quite an extreme wrote:
hollowmoon wrote:
I’m confused. I thought a smile always had teeth. But today a woman told me to smile and “demonstrated” but there was no teeth... it didn’t look like a smile to me. Also someone told me to smile with my eyes, but how do you do that if there is no teeth in them? I’m so confused.
Hard to explain without showing it. A smile is already a smile before showing the teeth but it's never a honest smile without smiling eyes.
May be I should be more concrete with that. A smile isn't just a hardcoded way of looking with showing your teeth. Any facial expression between looking totally unaffected and laughing with showing teeth counts as a smile.
If it comes to NTs the facial expression always fits their mood and the way that they feel towards others. Not even few try to fake a smile for looking nicer. But trying to fake a smile doesn't changes the real mood which still expresses in their face. For this a faked smile looks mostly dishonest or even nasty.
Showing a bad mood is something that keeps people away from you because people aren't nice to others once they have a bad mood. Because of this they want you to smile because it expresses a good mood.
For showing a smile just think about something funny and how this feeling of having fun exresses in your face.
Instead of conscious moving the muscles in your face you need to remember the feeling of having fun and let this emotion of fun and having a good mood modify your face in the natural way.
Especially once it comes to look in the eyes of other people. Once people are nice you feel good about them and of being near to them. Once you look in the face of other people try to show that feeling of expecting them being totally nice.
Why doing so? Because NTs try to read your face and their empathy causes them to feel the same way that expresses in your face. Most NTs try to socialize with people who like them and who seem to have a good mood. For this is showing the emotions of having a good mood and liking people before looking in their faces and their eyes the way to make friends.
People who lack to feel empathy aren't aware of this all. For this it's one of the most important things that autists who lack empathy or the ability to read facial expressions need to learn.