Do you have to learn to smile?

[RaBind]

Pretty much anyone can smile genuinely but being able to smile at you bidding seems harder. I always seem to just make a flat smile whenever I try to smile. I "feel" like I'm putting on an okeyish smile and it "feels" right ( i.e. muscles not to stressed) but my smile is flat.

Flat smiles look like this:

As you might be able to deduce the corners of the mouth don't point upwards but are instead just generally stressed.

My guess is that my natural attempt at smiling falls flat because I'm trying to do it naturally without any stress to my face muscles, while making it actually look like a smile actually takes an unnatural effort.

I was also wondering if this might be an intp thing.

Do most people need to practice to be able to put on a smile properly?

Did you have to do so?

Is it possible to practice putting on a good till you can just do it naturally? Or is it always gonna require unnatural effort and the use of muscles in your face that you keep forgetting exist?

 

[Hadoblado]

My smile tends to be flat, especially if I'm trying to smile to meet expectations.

Genuine spontaneous smiles are a lot more curved.

I don't know about if practice works, but a lot of people practice their photo faces in the mirror. I personally find that hard to stomach, but do tell me how it goes :I

 

[The Gopher]

Alternatively find the fact you have to fake social interaction amusing perhaps in a morbid way and hey presto you can smile whenever you want. Maybe more helpful advice is have a set interaction like. Blow air out your nose in a short burst as if you are silently doing one, hah, then curve your mouth as you do it. Practice it enough and you should be able to get a short burst smile that will fade before people can analyse it.

I'm not sure how you would practice it since I just go with the first version but hopefully that helps.