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02-16-2024, 02:23 PM
This post was last modified 02-21-2024, 01:52 PM by Maxmars.
Edit Reason: grammar
If you want to help someone in distress, offer affirmation of your bond, enhance your connection to them, or even just show good will... touch them. You will likely both benefit from the contact.
I came across an excellent article published in the Washington Post, which had particular meaning to me (but I'll get to that later.) The article was in the "Advice" category, authored by Trisha Pasricha, MD entitled:
The remarkable power of holding hands with someone you love
[excerpts]
Studies show that holding hands can reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences. But its impact on brain activity suggests something more profound is going on.
Holding hands exerts striking effects on our emotional state, especially when it’s with a romantic partner: It can help lower blood pressure, reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences.
...
But the research also suggests something far more profound about our need for connection.
“If you really understand hand-holding — what it is and how it has its effects — you begin to understand just about every single facet of what it is to be a human being,” said James Coan, a clinical psychologist and director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. “It expresses all the things that we are for each other.”
...
According to Coan, the findings suggest that holding hands actually helps the brain offload the work of confronting stress. So when you reach out to hold a loved one’s hand in a difficult time, it’s like you’re sharing the burden with them.
...
Coan hypothesized that holding the hand of someone close to them would cause an increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex as the participant relaxed and felt more secure. With more activity in the prefrontal cortex, he thought, less emotional activity — like those involved in fear or anxiety — would occur elsewhere in the brain.
But that’s not what happened.
When couples held hands, Coan did observe a decrease in all the emotional regions of the brain as he had expected. However, in experiment after experiment, there was no associated increase in prefrontal cortex activity — instead, there was a decrease.
What was going on?
At first, Coan couldn’t account for what part of the brain was responsible for the participants’ stress relief when they held hands. It was as if people were getting snacks out of the vending machine without paying any money.
Finally, he arrived at a new conclusion: What if he had gotten the baseline and experimental states backward? Maybe the brain didn’t perceive holding hands as something new he was adding to a baseline of being alone. What if our neuropsychological baseline was feeling connected to someone? Perhaps feeling alone was the deviation all along — one that would require the metabolically expensive activation of our prefrontal cortex to cope.
“To the human brain, the world presents a series of problems to solve,” Coan said. “And it turns out being alone is a problem.”
He called this phenomenon social baseline theory: It’s the idea that the human brain expects access to relationships and interdependence because without them, the world’s problems are mammoth and we need to expend so much more physiological and psychological effort. But when we know we’re not alone — as is conveyed through holding hands — it’s as if we can access snacks freely with no vending machine at all.
...
Don’t be afraid to offer a hand to someone who is struggling — we’re clearly wired for it.
Perhaps I am being presumptuous when I state that this all seems naturally logical to me. But sometimes life kind of 'highlights' little things for you to observe... in my case, my recent loss. When my wife recently passed there were many things that were made clear to me through the ol' "things I've taken for granted" angle of introspection. I loved holding her hand. I miss holding hands with my wife. I loved waking up to find that as we slept, we held hands. Dang it ... (now you know the reason I put off this little portion of the thread until the end.)
Enough of that!
I found in my research that many different research papers have been written on the effects of touch, the various cultural taboos proscribing contact, and even the results of "touch starvation." It's quite the subject... but ultimately, I would strongly suggest holding hands with your loved ones (where appropriate and welcomed.)
I came across an excellent article published in the Washington Post, which had particular meaning to me (but I'll get to that later.) The article was in the "Advice" category, authored by Trisha Pasricha, MD entitled:
The remarkable power of holding hands with someone you love
[excerpts]
Studies show that holding hands can reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences. But its impact on brain activity suggests something more profound is going on.
Holding hands exerts striking effects on our emotional state, especially when it’s with a romantic partner: It can help lower blood pressure, reduce pain and buffer stressful experiences.
...
But the research also suggests something far more profound about our need for connection.
“If you really understand hand-holding — what it is and how it has its effects — you begin to understand just about every single facet of what it is to be a human being,” said James Coan, a clinical psychologist and director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. “It expresses all the things that we are for each other.”
...
According to Coan, the findings suggest that holding hands actually helps the brain offload the work of confronting stress. So when you reach out to hold a loved one’s hand in a difficult time, it’s like you’re sharing the burden with them.
...
Coan hypothesized that holding the hand of someone close to them would cause an increase in activity in the prefrontal cortex as the participant relaxed and felt more secure. With more activity in the prefrontal cortex, he thought, less emotional activity — like those involved in fear or anxiety — would occur elsewhere in the brain.
But that’s not what happened.
When couples held hands, Coan did observe a decrease in all the emotional regions of the brain as he had expected. However, in experiment after experiment, there was no associated increase in prefrontal cortex activity — instead, there was a decrease.
What was going on?
At first, Coan couldn’t account for what part of the brain was responsible for the participants’ stress relief when they held hands. It was as if people were getting snacks out of the vending machine without paying any money.
Finally, he arrived at a new conclusion: What if he had gotten the baseline and experimental states backward? Maybe the brain didn’t perceive holding hands as something new he was adding to a baseline of being alone. What if our neuropsychological baseline was feeling connected to someone? Perhaps feeling alone was the deviation all along — one that would require the metabolically expensive activation of our prefrontal cortex to cope.
“To the human brain, the world presents a series of problems to solve,” Coan said. “And it turns out being alone is a problem.”
He called this phenomenon social baseline theory: It’s the idea that the human brain expects access to relationships and interdependence because without them, the world’s problems are mammoth and we need to expend so much more physiological and psychological effort. But when we know we’re not alone — as is conveyed through holding hands — it’s as if we can access snacks freely with no vending machine at all.
...
Don’t be afraid to offer a hand to someone who is struggling — we’re clearly wired for it.
Perhaps I am being presumptuous when I state that this all seems naturally logical to me. But sometimes life kind of 'highlights' little things for you to observe... in my case, my recent loss. When my wife recently passed there were many things that were made clear to me through the ol' "things I've taken for granted" angle of introspection. I loved holding her hand. I miss holding hands with my wife. I loved waking up to find that as we slept, we held hands. Dang it ... (now you know the reason I put off this little portion of the thread until the end.)
Enough of that!
I found in my research that many different research papers have been written on the effects of touch, the various cultural taboos proscribing contact, and even the results of "touch starvation." It's quite the subject... but ultimately, I would strongly suggest holding hands with your loved ones (where appropriate and welcomed.)
![[Image: original.png]](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/VQ256zpf_vGU2AbZERKA1vYkwjA=/630x510/media/img/posts/2015/10/taboo_zones_grey/original.png)
