Have you ever felt as if only half of your mind were present in a conversation; while the other half was busy beating you up? Not only can this impair your listening skills; it turns out this inner self-criticism can ruin your interactions when it flashes across your face.

Even when we control the main expression on our face, our true feelings will often show up, albeit for a split second. No matter how brief that negative expression, the person facing you is going to spot it, because research showed that people catch your expressions within less than a second—as fast as 17 milliseconds, to be exact.

Not only will your internal self-criticism be visible; in addition, there may be coldness, distance, judgment. Of course, this was not directed at them. But they don’t know that. They don’t know the criticism they were reading was self-criticism; merely that they were (accurately) seeing criticism in your face.

At best, they’ll get a gut feeling that there’s something off, something that’s not quite right. At worst, they’ll think that criticism, judgment, or coldness was about them— what they said or did, or what you think about them. When in fact, it was just the outside manifestation of internal turmoil.

Here’s another example. Let’s say you’re in the middle of a conversation; and you suddenly remember something you forgot to do at work. What’s going to happen to your face? You may wince at the memory; your expression may become tense. These split-second “micro-expressions” are what people pick up without even realizing it.

Unfortunately, anything which spreads negativity in your body language can be deadly for your interactions, because over 80% of your interactions come down to your body language. In fact, an MIT study found that the outcome of negotiations could be predicted with 87% accuracy just by analyzing participants’ body language— completely ignoring words and arguments.

This is particularly true in low-trust environments such as the one we’re in right now. In an anxiety-laden environment, our sympathetic nervous system activates. Though we may not realize we’re thinking differently, a more primal part of the brain has taken over. This primal brain does not directly comprehend words or ideas, but is immediately impacted by body language.

Which means that attempting to discuss ideas before you’ve quieted down the primal brain is doomed to failure.To convince the primal brain to take a backseat and let the cognitive brain re-engage, you need to establish trust on a visceral level. This can only be achieved by using a specific set of body language, voice tones, and words.