recognized across the autistic students that I have had the pleasure of teaching. And is there any difference in the reverse in their microbes? And I'm just curious,

Starting point is 00:28:50 is there a difference? So most humans, for example, will tighten their mouths, tighten their lips when they get angry, for example. So we humans, when we're scared, our hands get cold because the blood rushes down to our legs and our feet. When we're angry, sometimes our fists curl up and we're getting ready to fight. When we're nervous, we humans sweat in our armpits on the palms of our hands on our brows when we're sad or sometimes overwhelmed we cry yeah when we human beings are aroused the blood pools in the middle of our bodies right there is a specific change in blood flow and muscle movement that's different for each emotion on our faces and in our bodies so human beings men who are get erections when they're

Starting point is 00:29:37 aroused. They don't cry when they get, when they get aroused, they don't, they don't prepare to fight when they get aroused. You know, I do lots about my pay grade. That's a different issue. But in, when the human beings are aroused or excited, really excited about something, our pupils dilate. There's a facial expression that corresponds and specific and different for each facial expression. Each facial expression is different for each emotion. And so we're just hardwired into us. It does universal directions. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:08 So it's just a physiologic thing. It's not a physiological thing. Yes. So the Museum of Science in Boston has been one of my clients. I've helped them with a little bit of their research. I've done workshops and that kind of thing for them. It's science. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:23 So let's talk about when someone's aroused, like when their pupils dilate, you know someone's attracted to you. Yeah. So I talk about over and then under the X. those are the three main pieces so what happens when we get really flirty is we lower our eyelids we half mask our eyelids yeah our pupils dilate and swell and we tend to raise our cheeks and show a little bit of our smile bags so those are you know particularly women but men too we often will tilt our head and show our necks when we're willing to be vulnerable and it's a

Starting point is 00:30:58 very different feeling from, you know, any kind of like protest or defiance or getting ready to fight, which every once in a while, it's just the sort of lean back. It's a little bit of a surrender and I'm showing you all the vulnerable pieces and even dogs, they won't show you their neck unless they feel really safe with you. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I used to study body language in graduate school and I had this professor and he would love to take us to bars and we would sit off to the side and analyze all the not learning behavior used to watch for the mirroring too and i i went to school i went to the university in sweden and we used to go to bars i was in the i have a master's in anthropology and so we used to go to bars and watch and when people

Starting point is 00:31:47 would start mirroring each other the body language we could very with very high success predict that they were going to leave the bar together even if they didn't know each other when they walked in yeah yeah and the other one which I sometimes will tell people to do now and they're like how do I let someone know I'm interested I say that I say mirror their body language touch them lean in and then this is what you reminded me of and stroke your neck a little bit that's right and I teach body language which I don't do too much because of course body language for for those of us who are multilingual, multicultural, we can almost always find exceptions because body language can differ from person to person. But I love Joe Navarro. He's my

Starting point is 00:32:33 absolute favorite. He is, I believe he's former FBI, maybe CIA, but he categorizes it in the same way and talks about it the same way you just did, that we humans, we touch our skin when we feel vulnerable. So there's a difference between grooming ourselves and showcasing and self-soothing. So self-soothing is more frantic and more, I'm just going to touch my skin anywhere. And from person to person, it varies. I may be rubbing the inside of my wrist. I may be pushing down one sock with the other foot to try to get my ankles to rub together. I may rub the back of my neck, pull on my necklace, pull on my hair to stimulate my scalp. Touching the skin is calming myself down. But when we slow it down and we do the showcasing, it's like, Hey, I have hair. Hey,

Starting point is 00:33:25 I have lips. Yeah. My sassy neck. Yeah. It's like, look at all the pieces I've got that I'm willing to share. All right. So you're looking for facial expressions, matching what they're saying. You're looking for signs of compassion and empathy. And so when someone is lying to you, so let's say you are suspicious of something, or I actually, for years with my kids, they eventually just stopped lying to me because I figured out kinesiology, you know, the muscle testing. And I would do this thing with them where I would have them put their arm out and say, I didn't break the vase, you know, or I, I didn't knock over the vase or I did knock over whatever it was. And I'd tell whether they were lying and they got, I've never, I've never even heard of that. That's really

