Body Language of Hand Wringing
Cue: Hand Wringing
Synonym(s): Wringing The Hands.
Description: The hands are clasp one inside the other and tightly clamped and twisted on each other. The hands may also be tightly cupped and squeezed one inside the other or interlaced and squeezed. It can be done so aggressively that the fingers or knuckles turn white.
In One Sentence: Wringing the hands is a sign that a person is experiencing anxiety, stress or suffering from low confidence.
How To Use it: Wringing the hands is not useful and one should avoid it when possible. While it can provide a tactile release for underlying stress, it is best to do something proactive to actually resolve the issue rather than suppress it.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “I’m so agitated and stressed that I’m inflicting pain on myself as I would like to do to someone else, or due to stress of the situation at large. Since I’ve lost control of the situation and others, the best I can do is control the pain I do onto myself.”
Variant: This cue is similar to self pinching, pulling or even plucking the hair, or pinching one’s self as they are all forms of inflicting pain on the self. This is especially common when external pain can not be controlled.
Cue In Action: She wrung her hands as she waited for the doctor to report back with news about the surgery.
Meaning and/or Motivation: It signifies high anxiety, stress, or low confidence, and is a pacifying behaviour.
The hands are clenched because of the internal turmoil that a person feels that they cannot resolve through external factors. Pain that is inflicted on the self is pain that is controlled by the self. Therefore, self-pain is pain that is used to regain some agency over a person’s outcome – even if it is entirely unproductive.
Clenching is also a replacement for pain that someone might wish to inflict on other people whom they feel are causing their problems, and if not caused by people directly, than to the context in general.
Cue Cluster: Hand wringing is usually accompanied by gritting the teeth or jaw clenching, scratching and plucking behaviours, licking the teeth to sooth, lip biting or cheek chewing, eye squinting, snarling, amongst others.
Body Language Category: Aggressive body language, Anger, Clenching and gripping, Closed body language, Dislike (nonverbal), Emotional body language, Energy Displacement, Frustration or frustrated body language, Hostile body language, Low confidence hand displays, Nervous body language, Stressful body language, Worry body language.
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