If a person is feeling into the truth of something in their body, then someone else touching their body, even when it’s intended to comfort and help, can have the opposite effect of denying them that process and the valuable, felt, experienced information it brings with it.
There is an art to sensing when, on the one hand, someone’s emotional state is too much for them and so physical comfort adds a useful resource benefit to them (Love-Generating Touch), and when, on the other hand, people are able to handle and process their emotions and our attempt to physically comfort them interrupts that process for them (Process-Breaking Touch).
And of course that includes whether or not we’re someone they’d want to be touched by anyway, and other basic principles of consent – see The Boundaries Exercise.
This Specific Binary Table shows whether we were effectively tuned into the other person, and (often) the sincerity of our own motives. Maybe it was ourselves we secretly wanted to comfort, or gain attention or affirmation for.
| Love Consciousness Swipe Left | Fear Consciousness |
|---|---|
| Love-Generating Touch | Process-Breaking Touch |