Do you calm yourself down?

A pacifying behaviour or a self-soothing behaviour is when you caress yourself to comfort yourself. When someone is under stress, the only way is to comfort oneself is to use a self soothing gesture. People also use this gesture when a negative emotion runs through their mind or they get bored or even to hide something . Everyone does it unknowingly.
One thing to mention here, it is touching oneself in a complete "Non-Sexual" way and yes, it is to be repeated, everyone does it. We'll see some examples as to notice how do we do it? There are more than 25 gestures that come under pacifying behaviour but we will cover only 5 here, that too only face.

1.  Rubbing the Forehead

This is a self soothing or pacifying gesture, which is used usually to save oneself from embarrassment. You will see this gesture, when someone is feeling shameful about the "mentioned" topic. This was when Aamir Khan was asked by Rajat Sharma, in Aap ki Adalat, about his blog, where Aamir had written about his dog "Shahrukh",. 

2. Lip Movement

This one is seen, when someone is associated with a thought mostly negative. At stress, we want something to comfort us, and if we are not in a position to self-soothe, this is how we use it. As you can see, in the picture, she is asked by the host , if she thinks she has the talent to be successful in movies, in Sach ka Saamna. 

3. Scratching Face

Scratching face is a common gesture when a person wants to dodge a question or pretends that he/she is thinking over the question,which in reality, it has raised the stress level. This happened when Aamir and Katrina went for the promotions of Dhoom 3 and somebody asked Aamir, if he wants Salman to be married and the same question was shifted to Katrina.

4. Nose rubbing

 This is the most common gesture used, specially by males, when they are trying to hide something or are at stress. This gesture doesn't mean someone is lying, but it definitely means, being uncomfortable. When the reporter asked Virat in an interview, if he has a girlfriend, Virat says he is single and then he uses this gesture.

5. Cover the face/ Wipe the face

When someone wipes the face with one's hand with no intention of wiping the sweat, the gesture means the person is getting bored. This gesture is just one of the gestures to make one self ready to go. We see Abhishek doing this, because he is at some Gym launch with his mother, Jaya Bachchan and the journalists are talking to Jaya, not him. He gets bored and now wants to go. 

These were just for starters to make you understand, how we use pacifiers. It's not necessary we use it when we are lying. It may be one of the reasons, but there are several others. The other important thing to pay attention is the base-lining. You need to baseline the person and his/her normal behaviour when he/she is under no stress or during a normal condition. 

So next time , you notice someone self -soothing, ask them Is something wrong?

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