Christina Caron
Author Allora Dannon, 35, longed for physical touch for much of her adult life.
As a “romantic late bloomer” who didn’t begin dating until she was 32, she says she ached for someone to hold her. Not a “meaningless brush” with another body, she says, but the type of touch that had “intention behind it”.
This wasn’t a yearning for sex. She wanted someone to hold hands with, someone lightly touching the small of her back, a person to cuddle with on the couch. Sometimes she would sob, wondering why it seemed so easy for other people to be touched but so difficult for her. When Dannon shared her longing for companionship on social media, her account eventually drew nearly 120,000 followers on TikTok.
Being touch-starved, or lacking wanted physical connection, has become increasingly common in our fast-paced, digital world, experts say. And a lack of touch can affect both our physical and mental wellbeing.
Without regular touch, we can feel “lonely, anxious, stressed or emotionally depleted without immediately knowing why,” says Ozge Ugurlu, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ugurlu and other experts on touch explain why touch is so vital and why they think people aren’t getting enough of it.
Why is touch important?
Research has found that everyone needs some level of human touch for physical and emotional health, though the amount and type will vary for each person.
Psychologists have devised tools to measure what they call “touch deprivation”, such as the Touch Deprivation Scale. Higher scores on these scales are associated with anxiety and depression.
When touch is wanted and consensual, studies have shown that it can regulate our emotions and benefit our overall wellbeing. Touch promotes calm by slowing activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions, and prompts the release of oxytocin, often referred to as the love hormone. Touch has been shown to improve heart-rate variability, too, which is a measure of good health.
Research has also shown that touch can blunt pain, stress and anxiety. For example, blood pressure and levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress, can decrease as a result of touch.
Scientists have discovered that a soft, loving caress activates specific nerve fibres that light up parts of the brain associated with emotion, not just sensation.
Touch communicates connection and caring “with crystal clarity to your brain in ways that words don’t,” says James Coan, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of the forthcoming book Why We Hold Hands.
Why people may feel touch-starved
There are a few reasons.
People spend less time together in person than in years past and more time online. This has altered our friendships and romantic relationships, experts say, which makes it more difficult to feel connected and valued.
It can also hurt our ability to figure out whether we’re romantically interested in someone else.
“Touch is part of flirting. You bump into each other, and you assess each other’s interest with touch,” says Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley who studies touch and emotion. “When you flirt with someone, you’re figuring out: is this a good partner?”
Keltner was raised in an affectionate family that loved to give hugs. But touch can have “a different meaning culturally or individually,” he says. “And we have to honour that.“
It doesn’t help that we’re living in a “super anxious” society, Coan says. We are “increasingly sensitive to abuse and power dynamics” in the workplace and elsewhere, he adds. While this is important and useful in many ways, it can make us more hesitant to touch someone, even if the touch is safe and wanted, he says.
What helps with touch starvation?
Giving and receiving touch sometimes involves taking a calculated risk, Coan says.
“If you want more touch, ask for more touch,” he said. And if it is appropriate and consensual, “engage in more touch.”
He recalled offering his hand to a stranger during a scary bout of turbulence on an airplane.
“It’s weird in our culture, but the circumstance sort of called for it,” he said. “I would like to live in a world where we all did that more.”
If this sounds uncomfortable or intimidating, there’s no shame in touching your own body.
A few years ago, Latishia James, 38, was experiencing “indescribable loneliness”.
Her Yorkie-cairn terrier mix who loved to jump in her lap and cuddle had eased some of the pain. “She was my sweet little emotional support baby,” James says.
But in 2022 her dog died. James was separated from her spouse at the time. And because of the pandemic, she had spent years avoiding hugs or one of her favourite forms of stress relief: a massage.
Then James, who lives in the US, learnt a technique from her mental health therapist that involved giving herself a giant bear hug while stimulating specific pressure points with her fingers and rocking side to side to relieve anxiety and tension.
At first, she felt embarrassed to try it. “But once I proved to myself it was working, I didn’t care,” she says. “I did it all the time.”
People who are craving touch can get similar benefits from “brushing” their skin or massaging themselves using their hands or elbows, says Tiffany Field, a professor in the departments of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Miami, who has researched touch for decades.
Exercise of all kinds is also effective at stimulating the skin and muscles in a way that is similar to massage, Field says.
However we go about it, seeking out touch can be soothing, healing and vital for our health, experts say.
In fact, touch “may be the most overlooked sense of all,” Ugurlu argues. “We may not notice it when it is present, but when it is absent, the effects ripple quietly and powerfully through our lives.“
The New York Times
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