Ask Permission Before You Touch

I feel for people like Michele Starkey (whose article is linked below). I really do.

For perhaps as many as 70% of women, perhaps 25 or 30% of men, touch is the dominant sense, the one we use most consciously in almost all work, thought, and communication.

I'm an ear person myself, but I can relate. My mother is a hand person. My husband was a hand person. I understand how much having someone to snuggle up to means to these people.

Aging can be particularly traumatic for hand people who live alone. The people with whom they're used to sharing touch may have died first. Younger friends may have been taught to show respect by not offering the pats and hugs they miss so much. For other friends, touching may carry different meanings: for me (the ear person) a back rub is something you do to hush a whiny baby, but most of the men I know seem to think a back rub is, or might be, erotic.

But I have this to say to the lonely, touch-deprived seniors at the churches I no longer attend. Do not reach out and pat someone you don't know very well, even and especially if that person is (a) young, (b) new in town, (c) shy, (d) quiet, or (e) comfortable with more interpersonal distance than you are. It's incredibly obnoxious. It does not say "We love you." It says "We don't recognize you as a separate human being with boundaries that we need to respect."

Uninvited touch triggers stress reactions that lower immunity, so whether you even have a cold or not, your pushy behavior is increasing the chance that your victims will come down with colds...or anything else that may be going around the neighborhood.

Invitation is the key. I became a Certified Massage Therapist after seeing that even amateurish forms of trigger point massage helped factory laborers recover from what looked like crippling abuse of their muscles. I studied Neuro-Muscular Therapy, the cutting edge of trigger point massage, which relies heavily on the therapist's ability to feel the patterns of muscle tension that are causing pain. I know firsthand that touch not only communicates affection; it can also make the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk.

It can also, if it's uninvited, provoke long-lasting hostility, even violence. Even when someone has just paid me to touch him or her, I know better than to start before the person is ready to start. Uninvited touch can get you beaten up or killed, and has been recognized in many states as justification for homicide.

So before you read Michele Starkey's article about the benefits of touch, please bear this in mind. Even (and especially) if you are a grandmother, and/or a churchgoer, and/or Italian...always ask first.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8519393/dont_keep_your_hands_to_yourself.html?cat=34