Overcoming Touch Deprivation

From the time you were a newborn how well you thrived depended in large part by how much you were lovingly touched.

I was born two months premature in Trinidad in 1965. I was only 4 pounds and had to be in an incubator for my first few weeks of life. The doctors told my mom not to get attached to me because I only had a ten percent chance of surviving. My mother didn’t believe them.

And touched and loved me and willed me to live. And live I did. I grew into being a 6’3”, 200 pound man in almost perfect health. Such is the power of love, such is the power of touch.

We tend to get touched less and less as we get older, although our primal need for touch never diminishes. Touch deprivation is a significant form of sensory deprivation. Most of us wouldn’t dream of going weeks or months without opening our eyes, or keeping our ears plugged, yet many of my patients tell me that they haven’t been massaged or held for weeks or months.

Our world is becoming too formal, too stiff, too emotionally cold.

For the sake of your physical, emotionally, mental and spiritual health, give your self more permission to touch and be touched. You can never overdose on loving touch.

Don’t limit touch to sex. Don’t limit touch to just your partner and family. Reach out and touch more people.

Close your eyes sometimes and experience your world through touch.

Your skin is your biggest organ- use it. Get more skin to skin contact.

Everyone can heal and be healed through touch.

Be a great healer and lover by experiencing the miracle of touch as often as you can.