Starting point is 00:34:18 you would love kinesiology. It is insane. Cause the body goes weak when it's not telling the truth. Well, you know, we experienced cognitive overload. Our body betrays us when we're trying to lie. Our body's like, no, that's not what happened. It's just the lies are stored in a different area of the brain. And then we just, you know, for most of us, we're like, what even up and it leaks. Yeah. So my youngest still to this day, I can tell when he's lying just by the twitch in the corner of his mouth and he gets so mad, but the other ones were so good at it that I couldn't tell. But once I started using the muscle testing, then all I'd say is like, okay, put out your arm and they'd be like, okay, you're right. Well, my problem is of course that I,

Starting point is 00:35:06 I taught my kids, you know, initially through mirroring facial expressions. So even when they were babies, I did that type of, you know, how you stick out your tongue and it's so much fun. And you're like, if you do that with a little baby, they'll stick out their tongue. Well, I did the whole like facial expressions and put words to it. They never lost their innate ability to read these expressions. And I've always, as long as they've been talking, had words for it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:31 It would seem like a great idea until they got a little bit older and they started catching me. You know, when I got divorced, I mentioned that I was going to go see somebody for dinner. And it was supposed to be like a businessy, networky thing. And my son just took one look at me and showed a little bit of disgust. He was like, you like him. Your pupil's dilated. He turns it on you. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:57 Or my son, one of my favorite examples is when he asked if he could go out and I said, maybe, and he goes, thanks, mom. I said, maybe. Yeah, but when you say maybe and you nod, you always end up saying yes. But when you say maybe and you shake your head, you're always going to say no. It always turns out that way. Just give it up, mom. I even found out.

Starting point is 00:36:17 Give it up. But it does. I think it is really powerful to add because so many of us feel, and I hear from these guys all the time about struggling to break, break those patterns I was talking about, or really wanting to believe in love, but it hurts so much and feeling like, I mean, to me, the hardest, one of the hardest things about recovering from betrayal in a healthy way, whether it was infidelity or abandonment or whatever is, you know, what I call learning to trust your sniffer again, like learning to trust your inner compass that you will be able to sniff out someone who's

Starting point is 00:36:59 not going to do right by you. And so that's the thing that I think is so beautiful for my audience of what you're teaching is that a lot of these micro expressions guys are your kind of insurance policy to confirm what your gut may or may not be telling you. And by the way, if you've had a lot of trauma that you haven't resolved, chances are you're not even in touch with your gut a lot of the time, right? It's so hard. And so my real, I spent my, my entire career as a strategic advisor. So across, mostly across Europe and Asia, working with CEOs, managing directors and boards, And working in high stakes negotiations, doing business strategy, change management, marketing, all the different pieces that a strategic advisor would do from everything from like

Starting point is 00:37:54 a fortune 500, a big, big, successful global company to family offices and startups. And so I've spent the bulk of my professional life helping powerful men become more powerful. Yeah. And you're saying that your facial expression. are showing some micro expressions. Okay. Well, so some of these men have been brilliant and wonderful. I would say that the majority of them have been pretty selfish. I see. So like you were empowering people. So, you know, I turned 40 and decided I really, you know, after, after almost 40, after I turned 40, after almost 25 years abroad, I really got to the point where I was

Starting point is 00:38:42 homesick. I wanted to go back to my people. I wanted to go back to my friends. I wanted to see certain family members again, um, on a regular basis. And I just got homesick. I wanted to go home. And one of the things that, that happened was I couldn't keep my micro expressions ability secret anymore because I couldn't get work as a strategic advisor. So I started telling people that I actually knew how to code. I kept it secret. My obsession was teaching my kids to stay safe. Oh, wow. So you hadn't been teaching, you'd been doing strategy. I've been doing strategy. I was doing, yeah, strategy work, strategic advisory, executive coaching for really powerful people, mostly men for the duration. Not teaching them the micro expressions

Starting point is 00:39:24 and all of that. You were doing other kinds of strategy, but, but secretly using this to decide what to charge them or whether they were going to be a good client. Going into a boardroom and saying okay so this guy's totally aligned with you um this person is not following what you're saying but deeply loyal so take it for what it is these two are sleeping together you know and so you know I got this reputation of being able to read a room faster than anybody could figure out how I could do it but nobody really cared I mean in Asia and I spent almost a decade where they didn't care how I did things yeah people were very comfortable with working on with the with what they were good at and they were very good a lot of businesses are family offices

