Touch and Health

Physical contact has a large impact on people. Mammals are tactile. There are all kinds of benefits to touch, if you can do it comfortably. Not being touched can add a lot of stressors. How we are touched by other people affects our sense of self, and our self esteem. My own experience is that being touched by people I feel close to helps to ease pain and tension in my body.

One of my first responses to social distancing was the realisation that there are people who matter to me a lot who I will not be able to hug for some time. There’s the heartbreaking possibility that there may be people I never get to hug again. I cannot use my body to comfort people who are fearful or otherwise distressed. There are people I would very much like to be able to hug close right now, and reassure in the way that only a hug can. But, they are safer if I don’t see them.

I have a lot of issues around touch. I don’t do it lightly or casually. For me, any kind of physical contact represents a fair amount of considered trust.

I am dealing with this by doing small visualisations. In the visualisation, it is a gentle, sunny day and I am meeting a friend. It is safe to meet them, and safe to hug them. Both of us are well. I hug them. I’m finding that running these little visualisations is helping me deal with my own fear, and with the pre-emptive grief I’m feeling because of that fear.