Health and Wellness
Do you ever think about touch, whether that is being touched or touching other? Physical contact is necessary for newborns to thrive. Skin to skin contact is essential for human wellness at all levels of maturity. There is evidence in our society for being deprived of healthy, appropriate touch. I wonder if in the absence of healthy touch, inappropriate touch goes up? As a counselor I see the tolls of depression and anxiety, and track all the repercussions of inappropriate touch. We rarely seem to discuss the absence of touch.
We do actually discuss it, but the absence of touch isn’t called that, though some folks are pushing the term ‘touched starved.’ Most people who are depressed report loneliness. The lack of human touch is simply one aspect of being alone, by definition. Humans need quite a bit more than food and water. We need intellectual and emotional reciprocity of interaction. We need physical touch. We need spiritual connections, which is not necessarily church related. Being connected to humans or nature or something larger than one’s self seems to be just as essential as vitamins and minerals.
Addressing touch may have become even harder after covid. Just getting real, face to face time with another human being has become problematic. Even when we’re together, we’re masked- meaning lines of communication…
