|
Barrett -> Re: Tactile Defensiveness (May 8, 2005 3:18:00 AM)
|
“I actually find it is the touching that decreases a person’s defensiveness and until I do that, all the talking just makes things worse. I try to do my talking while touching. This seems to make things go much smoother for the both the patient and me.”
Jon Newman
Jon,
I hope you don’t mind my quoting your recent email this way, but I was pretty sure you wouldn’t-especially since I agree entirely and couldn’t have said it better. I see your last post contains this also.
I’m reading a new book, “Why We Lie-The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind” by David Livingston Smith. Great stuff and sure to generate an essay, but for the purposes of this discussion I will focus on Smith’s explanation of how deception, both from and of ourselves, is required to simply get through the day, and that we evolved as creatures inherently adept at both deceiving and detecting deception. The “social poker” we play all day long is acutely amplified on a verbal and non-verbal level throughout the course of history taking. Our personal ability to sense and perform on this spectrum varies wildly and can change even within us from moment to moment depending upon our focus, bias, intention and a host of other factors. Every clinician recognizes this dance.
But actually touching another takes this aspect of communication to another level. Every time I teach I walk up to a student seated on the aisle and touch them somewhere about the head and neck while I am speaking and within three seconds they begin to display their own movement toward a reduction in mechanical deformation. I have never, never encountered any “tactile defensiveness” in response, and, this has been my response in the clinic with virtually every patient for many years. If verbal and social preparation is so crucial to its avoidance, how is this possible?
My answer (today anyway) is that people aren’t afraid of touch. In fact, I think they crave it. What they are afraid of and what they sense quite distinctly is coercion. If this is the therapist’s intent, no matter how gentle, the patient will sense this and quite appropriately resist, defend against it and, in turn, become more physically defensive themselves. They are born with the instinct to do so.
But if your touch contains no intention to coerce, test or judge then another instinct emerges. And defensive activity disappears.
Guess what that is.
|
|
|
|