Body Language of Frozen Hands or Frozen Feet Called Flash Frozen
Cue: Frozen Hands or Frozen Feet
Synonym(s): Freeze, Flight or Fight Response, Hide In Plain Sight, Flash Frozen.
Description: Whenever the hands or feet suddenly cease moving.
In One Sentence: Hands that suddenly freeze indicate negative thoughts due to a fear response.
How To Use it: As frozen hands is a negative thought indicator you can use the signal to show that you are in distress by suddenly locking up. However, as this cue is subtle and requires a person to be conscious of your baseline amount of hand of foot movement, it is usually out of the normal awareness of most people. Thus, the cue is not something that is wildly applicable in signaling ‘honest’ emotions. That being said, if you find that you suddenly freeze and are unsure why, you can remind yourself that it’s likely that you are experiencing a fear response.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “I’m nervous, stressed, fearful or thinking of negative thoughts which is causing me to stop moving and hide in plain-sight.”
Variant: Ankle-Ankle Cross or Scissor Cross.
Cue In Action: a) Bill’s normal baseline was jittery, always kicking and bumping his feet and legs, but when the topic of his adultery came to subject, he stopped kicking and sat with his hands under his thighs, all but freezing stiff. b) Normally quite fluid with his gesticulation, his hands were placed in his pockets when discussing rocket science. Seems he was not such a know-it-all when rockets were involved. c) The negotiation was going well, that was until he found out that the assets he most coveted would not be included. He wrapped his legs around the chair and bit his lip. d) She suddenly locked her feet around the legs of the chair indicating discomfort and anxiety.
Meaning and/or Motivation: A nonverbal cue that usually involves a visceral response from the fright or flight system. This fear causes a person to freeze, either in whole, in extreme cases, or more minutely such as arm or leg freezes. The subconscious mind is telling a person to try to hide in plain sight by not moving. Breath rate can be reduced, eyes may cease looking about the room, and the body may take up a less expansive profile.
The fight or flight response is a bit a misnomer. It’s not actually how humans or other animals respond to stress and danger. Lazy by nature and especially cautious of injury, we have evolved the proclivity to handle situations in more appropriate ways. Most animals, humans included, will naturally sequence freeze, flight and fight in that order. Freezing is important to assess the situation, for how does one know what they are running from, and in what direction, if they don’t first identify the object of their fear?
Sudden cessation of gesticulation can indicate a freeze response due to being caught in a lie especially when the context warrants it. This is part of the flight or fight response as liars are trying to seem less noticeable. Movement attracts attention.
When hands or feet are usually busy according to a baseline, suddenly begin to slow, or become less expressive, it can signal a lack of enthusiasm or confidence for the topic, discomfort, fear, anxiety, or nervousness. While seated, the legs can also be locked behind the legs of a chair with essentially the same message being delivered except in this case it is a restraining-freeze-behaviour. When the legs are wrapped around the chair they can’t move, hence they are locked, and are also there precisely so they don’t move, and are hence frozen.
The ankle or scissor cross also shows reservation and self-restraint, due to withholding of a thought or emotion. When the ankles cross it is due to a subconscious freeze response due to a threat and the legs are entwined so as to restrict and restraint movement.
On the flip side, if feet suddenly freeze from a jitter, it indicates an emotional change has occurred and that a person is experiencing threat. Freezing, in this way, can happen as a result of being confronted with an embarrassing question or situation, or being the subject of a childhood tale that one is not particularly fond about.
Cue Cluster: Couple interlocked legs, which is a freeze response meant to reduce foot movement, with pacifying behaviours such as rubbing the thighs palm down, as if to dry them, and you’ve got a cluster signaling that a secret is being covered. If the feet are pulled under the chair, the message is even more exaggerated. The feet are saying exactly what the person is thinking, that he or she is closed and withdrawn from the conversation.
Body Language Category: Defensive, Disengagement, Dislike (nonverbal), Inborn behaviours, Lying or deceptive body language, Nervous body language.
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