In the previous post regarding weighted blankets, I spoke about the importance of experiencing safe touch and that the use of a weighted blanket may, for some people, be a safe way to re-learn that experience. Most people usually think of touch as a pleasant or painful sensation, but rarely a highlight of life in the absence of the heightened experience of touch related to sexuality or pain. Touch, more than merely the interface between our bodies and the outside world, is probably the most misunderstood sensation.
The sensation of touch may be differentiated into several categories: light touch, deep sense of pressure, temperature and pain, vibration, proprioception or sense of position in space (such as joint sense ) and others. It is said that there are 20 different types of highly specialised receptors associated with touch. These are sensory neurons found in all parts of the body except the brain. They vary in density and sensitivity to stimuli.
Touch is a fundamental part of our daily experience. The sense of touch gathers information about our surroundings as well as being a means of establishing trust and social bonds with others, both people and animals. It is crucial to creating our unique human experience. No wonder we use phrases such as calling something a “touching experience”, saying someone is “touchy”, or feeling “soft-hearted.” We often use the word “feeling” to reference emotional states rather than solely the sense perception.
The human brain has two distinct but parallel pathways for processing touch information.
[1] The first pathway is sensory, which conveys some dry facts: vibration, pressure, location and fine texture. It can tell you if someone is stroking you, up or down your arm. That part of the sensory pathway is a brain region called the primary somatosensory cortex, which is the first region to be triggered by the experience of touch.
[2] The second pathway processes social and emotional information. This pathway identifies the emotional content of mostly interpersonal touch using different sensors in the skin. This pathway activates brain regions associated with social/psychological bonding, pleasure and pain centers.
Touch is critical for child development. This is something researched for many decades, such as Harlow’s experiments on monkeys.) We know a parent’s touch, whether positive or negative, is a crucial factor in a child’s development.
Most people wouldn’t have difficulty distinguishing between a friendly touch of social support and a touch involving sexual suggestion or seduction. An arm around the shoulder coming from a person will change the way you experience that touch based on your relationship with that person. Our brain processes the sensorial experience with information about the social context from other parts of the brain. Usually the social context enables us to tell whether the gesture is genuine or insincere, whether it is straightforward or perhaps cloaks a hidden agenda. Identifying a gesture as insincere or containing a hidden agenda then appropriately triggers the need for further investigation.
Therapeutic Touch
A large body of research suggests that therapeutic massage can be helpful for a number of physical and mental ailments. These include pain relief and addiction recovery, as well as maintaining emotional equilibrium, cognitive function and mobility among an aging population. Other have also suggested that massage may be an effect way to treat anxiety, insomnia, headaches and digestive problems.
The popularity of therapeutic touch has not received its due recognition. This is partly due to the dominant status of the pharmaceutical approach and partly due to the lack of vigorous scientific proof of its efficacy. However, those with trauma in their background must remain aware that it may be difficult to identify the very moment that touch may change from a healing procedure into a sexual transgression. Always be as clear as possible about your personal boundaries and in maintaining them. It may be a good idea to tell your massage therapist at the very beginning that you have very strict boundaries that must not be crossed. Doing this may avert the danger of the massage therapist inadvertently or even intentionally blurring/crossing the ethical boundary between the therapist and the client being touched.
I am especially interested in establishing healthy self-soothing practices in our daily routines. Self-soothing happens when we need to be soothed. We use all kinds of methods to be soothed – some are safe, some are unsafe and some are neutral, depending on how they are applied. Given the general phenomenon of addiction related to nicotine and alchohol along with the uncontrolled use of comfort foods (especialy sweatened foods), and their attendant unhealthy consequences of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure etc, safe self-soothing options are critical. Advertising for alchohol, nicotine and processed foods are designed to seduce us without concern as to their negative attributes.
In my experience with DID patients, grounding and self-soothing are part and parcel in healing those who were subjected to early childhood trauma. Helping them re-experience the literal sensation of “safe” was critical to therapy. Learning to self-sooth, the self-empowering process of being able to generate that sensate of safey is an essential part in healing.
It is in this context that I wrote an earlier post on the therapeutic potential of weighted blankets. I think any self-soothing practice that does not cause harm is worth very serious consideration. Consider comparing the negative aspects of self-soothing with drugs or alcohol (or any other addictive behaviod) with simply resting under a weighted blanket. If the weighted blanket works for you then there is no contest.
