Shielding

In my last article I wrote about a very specific reaction that occurs when a person is surprised or afraid. In this article I will give general knowledge about some other common physical reactions to fear aside from jumping or running away that is.

So to start with we will look at how children react when afraid, because a lot of body language we pose today, we learned and had used when we were kids. A lot of children’s reactions to fear break down into a simple general gesture known as shielding.

It is called shielding quite simply because a person will use their hands or arms to block access to some part of the body. Children tend to do this quite often, whether it is shielding their eyes to avoid seeing something particularly scary or disgusting, shielding their ears in an attempt to avoid hearing things that they find unpleasant or just shield themselves entirely with a blanket because they are afraid of thunder, shielding comes from the subconscious need for protection from something.

Adults tend to shield themselves as well, but their general shielding reaction may be less obvious than it was during their childhood. Adults when in fear will most likely attempt to protect vital spots of their bodies. These vital spots often include the throat, the inner thigh, the groin and the chest just to name a few. They do that, as said before, using their arms. After all if you had the choice between losing an arm or losing your head, I believe most would tend to lean towards the loss of an arm.

Usually a reaction tends to either join the shielding reaction or follow up afterwards. A person may shield and run away or they could shield then punch the threat in the face. As with most anything in body language, it is based off of context.

I hope you enjoyed the article and I also hope you return to view more. Have a great day and goodbye.