Stiff eyes. Flowing eyes

Perspective

What happens when a rehearsed identity meets fresh evidence

By Peter R. Valderhaug

Many years ago, I told someone that looking up and to the right meant they were lying.

I had seen the idea presented confidently in a film, and I repeated it with equal confidence. Since then, I have learned that eye movements offer no reliable shortcut for detecting dishonesty. Human beings are far more complicated than that.

Still, I have continued to pay attention to people’s eyes.

I watch them when someone searches for an answer, remembers an experience, tries to make sense of a contradiction, or encounters a question they have never considered before.

Over time, I began noticing a distinction that has become valuable in my work.

Sometimes the eyes move as the person thinks. They look away, return, shift, pause, and search.

At other times, the eyes remain fixed while a complete story pours out with remarkable fluency.

I began calling this flowing eyes and stiff eyes.

The distinction tells me little about whether a person is truthful. It can tell me something about whether they are actively exploring an idea or repeating a conclusion they already know by heart.

That difference matters because many of the beliefs we call identity began as conclusions.

Then we rehearsed them until they felt like facts.

The student who knew he was bad at school

A student once told me that he was bad at school.

He said it calmly and confidently. His voice carried no uncertainty. He spoke as though he were describing his height or the colour of his eyes.

I happened to be holding his final examination paper.

I had graded it the previous day.

It was an A.

I asked him, “How do you know you are bad at school?”

He looked straight ahead and told me a story he clearly knew well.

When he was in primary school, a teacher had described him as a poor student. He struggled to learn as quickly as some of the other children. He made mistakes. Others seemed to understand things before he did.

From those experiences, he had formed a conclusion:

“I cannot really succeed in education.”

His eyes stayed almost completely still while he spoke.

The story had structure, rhythm, and certainty. Every part seemed to lead naturally to the same conclusion. It sounded less like something he was thinking about and more like something he had repeated many times.

I decided to place his old conclusion beside the evidence in my hand.

“If your story is accurate,” I said, “I need to reconsider this grade.”

His eyes moved.

“What do you mean?”

“I have given you an A. Your story says that you are bad at school and unable to succeed. My assessment says that you have produced excellent academic work. Which piece of information should we update?”

His eyes began moving in several directions.

The confident rhythm disappeared. He paused. His face changed.

“I do not know what to say,” he replied. “What is this?”

For a moment, his old story had nowhere to go.

It had met evidence that could no longer be ignored or easily absorbed into the familiar conclusion.

I asked him:

“Who are you now that this old story no longer explains everything?”

He looked down at the paper, then back at me. His eyes continued moving.

“I do not know,” he said. “But I am excited to find out.”

That answer contained far more possibility than the certainty he had arrived with.

He later changed jobs, became more willing to learn, and began describing himself differently. The examination grade offered useful evidence. The deeper change began when he allowed the evidence to question the identity he had rehearsed.

A story can become automatic

Research on eye movements and cognition requires careful interpretation.

A widely cited 2012 study tested whether particular directions of eye movement could be used to detect lying. The researchers found no reliable pattern.

That finding addresses a useful question: eye direction alone cannot tell us whether someone is being honest.

A different line of research has examined what happens to eye movement during tasks requiring varying levels of mental activity. A 2023 study found that participants produced more eye movements when answering questions that required greater cognitive effort than when responding automatically.

This distinction resembles what I observe in conversations.

A familiar answer requires little searching.

A fresh question often creates a pause.

The eyes move. The person looks away. Their speech becomes less polished. They may say, “I have never thought about it that way,” or, “I actually do not know.”

These moments can look like confusion. I often experience them as signs of genuine contact with something new.

The person has reached the edge of the rehearsed story.

Identity is built from repeated conclusions

Consider the difference between these two statements:

The first describes an experience.

The second defines a person.

An experience belongs to a particular time, place, and context. An identity statement travels into new situations and begins organising what the person expects.

Someone who believes “I am bad at school” may avoid courses, delay applications, withdraw during discussions, or interpret ordinary difficulty as proof that learning is beyond them.

The identity creates a search pattern.

The person notices mistakes quickly. Success may be dismissed as luck. Praise may feel uncomfortable or inaccurate. New evidence is filtered through the older conclusion.

The story remains stable because it helps determine which information receives attention.

