Body Language and Confidence: The One Habit That's Quietly Undermining How You're Perceived

There is a gesture your body makes when you're stressed or overwhelmed and you're probably doing it without knowing it. And it's telling everyone in the room that you're not as confident as you want to appear.

In this episode, Sandy breaks down what the neck-touch gesture actually means, why your nervous system gives you away before you've said a word, and what FBI counterintelligence agent Joe Navarro says you should do the moment you catch yourself doing it.

You'll also hear about Andrea, a woman in a meeting Sandy noticed mid-session and the one question Sandy asked that brought her straight back into the room. No intervention. Just the right question at the right moment. That's emotional intelligence in real time.

Plus: why catching this signal in yourself is the skill that actually changes how you communicate and how to use it to show up with more confidence and a lot more presence.

Your body is already in the conversation. This episode helps you understand what it's saying.

Transcript

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There's a gesture that your body makes when you're stressed, overwhelmed, or having some seriously negative thoughts. And you're probably doing it now without even knowing it. In meetings, in conversations, maybe even on stage. And it's quietly signaling to everyone in the room that you're not as confident as you want to appear. In the next 10 minutes, I'm going to show you exactly what it looks like, what it means, and how an FBI agent uses it to catch people in interviews, and what to do the moment you catch yourself doing it too. Stay with me. Welcome to the Magnetic Communication Podcast, where we make emotional intelligence simple, real, and usable. I'm Sandy Gerber, speaker, author, and certified communication and emotional intelligence trainer. I'm here to give you quick tools you can use right now to talk better, lead stronger, and connect deeper. Let's go. Welcome back to the Magnetic Communication Podcast. I'm Sandy Gerber, your host. And before we dive in, I want to give you a huge thank you to everyone who voted for us in the Women's Podcasters Awards. I was just notified that I'm a finalist. So that's super exciting. And you know, your support means everything. And I don't take it lightly because we're building something really special here together. Now, today I want to tell you about a moment in a meeting that I was in not that long ago that reminded me why body language and confidence are the same conversation. I was mid-session and I noticed a woman across the table, let's call her Andrea, with her hand tucked under her chin, and it was pressed gently against the front of her neck and just sitting there. She wasn't scratching, not fidgeting, just holding it there. Now that gesture can mean one of two things. She was either feeling insecure about something being said, or she was having some pretty negative thoughts about what was being said. And neither one is great when you're trying to move a room forward, and I know exactly what I was looking at. So I paused, and instead of naming what I saw, I turned to her and I said, How about you, Andrea? You've been in many of these meetings. You know this better than anyone. What's your take on this situation? And she sat up, the hand came down, and she gave the most grounded, clear-eyed answer of the whole session. I didn't rescue her, I didn't call her out. I made her the expert in the room, which she was. And that gave her a way back in. And that's what reading the room actually looks like, especially as a leader. It's not a, you know, dramatic intervention or anything. It's just reading the room, and it's just a well-timed question that tells someone, I see you and I think you have something worth saying. I used to think that I was a very good poker face person. You know, I'd convinced myself of this for years, but I'm Canadian and we're trained from birth to seem fine. So it turns out I was wrong. Your body is constantly broadcasting how you're feeling. Stress, discomfort, uncertainty, that specific feeling when someone asks you a question, you don't know how to answer, it's all going somewhere. Your jaw, your shoulders, your hands, and very often your neck. The neck is one of the most nerve-rich areas on the body. So when you feel something you can't quite process, like stress, anxiety, social pressure, a comment that might have landed sideways, your brain sends your hand there automatically. No decision made, no awareness required. The hand just goes. What's happening physiologically is that touching the neck stimulates the vagus nerve. It slows your heart rate. It lowers your blood pressure. Your body is literally trying to self-medicate in real time. Now, Joe Navarro, who I just love reading his stuff, he spent 25 years as an FBI counterintelligence agent reading people for a living. Like, how fascinating is that? He calls neck touching one of the most reliable signals of discomfort that you can observe. I'm gonna say that again. Neck touching is one of the most reliable signals of discomfort that you can see. So he once described an interview where a woman answered every single question calmly, right up until he asked her if her son was in the house, and her hand went straight to her neck dimple before she even finished saying no. That hand told him everything. The body doesn't lie, even when the words do. So the type of neck touching that Andrea was doing was her hand under the chin pressed against the front of the neck. It's what body language experts call cupping the neck, and it shows up when someone's feeling stressed or overwhelmed and needs to physically settle themselves down. So that's one of them. One that women more often touch is the supras sternal notch. I had no idea what that was, I had to look it up. But it's the