Body Language of Compressed Lips or Stiff Upper Lip
Cue: Compressed Lips
Synonym(s): Tight Lips, Lip Compression, Disappearing Lips, Stiff Upper Lip, Inward Lip Roll, Lip Pursing, Lip Puckering, Pursed Lips, Puckering, Prune Lips.
Description: Done by pressing the lips together to the point where they begin to disappear.
In One Sentence: Lip compression is a negative thought indicator.
How To Use it: Compress the lips when you want others to know that you disapprove of them or their ideas but do not wish to speak out and say so verbally. Compressing the lips also shows others that you are anxious or stressed. By demonstrating this “honest cue” one can show others that you wish for them to change their tactic to better suit your stance.
Context: General
Verbal Translation: “I’m having a hard time with this and so I’m going to suck my lip in and consume it while I deal with negative thought or while I am in deep concentration.” “I’m biting back my words.” “I’m holding something back with my mouth by pressing my lips together so no negative thoughts escape which may get me into trouble.”
Variant: The jaw is often tensed coupled with compressed lips showing additional negative thoughts. Note that Compressed Lips (lips flattened) is related, but not the same as a Lip Pucker (lips pushed out).
Cue In Action: a) She really wanted to speak out about the eighteen year old would-be-wife but she maintained a stiff upper lip and kept quiet. b) He was really contemplating a thought, and wanted to speak-up, you could tell from his compressed lips, but instead he kept steady and quiet. c) She rarely held full, relaxed lips, she carried many negative thoughts around with her throughout the day.
Meaning and/or Motivation: A universal trait done to signify stress, anxiety, anger, frustration and an overall negative thought indicator. The lips are tightened to contain and stifle emotion or signal deep concentration and internal turmoil. It is opposite to full expressive lips that show contentment. The subconscious mind is essentially telling the body to close down and not let anything out – to bottle it up and withhold information or feelings.
Tight compressed lips happen honestly and immediately so reflect true stress sentiments revealing a troubled mind.
Alternatively, a tight lip indicates thought process when someone is indecisive. This can be particularly useful in business. Picture someone reading a document or contract aloud. Lip pursing will happen in real time as judgment arises. Other times, lip pursing is done to show outright disagreement. Usually the eyebrows will frown in unison with pursed lips. Lip pursing is a very reliable indicator of different thought processing, and it would be foolish to ignore it. Watch the lips for these quick flashes will tell you a lot about what is going on inside someone’s head. Tight lips can also form due to sexual arousal and sexual tension, but this comes across more as pursing with accompanying sexual clues.
Cue Cluster: Compressed lips are accompanied by other restraint postures such as hand to the back of the neck, hand clenching, eye contact avoidance, head turned away and ventral denial and jaw clenching.
Body Language Category: Anger, Clenching and gripping, Closed body language, Closed facial gestures, Emotional body language, Honest body language, Frustration or frustrated body language, Leaked or involuntary body language, Masked body language, Negative body language.
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