Touch in Therapy Heals: Why Hugs Truly Matter
*Please note that certain details in this story have been changed to protect client confidentiality.*
She couldn’t make eye contact with me for seven sessions. Maybe a glimpse, perhaps a half-smile, but she couldn’t meet my glance. The shame consumed her like an ill-fitted suit, but it seemed as if she had been born into this world wearing that suit.
I was new and very young in this profession, and I doubted my efforts. Why wasn’t she opening up to me? Did she want another therapist? What was I doing wrong?
This client was so soft-spoken and so slight that I had to lean in to hear her. Even then, I often needed her to repeat herself. Our infamous moment happened by accident, as most many life-changing moments do.
As she was recounting the events of her day, I asked if I could sit next to her on the couch instead of across from her. This suggestion wasn’t me being particularly intelligent or methodical- as usual, I just couldn’t hear her very well, and I didn’t want to miss a word.
But as our bodies sat together, she rested her hand on mine, and then, in that same breath, she said she wanted to tell me a secret. She then told me a detail of a story that had been tormenting every last fragment of her beaten-down soul. She kept her hand on mine for the duration of our time, and then she asked if she could hug me goodbye. I said, Yes, of course. Always. Thank you for asking.”
And we hugged. This moment happened in 2015, just two years after I began practicing, and I still remember the feeling of her arms wrapping around my back.
The Traumas We Face
At the time, touch in therapy seemed taboo. Maybe a handshake at intake, perhaps a cautious and tight-lipped hug at termination. But the contact always felt stiff, and it always felt awkward, and I always questioned if I’d lose my entire career.
This moment has profoundly changed the way I understood, related, and helped my clients. I think about the feeling of her hands in those sessions when a client and I are getting close to the vulnerability, when it’s sitting right between us, waiting, edging, hanging, gnawing with an insatiable hunger.
Both the client and I know when we’re ready to move to that space, but there’s still that untouchable fear of rejection and shaming. There’s still the terror that I’m going to hurt them like so many others have destroyed them.
We all know that most people don’t enter therapy when things are going well. It’s when things become intolerable and undeniable. Therapy is for last resorts and ultimatums. It’s the place you come crawling to after the relapse, breakup, or suicide attempt. And you still don’t trust that person will hold you safely.
I work closely with trauma- every trauma. I work with the kinds of traumas that belong in bad horror movies with underdeveloped plots and in graphic novels that only average three-star reviews on Amazon. They are the traumas that make everyone unanimously sick: child molestation, prostitution, gang rape, the type of domestic violence that puts people into comas. It’s trauma that should make me lose all faith in all humanity.
Most trauma comes down to three experiences: loss, fear, and shame. You ruminate over what you have lost (or never had), you fear what lies ahead, and you internalize the experience in such a way that makes you feel inferior, unworthy, and unlovable.
People cope with these reactions in a variety of ways, but most tend to avoid, displace, intellectualize, and deny them altogether. Many survive through some means of compulsive escape: drugs, sex, work, food, television, and any other cheap high that can seemingly numb the undeniable anguish. They run away from themselves- because that’s the only place you can run without being found.
When Unsafe Touch Is All We Know
Trauma inherently violates physical and emotional boundaries. It distorts logic, intensifies emotions, and defies reality. After enduring trauma, the world feels unsafe, and you don’t know who or what to trust. Most of the time, you don’t even trust yourself.
For most of my clients, touch is transactional. It’s a necessary evil, a means to an end, a form of either holding power and control or surrendering it entirely. Touch isn’t intimate, and it certainly isn’t nurturing. Maybe they enjoy parts of sex, but sex often has its attached strings and subtle implications.
These reactions aren’t exclusively trauma-related. Society reinforces the phobia and aversion to touch. We enter the world relying on it for survival, turning to our mothers for soothing and cradling. But as we develop and mature, touch becomes more and more limited. As young as adolescence, we limit the majority of touch to the confines of sexual intimacy. As we transition into adulthood, our touch remains incredibly limited- we often only share it with a partner.
We’re all starving for connection, but we don’t know how to give it, we don’t know how to receive it, and we don’t even know how to ask for it. Instead, we hire escorts and cheat on our spouses and pay for professional cuddling services.
Touch may not be what we crave. But we crave being seen, and touch is the tried-and-true catalyst for feeling visible.
Embracing Touch In Therapy
That first moment of healing touch happened several years ago. And after that session, after the breakthrough, my client started speaking with more confidence. Her eyes could gradually meet mine. We talked about her life, about all the parts that seemed far too terrifying to unpack. I always sat next to her on the couch, and she often rested her hand on mine.
And I noticed something different within myself: I started realizing how good touch felt. More hugs, more hands, more cuddles- and not just with my husband, where that’s expected. I started embracing touch with friends, with family, and with people who I love. Most of us who are starving for touch initially feel awkward receiving it, but with the right people, we find ourselves longing for it.
Because even though we want to complicate it, the work comes down to this: Touch is incredibly healing, and the experience of it often transcends language. All touch must be safe, appropriate, and consensual in every form of that term. And, in almost every single experience of touch in therapy, clients move into a more relaxed space (I call it “the melt”).
Unfortunately, most clinicians, terrified of liability and misinterpretation, avoid touch. The fears aren’t irrational- we’re a nation that loves to sue, and no professional wants to be branded with malpractice.
And so, most therapists remain stoic and rigid, sitting professionally behind their notepads. They use the right interventions and speak the right language, but they are missing the critical part: being a human who can see another human. There are so many barriers: the notepad, the coffee table, the stuffy clothes. There are so many things between the therapist and the person across from them.
I don’t think touch is always appropriate or necessary, but to use touch in the right moments is to harness true therapeutic intuition. When we therapists lean into a safe, nurturing touch, we engage in one of the most primal human desires: the desire to be nurtured. This is the root of all attachment needs, and it’s where most of us have experienced devastating deficits. While our inner children recognize these needs, the “tough” adult selves often ignore them.
Therapy is about healing and safety and comfort and compassion wrapped into one strange relationship. Most of all, it’s about connection, and clients with trauma want connection as much as they fear it. In her work on emotional responsiveness, Sue Johnson summarizes it best: Are you there for me? Am I there for you?
A hug can’t fully answer those questions because nothing can. And maybe a hug is just a hug, and maybe the connection would happen regardless. But, I stand by my experiences. Touch is universal. We need it, we want it, and when we can offer it safely and appropriately, it can be the gateway to healing.
