Entangled in Touch: 2/4

touch starved and touched out

Welcome!

This is Part Two of a deep dive on the sense of touch (Part One here). The series is based on years of academic research, but instead of relying on theory, I share everything I know through story.

Photo by Gert Stockmans on Unsplash

On a global scale, the COVID-19 lockdown ruptured our unconscious day-to-day movements and brought what was taken for granted to our active attention. Between fears of catching or spreading the virus and mandates to isolate, there was a rise in the phenomenon of skin hunger or touch starvation. These terms are typically used to describe babies in neonatal care, who don’t get the skin-to-skin contact they need to regulate their breathing and heart-rate.

These first moments of touch are crucial for the child’s caregivers, too. In the early days with my newborns, when I fantasized too long about escaping to a studio in Paris with just a writing desk and a bed, I’d strip down with my babies and hold them close. Their weight and breath on my chest secured me to them and them to me. The cure to my restlessness wasn’t escape, it was entrenching myself further in love.

In the upheaval of COVID, many of us lacked the kind of touch that centers and binds us within secure relationship. There was no hugging or handholding, no kissing or squeezing. So many ached for the touch of other bodies in the privacy of their own homes. This yearning slowly erodes the foundations of mental stability. 

And since we live in a culture of extremes, many parents felt touched out instead of touch hunger. The term gives voice to the sensation of haptic overwhelm felt by primary caregivers, who are in near-constant contact with their children, partners, and/or pets.

When my first child was born I didn’t know the term touched out, but I felt it when my husband sought to find our previous intimacy. I welled up with emotion and cried, “I’m giving everything to everyone. It’s like my body isn’t my own!” It took months before I felt my bodily boundaries begin to reestablish, albeit giving me a new motherly shape.

My culture suffered from haptic impoverishment and dis-ease well before the pandemic. About a decade ago I lay in a small Moroccan hammam being tenderly washed by a stranger. Her soft breasts brushed against my back, which would have been deemed frightfully unprofessional at home. Uncomfortable at first, I soon found it was soothing and refreshing to be touched in such an easeful way.

Nearby two women my age washed each other’s half-naked bodies. Although I don’t speak Arabic, I knew from the familiar rhythms and intonations that they were going through the weekly gossip. I’ve never touched my friends in this way. Ever. What a lost opportunity for connection to the people I love the most.

Please, don’t think I’m saying that all interpersonal touch is lovely. Humans are clumsy and cruel. Revelations in the news stories over the last five years shows that violations are as common as they are traumatic.

When confronted with the sheer quantity of touch that’s gone wrong there’s an impulse to do away with social touch altogether. In the wake of the #metoo movement and COVID-19 lockdowns, hands stay politely in pockets during greetings and hugs are less common. Institutional workers‑ teachers, doctors, spiritual leaders, police officers, and social workers‑ are expected to touch only when professionally necessary. And for good reason. The abuses that have occurred by hands of authority are gut-wrenching. Yet, despite these violations, responding with the drastic diminishment of physical contact leaves us starving for each other.  

Part Three next week may be my favorite. It hops between the grasslands, the barber chair, and the birthing pool. And then, if I may be so bold, reveals the Universe’s first whisperings… stay with me!