little hollow at the base of the throat between your collarbones. And sometimes we'll reach for a necklace sitting right over that spot, and it's the same instinct, just a different prop. Men tend to grab the front of the neck more firmly or mess with the collar or adjust a shirt button. It's the same kind of function. It's when someone goes to reach for the back of the neck that's different. Rubbing the back of the neck like more vigorously and more of a squeeze, it tends to show up with frustration. Like when someone gives you feedback you really don't want to receive, and you're trying very hard not to say the thing that's coming to mind. The body has its own way of editing what you'll say, and that will present as you rubbing the back of your neck. So cool, right? And Navero is clear on this. If you catch yourself doing excessive neck rubbing, you need to stop. Like deliberately, because it's not a neutral habit. It's a signal to yourself and to everyone watching that something has knocked you off balance. So dropping your hands to your lap and taking a breath instead changes how you're being perceived. And more importantly, it changes how you feel. So context matters with all of this. One gesture in isolation, it doesn't tell you much, right? But when you see a gesture appear at a specific moment in a conversation, like, you know, right after a question or right after a piece of information lands, that timing is everything. That's your signal. So you're watching and noticing this in other people, and that's very useful. Knowing what it means when you see it puts you about three steps ahead in almost any conversation. And catching yourself doing it, that's the skill that actually changes how you communicate. Most people are so focused on managing their words that they've completely abandoned the body. And the body is running its own broadcast 24 hours a day, whether you've authorized it or not. You think you look confident, your neck and your shoulders and your jaw are giving a very different interview. This is why body awareness and emotional self-control, they're not separate skills. When you're regulated, when you've actually processed what you're feeling instead of just suppressing it, your body reflects that. You take up space differently. You make eye contact without it feeling like a stare down. You pause without it reading as panic. And when you're not regulated, the self-soothing gestures, they start multiplying. And everyone in the room can see them. Even if they can't name what they're seeing, they just feel it. Something's off. That vague sense of I don't quite trust this often traces back to a body that's telling a different story than the mouth. When you catch your hand going to your neck or your jaw clenching, or your shoulders creeping towards your ears, that's information. Your body just flags something worth paying attention to. Don't just go past it. Don't pin your arms to your sides like you're trying to disappear. That rigidity reads as its own kind of stress. Just breathe. You know, I've mentioned the EQ switch in the past and the EQ breath. Three seconds in through the nose, four seconds out through the mouth, quietly. That one slow breath does the same thing that the neck touch was trying to do. You're just doing it on purpose instead of accidentally. And then name what's happening internally, not out loud, just to yourself. What's that feeling you're feeling? You know, say I'm uncomfortable right now. Naming the feeling is what researchers call effect labeling. And it actually reduces the emotional charge. Your activity in your amygdala, the brain's panic center, that activity reduces by 50% just by naming your emotion. So that discomfort doesn't disappear, but it drops from a 10 to something more manageable, like a five. And if you're running a room, a meeting, a conversation that matters, use what you notice in others. When someone's hand goes to their neck, they're telling you something. Start watching how people are responding to what you're saying. Check in and ask the question. Make them feel seen. That's what confident, emotionally intelligent communicators do. They read the room and they respond to what's actually happening, not just what's being said. Your body is already in the conversation. The question is whether you're paying attention to what it's saying. So this week I want you to pick one conversation and spend 30 seconds afterwards asking yourself where your body was. What did your hands do? What happened to your shoulders? Where did the tension land? And check out if you're using the neck cupping or the neck rubbing as a self-soothing or frustration signal. It's not, you know, self-criticism here. We're just looking for information. When you start getting curious about your own signals, you get a lot better at catching them in other people. And that's where confidence stops being a performance and starts being something you actually feel. So one quick thing before we sign off together, if this episode made you feel or think or made you suddenly very aware of where your hands are right now, would you take 30 seconds and leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts? It really helps people find the show and it totally means a ton to me. So avoid the neck touching as much as you can. And friend, I'll see you next week. You know, I really believe the more that we build our emotional intelligence and learn to communicate with intention, the more connection and love we create in the world. If something landed for you today, please pass it on. Share it with a friend, post it, or just start a better conversation. And you can grab tools and training anytime at sandygerber.com. And you can find me on Instagram at Sandy underscore Gerber underscore official or Connected Conversations HQ. Or over on YouTube at Connected Conversations SG. Let's keep learning to communicate to connect.