Vanessa Van Edwards breaks down self-touch habits like hair playing, face touching, and arm rubbing. These gestures signal nervousness, distraction, or closed-off posture to others, whether intentional or not. The key is becoming aware of these habits and using them purposefully instead of letting unconscious tics shape how people perceive you.
Let's talk about self-touch as a whole. Any kind of self-touch, that's touching my hair, touching my face, rubbing my arms, rubbing the back of my head, eye blocking, like pinching my nose or rubbing at my eyes. Those are all types of self-touching. They could be flirtatious. They could be signs of self-soothing or pacification gestures. So showing my inner nerves. They could be habitual. So I'm very just used to touching my face, so I don't even think about it. I don't even realize I'm doing it. And they also could be practical. I need to fix my hair because I am on camera and it could be knotted, right? All those things, they don't matter to the other person because it's sending a signal. My students are like, but I like crossing my arms. 'comfortable,' or 'I get cold.' I'm like, I don't care. Your person doesn't care. All they see is that you're distractingly fidgeting or that you're blocking and being closed off. So if you want to do that, just be purposeful with it. If you want to block— like, there are some negotiations where you maybe want to be closed-minded. Fine with me, just make it a choice. That's right. There are some things where maybe you want to self-touch because you don't care. Fine with me, just be purposeful with it.
