skin hunger

Touch people. All the time. Don and I started reading the book ‘And They Were Not Ashamed’ when we first got married, but only got half way through it. Now we are finishing it during our family read-aloud time nightly.

There is a section called Touch Deprivation and it really ‘touched’ me. Here are a few points that stood out to me:

• Just as we need the physical nourishment of food, we need the tactile nourishment of touch.
• Few are lucky enough to receive a sufficient supply to meet their basic needs for love, comfort, and reassurance.
• Compared to many other cultures, Americans are COLD FISH, though we certainly don’t think of ourselves that way.
• Most touch deprivation goes unnoticed or misdiagnosed since few understand or are aware of the critical need for touch.
• We develop a form of emotional scurvy, although we call it by different terms: depression, stress, anxiety, aggression, and midlife crisis.
• Behavioral scientists have given this deprivation of touch the term called skin hunger. Some people confuse skin hunger with restlessness, sexual desire, loneliness, or stomach hunger (interesting to me).
• Serious touch deprivation causes some to become touch avoidant—withdrawing from the very thing they need most. Some cannot even stand to see others touching due to the emotional upset it causes them.
• A fear is that touch will be misinterpreted as sexual when it is merely meant to be loving (very true in our society).
• “Non-touchers” often marry “touchers” (true in my case. Don is a “toucher”!)
• Most boys by the time they are 5 or 6, they stop receiving the touch they need because they are expected to be “big boys” now.
• For girls, touch continues longer than for their brothers, but tends to end when breast development begins (especially touch from their fathers).
• If family members and individuals in society would hug and touch more in positive, caring ways, unmet emotional needs for touch leading to premarital sexual activity among youth might be reduced.

A study that was done:

U.S. friends in a coffee shop tend to touch each other an average of only twice an hour—but Puerto Rican friends touch 180 times, and French friends, 110 times. (I’m amazed it’s even twice an hour here).

I loved on my mission how affectionate Latin people were!

Maybe I should move to Puerto Rico?!