When touch or affection feels hard to receive
Here’s what might be happening and what can help
Here it is, the end of your long day—finally.
*Deep sigh of relief.*
You’re sitting on the couch next to your partner, the kids are finally in bed, and you can tell that your partner wants to connect physically, even if it’s just cuddling up together on the couch.
You know by now that one of your partner’s primary love languages is physical touch, and you’ve had more conversations than you can count about how they’d like more physical affection from you.
You’ve heard their requests, and you’ve tried diligently to remember to reach for their hand while you’re out on a walk, touch their low back as you walk by them in the kitchen, or be the one to initiate sex.
Sometimes remembering feels easy and natural—especially when you’re feeling more spacious and open—but other times it’s truly the last thing on your mind.
And not only is it the last thing on your mind, it’s the last thing you want! Although you’d never say that to them.
But you want to show up for your partner, and you know that humans are “wired for connection,” so there must be something wrong with you for not wanting it, right?
I hear some version of this from my students and clients frequently. And I lived it for many, many years myself.
Let me start by saying, first and foremost: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.
If you have a hard time right now receiving physical affection and offering it to others naturally, it simply means that your nervous system equates physical affection with threat.
Touch with and from others feels unsafe.
Not that *the person* with whom you’re experiencing touch is unsafe, but that the sensation of touch itself feels unsafe.
If you grew up in an environment where you were not consistently held, rocked, cuddled, and nurtured in the ways that infants need to be physically nurtured, this registered as chronic stress in your system.
Nurturance feels unsafe because it’s unfamiliar.
If you grew up in an environment where there was inconsistent care or abuse, the body might now equate touch with threat because that was its experience.
If you rarely feel a desire for touch, it’s not because you’re broken and aren’t “wired for connection” the way it seems like everyone else is—it likely means you had to suppress your need for physical touch when you were young because that need was going unmet.
Young humans don’t have the capacity to bear that level of chronic physical and psychological pain, so they have to disconnect from it in order to survive.
How beautifully beneficent and protective your brain and body is.
For students and clients who struggle to give and receive physical affection, I recommend exploring soothing self-touch practices.
There’s a part (or parts) of you that deeply desires to be comforted. Your work is rebuilding trust with that part, listening to how it wants to receive comfort, and then providing it to the best of your ability.
Experiment with what kinds of touch your body likes or desires. Head or face petting? Light touch on your arms or torso? Side-rocking? Self-hugging and self-embrace?
Your brain is going to want to answer the question; kindly remind them that I’m not asking them. I’m asking your body.
If you have an aversion to touch, it’s likely that none of these are going to feel “good” to begin with.
You’re growing your system’s capacity to be with the uncomfortable sensations that arise as a result of touch.
You might experience shame, disgust, or feelings of nausea as you begin to touch yourself in soothing ways.
Remember: it’s unfamiliar to your system. See if you’re able to bring gentleness and compassion to the discomfort that arises, loving the discomfort too.
A capacity to receive and be soothed by self-touch is an integral part of inner stability and falls under the Nurturance component of inner secure attachment.
Growing your capacity for touch doesn’t begin with other people—it begins in your relationship with yourself.
As within, so without.
When you’re able to find safety in soothing self-touch, you’re creating a system that can more easily discern what kinds of touch feels good and safe with others too.
You’re no longer hugging friends because that’s what sociable adults do, or providing affection to your partner because that’s what loving partners do.
You’re doing it as a natural extension of what now feels familiar, safe, and good to your system.
This is what embodied change looks like.
When something becomes embodied, you don’t have to think about it anymore.
You reach for their hand because you want to.
You look forward to your end-of-day time together because you can once again feel your own need for touch and affection.
You can easily say “I actually don’t have capacity for that tonight, I need to tend to myself for a bit first” instead of doing the thing anyway because you don’t want to hurt their feelings.
You’re embodying what is real and true for you instead of showing up in the ways you think you should.
You’re unshakable.
With heart,
Grey
P.S. If you want concrete practices for embodied change that are specific to your nervous and attachment systems, learn more about my Unshakable Core™ Audits at the button below.
Resources
I’m currently offering single, sliding scale Stabilizing Sessions as a support in this time of collective change and uncertainty. In these sessions, I help you:
Find a felt sense of stability in your body (practices you can take with you!)
Identify what is pulling you off center (the world is a difficult place, but your suffering comes from how you’re relating to it)
Identify at least one concrete, embodied action moving forward for ongoing stability
Sessions details:
60-minute sessions via Zoom
Sliding scale $150-$350
Offer is limited to three sessions
You can either schedule a free, 20-minute Connection Call with me to see if we’d be a good fit, or reply to this email to schedule your session.
In case you missed these conversations:
Three Reasons I’m Checking in With Myself Before Taking Advice From the Internet; Especially on how to show up right now
Your Critical Inner Voice? That’s Not Your Inner Authority; It’s someone else’s pain you’ve internalized