Smiling as a Form of Defense?
Smiling as a Form of Defense?

Photo by Nicholas Kusuma on Unsplash

There are times where we have no desire to smile and yet our brain will force us to smile. Where you are just having a terrible day or got unfortunate news but if you are out and about around others, you try your hardest to hide the feelings inside with a smile outside.

You might even put up an even bigger smile where you’re on the verge of tears.

When we smile, our brain produces this neurotransmitter called dopamine. Even if the smile is forced and doesn’t match our true mood or emotions at the time, you still feel as if everything is ok for a little bit.

By merely forcing your facial muscles to create a smile it fools your mind and this dopamine release will allow us to temporarily get a slight feeling of “happiness” and will help reduce the stress inside us — balancing out our flight-flight response.

You might or may have not realized how your brain tries to protect us when we are feeling down, but it does and it’s fascinating that even with a smile it will try to mitigate some stress.

I like to pay attention to people's smiles to see if I can figure this out and recognize when they are hiding sad emotions from the world. A trick I use is by paying attention to their eyes and mouth when they smile because when people have a true smile, the edges of their eyes and mouth will form a genuine wrinkle. I notice their eyes close (not entirely) but enough that it causes these wrinkles and their mouth will develop a slightly wider smile.

I don’t call them out on it, I just simply witness.

Where am I going with this?

Honestly, nowhere but just to lay it out.

Not everything has to be a 10 step process on “How-to…” or a 1500–2000 word long story with a beginning, middle, and an end. Sometimes it’s good to just share some insightful yet brief notes just like this one.
['Samantha Drobac']
['Growth Mindset', 'Psychoanalysis', 'Self Improvement', 'Personal Development', 'Psychology']