Inter-Partner Touch in Spiritual Care and Couple Counselling

1. Inter-Partner Touch in Spiritual Care and Couple Counselling A Review of the Literature and Future Implications Martin Rovers PhD Cassandra Petrella MA Michael Machen MA

2. Touch and Love • Born in love, or not • A baby in our parents arms • Growing in love, or not • We each have a wound or two! • Falling in love • A babe in our lover’s arms • Re-creating, repairing, healing love • The work of love • Held in LOVE • Home to God

3. Touch defined • “Touch, for the most part is a proximal sense. That is, we feel those things that either are close to us or actually contact us”. (Cholewiak & Collins, 1991) • Montagu (1971, p.1) explains “The skin, like a cloak, covers us all over, the oldest and the most sensitive of our organs, our first medium of communication, and our most efficient of protectors.” • Sue Johnson says touching, caressing, stroking and the emotions there evoked “are the royal route to love”.

4. Inter-Partner Touch defined Inter-partner touch will be the term used for the touch which occurs between partners in the helping relationship session. Touch between couples can be eye to eye contact, hand to hand touching, embracing or hugging.

5. Human Development • Touch is first experienced in the womb. The child is held by the contents of the womb and the warmth of the mother’s body. • Harry Harlow’s rhesus monkey experiments. • Rene Spitz’s study with human orphans. • Tiffany Field: Massage therapy leads to 45% weight gain in premature infants. • Nicolas Gueguen: teacher back patting doubles the likelihood of a child speaking up in class.

6. Attachment Security • “Touch is the language of attachment” (Montagu, 1971) • Bowlby`s early research (1969) was looking at children her were separated from their parental proximity when hospitalized. • Felt-security • Proximity seeking • Early experiences of touch and later couples relationships .

7. Communication • Touch gives a person information about their physical environment. It is a means of environment to person communication. • It is also a means of person to person communication. • Touch expresses ones inner emotions to a partner. • Dachner Keltner – touch expresses emotion, especially compassion

8. In times of distress • Interactional emotional regulation. • Inter-partner touch can reduce a partner’s anxiety while a partner is enduring a currently stressful situation. • MRI study of couple hand holding (Researchers Jim Coan and Richard Davidson)

9. Spiritual Growth & Connection • Touch has for centuries been used by spiritual healers to promote mental and physical health healing. It was one of the earliest forms of medicine before the pharmacological revolution. • Spiritual rituals involve inter-person touch • Touch creates connected among beings • “laying on of the hands” • Study of touch therapies / Reiki leads to participant spiritual experiences. • Touch can create a more spiritual connection between the couple and for each individual.

10. Touch Therapies • Humanistic therapy – therapist to client touch. • Couple therapy: EFT, PACT • Reiki / massage therapy • Touch with sexual abuse survivors. • Prayer and touching.

11. Touch and Couples Counselling • Integration of touch in couples with one partner of past sexual abuse. • EFT: - Enactments in EFT – eye contact, “turning to your partner”, often promotes comforting actions between partners • How do you get close? We already know that couples who aren’t physically touching or intimate are more disconnected from each other. • Solomon & Tatkin - touch interventions in therapy

12. Future Implications • Potential to expedite process of therapy. • Provides comfort through the emotionally demanding process of therapy. • Increases connection and bonding. • Promotes safety and secure attachment between the couple. • Heals attachment wounds through new secure attachment development and a more dependable sense of security. • Security enhancing interactions lead to pro-social beliefs about others.