“I Said No:” Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

Part II, Chapter 8

I put out an album! It’s the soundtrack to my musical, Squirm: A True Story, which I’ll be performing in June at Hollywood Fringe.

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Part II: It’s All the Same Thing

I said you have to choose / to be good at one thing / but you can write the story / and uncover it slowly / I was wrong / I gave you bad advice

—from my song, I Was Wrong on my EP Costumes

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Chapter 8: “I Said No:” Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

Saturday May 22, 2021, 7:31am

I had an amazing guitar lesson yesterday. Amelie told me that she could produce an album for me. It took me a while to process what that meant. I had so much fun, I was beaming. I love writing music! Later at the motel I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “You’re a musician, Mia” and started cracking up. I’m the musician I always wanted to date. lol.

Tuesday May 25, 2021, 9:10am

My class on nonverbals last night was amazing. So good. I was so in my element, I was in flow. Everyone was so open…I changed 20 people’s lives in 90 mins. It’s such an amazing feeling.

Tuesday June 1, 2021, 8:12am

Sunday I wrote an entire new song. It’s called “I Said No.” The music comes from Jessie’s Girl (my high school anthem) and it’s about all the nonverbal ways to say no, plus some lines from the letters about [the guy from chapter 2]. “I gave him so much credit for the adult I’ve become/It was all in me already so I guess it was in you.” It’s stuck in my head.

Most of communication is nonverbal. Whether you agree with the 55/38/7 rule from the Mehrabian & Wiener, 1967 and Mehrabian & Ferris, 1967 study¹ (which says only 7% of our communication is the words we say) or not , every scientific study I’ve found still says that most communication is occurring nonverbally. For my neurodivergent readers (I’m one of you), before you say you can’t read nonverbal information, remember that you know what a nod is versus a head shake, you know what a shrug likely means, you can communicate with dogs and babies without words, you smile, laugh, breathe, scrunch up your face in focus or frustration. And whether or not reading nonverbal information comes naturally, this kind of communication is largely learnable. Since we’ve defined consent as an ongoing process that requires us to listen with our whole body beyond just words and being willing to adapt to new information, nonverbal communication cannot be ignored. It’s a huge portion of that information.

Neurodivergence includes but is not limited to autism. It encompasses depression, anxiety, PTSD, cPTSD, OCD, ADHD, and many others. Neurodivergence, as well as prior experience, exposure, socialization, cultural differences, the media, and more affect every one of us and how we communicate. It's important to communicate about how you communicate and check in with others when you're interpreting not just their nonverbal cues, but their words as well.

Photo by Summer Wagner

Let’s go over some terms.

1. Body language: how a person moves, sits, stands, gesticulates, holds or carries themselves. These all point to some indicator of their emotional state. Some are obvious, some are not. (Ex. We mostly all know what shrugging, nodding, or shaking our heads mean. Crossed arms might convey that someone is closed off, but it might be because they’re cold.)

2. Facial expression: again, some are obvious, some are not. We have muscles in our faces that are dedicated to expressing emotions. Most facial expressions convey “compound” emotions, meaning their not one isolated emotion at a time. You can think of those posters of smiley faces at the doctor’s office that show happy, sad, surprised, angry and so on as single emotions, while most feelings contain several.

3. Gaze: Eye movement is significant, and you can begin to notice for yourself where you look when you’re feeling different emotions. Any shift in gaze means something. It doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing for every person. Eye contact means different things to different people, different across cultures, and different with neurodivergence. (Ex. It might mean I’m distracted when I break eye contact but for someone else it might mean they don’t want to keep talking.)

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