Tag Archives: recovery coach

Melissa Killeen

As a recovery coach, I can’t tell you the number of times I have looked at my client and thought, “Are you lying?” Probably, thousands of times.

There are a lot of telltale signs that a client is lying. A slight facial expression can reveal when someone is lying. Paul Ekman in his book Telling Lies, describes these minute facial expressions as micro expressions while the body language clues to deceit are called micro gestures. I find that many of my clients show their deceit not on their face but rather in their body actions or voice intonations.

I have one client that has a sing-song, childlike voice that “tells” she has been drinking before I ask the question. Another client sits with me, with every point of her body facing away from me – her toes point away from me, her knees follow suit, her hands clasped in front of her body, as she rests her elbow on the arm of the chair farthest from my chair. Yet, her face looks at me as stoically as a dog looks to its master and her eyes are glued to me as if they have been affixed with super glue. I read these as signs of concealment.

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