This is one reason insight can coexist with undesired behavior. A person may understand intellectually that an old teacher’s judgment was limited or unfair. Yet their decisions still reflect the identity created around it.

The story has become more than a memory.

It has become an instruction about what to expect.

Stiff eyes and familiar answers

When I observe stiff eyes, I treat them as an invitation to become curious.

The person may simply prefer steady eye contact. They may be concentrating. Culture, neurodiversity, personality, fatigue, stress, and the relationship itself can all influence eye behaviour.

A rehearsed identity story often has several recognisable qualities.

It appears quickly. It sounds complete. It explains a great deal with very little uncertainty. The person has told it before, both to others and to themselves.

“I am terrible with people.”

“I always lose motivation.”

“I cannot speak in front of a group.”

“I am simply an anxious person.”

“I never finish anything.”

These statements may contain real history. Their certainty can also hide the range of experiences that complicate them.

The socially uncertain person may have built several deep friendships.

The person who “never finishes anything” may have completed a degree, raised a family, built a business, or supported someone through years of difficulty.

The person who “cannot speak in public” may communicate clearly and confidently whenever the subject matters enough.

Identity stories survive by keeping contradictory evidence at the edges of attention.

A useful question brings that evidence closer.

Flowing eyes and new possibilities

Flowing eyes often appear when the person needs to search.

They are making connections, revisiting memories, comparing interpretations, or trying to create language for something they have never expressed.

This process can feel uncomfortable because fluency temporarily disappears.

Certainty gives way to hesitation.

The person may struggle to answer. Yet this struggle can mark the beginning of a more honest form of thinking.

A familiar question invites a familiar identity.

“Why am I always like this?”

“Why do I keep ruining everything?”

“What is wrong with me?”

These questions already contain their preferred conclusion. They ask the mind to collect more evidence for an established story.

A different question changes the search.

Questions like these create movement because they ask the mind to search beyond its established path.

The answer may arrive slowly. That slowness has value.

A fast answer often comes from memory.

A slower answer may be under construction.

Your stories are a form of software

I sometimes invite people to think of identity through a simple metaphor.

The brain is the hardware.

Your recurring stories are part of the software.

The hardware is extraordinarily complex and capable. The software contains instructions formed through experience, relationships, culture, education, success, disappointment, and the meaning you made from what happened.

Some instructions remain useful.

Others were written using limited information.

A conclusion formed by a child can continue running inside the life of an adult. A comment from a teacher, parent, partner, or manager can become an internal command long after the original situation has ended.

The metaphor becomes useful when it creates a practical question:

An outdated story does not make someone broken.

It means their present capacity may be operating through instructions created in the past.

Fresh evidence creates the opportunity for an update.

New thinking changes available action

One of the most valuable principles I learned through Dr. Richard Bandler’s work is that changes in thinking affect emotional state, and emotional state affects what someone experiences as possible.

My student’s abilities had already changed.

His identity had failed to catch up.

When he encountered the A, he initially had two conflicting pieces of information:

“I am bad at school.”

“I have produced excellent academic work.”

The grade alone could have remained an exception.

The question I asked him required him to reconsider the rule.

“Who are you now that the old story no longer explains everything?”

That question opened a gap between his past conclusion and his present evidence.

Inside that gap, a different future became easier to imagine.

The goal was never to replace one rigid identity with another. For example, “I am brilliant at everything” would have created a different form of distortion.

A more useful identity can hold development:

These statements create room for evidence, effort, mistakes, and continued growth.

A small experiment for your next conversation

During your next meaningful conversation, ask someone a question that requires more than a familiar update.

Try:

Then observe gently.

Notice the pause.

Notice the movement of the eyes.

Notice whether the answer arrives immediately or develops as the person speaks.

This is an exercise in attention, rather than assessment. The aim is to recognise the difference between a polished story and an active search.

Then turn the question towards yourself.

Choose an identity statement you repeat frequently.

Write it down.

Ask where it came from, which experiences support it, and which experiences it leaves out.

Pay attention to what happens as you search.

Your eyes may move.

Your certainty may soften.

A more complicated and useful answer may begin to emerge.

That movement matters because identity is shaped by the stories we repeat, the evidence we include, and the questions we allow ourselves to ask.