Starting point is 00:40:13 and they're really focused on building these teams with people really good at different things and then I got to the U.S. I started talking about microexpressions because I couldn't get anybody I had no network yeah and you know my network was like you know 20 to 30 hours away by plane And Zoom wasn't really a thing in 2012 that we were using on a regular basis, at least. And so I had to really start over. And I started telling people about, well, I also do microexpressions. And I knew I could teach it because I taught my kids. So people started saying, well, that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:40:48 I don't want you to go in and code my meetings or my high stakes negotiations or participate with that. I want you to actually teach me. I mean, that's been such an interesting thing with sort of the American psyche that people were like, no, no, you not you do you. You teach me. Yeah. I want to do that. Yeah. And so I really got to a place in my life where I realized I was mortal and that I have a certain number of years left in life. and what do I want to do? And I went to an all-girls summer camp growing up that really just saved me in so many ways. I mean, one of the girls I went to summer camp with is a clinical psychologist and my middle child is named after her. And so this was my tribe,

Starting point is 00:41:35 my people, the people that kind of loved me through thick and thin and that I'd lost contact with. And it was an all-women's camp, all-girls camp. And so I would say part of my obsession, my mission, and my calling right now is to teach, in particular, young women to put the words on their gut so that when you have that experience of like, I think this guy is, he's saying all the right things, but oh, there it is. There's the disgust when he's saying, if you work for me, I'm going to work and help you get promoted and fast track you. And you're like, no, you're not. and not only am I feeling that he's, I don't believe him, but I see it clear as day. I see the science. Every time he talks about something that's for my benefit, he growls. Is that what

Starting point is 00:42:19 normally happens when, when someone's like a predator, are they going to feel contempt or do they are disgust? What is the reality? So this is disgust. It's always so fascinating to me, the minds of predators, you know, I'm not talking about like serial killer predators, that's a whole different game. But, you know, people who like consistently use women or abuse them or. The two things I would look for, I would look for that love bombing, which, you know, you're very familiar with, right? If it's almost, the words are almost too good to be true that I would say, the other thing that I've noticed in my own life with the narcissists, with their love bombing is they become obsessed with whatever I'm obsessed with. Yeah, they always do. But maybe I

Starting point is 00:43:07 didn't recognize it when they first started talking. There was nothing in an initial conversation that I would necessarily think they were interested in the same things. But as soon as I start talking about something, oh, lo and behold, that's their obsession too. Yeah. And are they secretly feeling contempt for you? And that's why they're making like they're. Yes, they know they're lying. Yeah, their bodies are leaking their bodies are betraying them it's kind of like somebody saying um i'm not nervous and there's just got like these pools of sweat and like you see that disconnect or if you see a four-year-old in front of you and they're crying and there's tears running down their face as a grown-up you're like yeah dude you are i'm thinking

Starting point is 00:43:52 in my head yeah you're really sad so that's how clearly i see the micro expressions and they're saying like i love skiing no you don't yeah or i really am touched by your story but their chin isn't puckered right and they're and the real problem again is when they're showing that the disgust or that yeah or if they're sorry if they're if they're raising their cheeks every time you get hurt so they're showing some arousal and pleasure in your pain that's a huge red flag run. Yeah. Run. Cause that's probably a little masochistic. I mean, not masochistic. Yeah. And can you see my eyebrows are tending? Cause that makes me sad. Yeah. Wow. So it's so fascinating. We could keep going forever. You guys, the book, hold up the book. The book is called

Starting point is 00:44:45 facial expressions and love, lust, and lies. She has a whole facial mapping system. You can see all the little micro expressions and many nostril flares and chin wobbles and eyebrow things to look for. Did my facial expressions, I wasn't even thinking about it. Did my facial expressions match what I was saying? Yes, you did. You show a lot of empathy. I do. I wasn't even thinking about that. I was so focused on what I have to say and not just your own dialogue. All right, good. Well, I'm glad I match. Thank you so much for being here and for all you're contributing to the world. And I love, love, love the idea of, I mean, teaching everyone this, but certainly teaching young women and empowering them with that kind of added protection

Starting point is 00:45:49 because we need it. I mean, we all need it. We sure do. Well, thank you so much. And thank you for everything that you're doing to support people and for all the vulnerability you show with your own life and your own experience. It really means a lot and it makes it easier for other people, you know, for the rest of us to open up and be vulnerable too. Thank you. One day I will charge you for breaking my heart You're just like my sport car, driving fast, you go far When I'm sitting by you, we get high

Starting point is 00:46:52 This song is about you, and my lips are...

Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Diary of a Human Lie Detector with Annie Särnblad

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