Human Contact (Why we need it)

Touch is a language all within itself. It has been suggested to be more versatile than voice, facial expressions, and other modalities of communication or expressing emotion.

Yet now days, humans aren’t getting the amount of affection they require. Researchers are finding a whole new issue among people called “skin hunger”. Skin hunger is a common problem among people in which they feel deprived of meaningful human contact. Human contact is just as important as food, water, or sleep. Touch hungry people can even present symptoms that mimic depression, becoming withdrawn, and flat expression in the voice. Extreme loneliness can even cause chronic medical conditions.

When humans have less human contact it’s been shown to be less happy, more lonely, more likely to experience depression, stress, worse health, less social support or support system, lower relationship quality, mood or anxiety issues, secondary immune disorders, alexithymia (impairs the ability to express or interrupts emotion), preoccupied or fearful avoidance attachment style, and form less secure attachments.

• We possess an innate ability to decode emotions from touch alone.

• Touch is a more nuanced, sophisticated and precise way to communicate emotion.

• Matthew Hertenstein, a researcher said “We live in a touch-phobic society. We’re not used to touching strangers, or even our friends, necessarily.”

• Humans come equipped to send and receive emotional signals solely through touch.

• The primary somatosensory cortex is the part of the brain that responds to touch. Originally thought to only encode basic qualities of touch such as smoothness and pressure.

• The experience of human touch is affected by your social evaluation of the person touching you.

• Touch can convey multiple emotions at once: joy, love, gratitude, and sympathy.

• Scientists believe touch is simply a means of enhancing speech or body language.

• Touch is crucial to bonding, we become more connection when we touch another.

• Touch depends on how it’s interpreted and is context dependent.

• Our reaction to touch depends on the situation. For example: depending on if you’re at a doctor getting an exam or trying to pick someone up at a bar.

• If we embrace touch, we could experience more positive interactions along with a deeper sense of connections to others.

• When studying touch, massage showed multiple benefits such as better sleep, reduced irritability, increased sociability among infants, and improved growth in preemies.

• We develop our comfort with physical comfort as children, depending on how our physical connection with our parents was.

• Your tolerance for physical comfort can change when you spend more time with people who provide more physical contact. It you’re not a touchy person but spend time with someone who is, you can become touchier like them.

• Touch enhances cooperation, even with strangers. While the touch could be a light shoulder touch and be seemingly insignificant. A light touch, even if the person doesn’t remember the touch, it can result in larger tips, buy more or agree to a favor when touch is involved. Even if they don’t remember the touch, they remember feeling a deeper connection to the person. Give this a try the next time you ask for a favor or if you’re a server. Just a quick touch to the shoulder.

• Studies have shown that sports team that touch (high five, chest bumps, other encouragement touches) are more successful the team is later on.

• Human touch strengthens relationships, a marker of closeness indicating how strong a bond is, the more you touch, the closer you can become.

• When you stimulate the pressure sensors in the skin, it lowers stress hormones. Warm touch release oxytocin (the love hormone), which enhances a sense of trust and attachment.

• When we realize that touch lowers stress and can help reduce depressive feelings, it makes sense that humans self-caress. We self-caress as a calming mechanism.

• You can’t touch another without being touched yourself. Meaning both people receive the benefits of touch regardless of who makes contact.

• When hugging another person, the person who gave the hug also receives the same benefits. A tight hug also compresses and relaxes the sympathetic nervous system causing a calming effect.

• The physical sensation we feel when we touch someone (if they’re cold, warm, clammy, pull away, muscles tensed or relaxed) influences what we think and how we perceive what they say.

• Touch functions differently depending on the stage of a romantic relationship. Touching tends to rise at the beginning of a relationship, peak at marriage, and then tapers off through the years.

• A true indicator of a healthy long term bond is how often your partner touches you in response to your touch. The stronger is reciprocity, the more likely they are to report emotional intimacy and satisfaction in the relationship.

• Overly touchy people take the risk of being perceived as over the top, harassing, creepy, or threatening.

• Quality of touch, duration, intensity, and circumstances all affect our interpretation of the touch we receive.

• Touch naturally seems more intimate when paired with something else such as eye contact or speech.

• Research has proved that touch is the best way to comfort someone grieving or upset.

• Holding hands produces a calming response for both people.

• Prolonged lack of human contact has shown the brain to rewire itself and cause psychological problems.

We live in an age of technology, meaning we’re more connected than ever. But those connections are no substitute for real physical human touch. Everyone remember the free hugs movement? The man who started that literally felt so withdrawn and lonely that he offered hugs to strangers just to receive that physical touch. He was skin hungry and I know that feeling all too well.

Verbal and written communication is no substitute for human connection. We have so many apps to stay in contact with each other but people are feeling more lonely and deprived than ever. Perhaps we should put our phones to better use by making plans with people and embracing people who need it.

Vibe Higher,

Lobeless

P.S.- I was looking through all my photos and I realized something. In all the photos where I'm with my friends and sharing human contact, that's when I look the happiest. I've spent more than a year almost completely isolated and during my research I realized that I am skin hungry. Physical touch is incredibly important, so make sure to give more hugs and show more love. We all need it.