Hug: why it is a powerful emotional regulator (according to psychology)

Human beings are “social animals” by nature – as the philosopher Aristotle reminded us – and we like the closeness of people, touching, hugging, kissing. And we not only need it to feel good, but also to develop as people because from the moment of happiness in which we perceive the light and arms lovingly surround us, we become fully human.

But, Why does receiving a hug make us feel so good and comforted? This subject has been widely studied from psychology.

The hug and its balsamic effect

in the heat of primal hug – that of the mother to the baby life unfolds. When holding her baby, the mother secretes oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone”, so important because it causes the “rising reaction” of milk during lactation.

In this video you can see common situations, including hugging, which can help us release oxytocin.

Tender touch helps not only in feeding the baby, but by releasing oxytocin, which also increases considerably during childbirth, contributes to the creation of a “early linkbetween the two, which makes their survival possible.

We all know that midwives tenderly place the newborn baby on the mother’s chest and the heat emanating from contact with her body produces in him a deep balsamic effect. In this way, they manage to mitigate the stress of the childbirth experience and rebalance cortisol levels in the blood, which is the hormone that the body secretes in abundance as a physiological response to stress. The baby feels like this a pleasant sense of well-being that helps him little by little to adapt to his arrival in a new world.

The hug is an emotional self-regulator

Psychologists have discovered that this release of oxytocin through pleasant touch when it occurs in adults helps us powerfully to emotional self-regulation. So when we are going through a moment of anguish and stress, hugging someone is an easy way to comfort the person and get them to calm down, but yes, for oxytocin to be released, the hug must last more than 8 seconds.

Psychiatrist Marián Rojas Estapé recounts the anecdote of how she experienced that magical sedative effect when after suffering a spectacular and frustrated robbery attempt, she came home with adrenaline through the roof and found that it was her turn to breastfeed her baby, she threw her bag aside and when she got to work she discovered how to hold it tenderly in his arms he suddenly calmed her.

It was at the beginning of the last 20th century when the meticulous study of the importance of affective contact and adequate stimulation in human development began to be put on the table.

It’s known that The sense of touch is a complex reality and develops in the maternal womb from the eighth week of gestation. Our sensory experience of touch is the result of the integration of the activity of the systems responsible for processing pressure, temperature, joint position, muscle sense, and movement.

The hug and the hospitalism syndrome

Pleasant tactile sensations act from the moment of birth as a primitive organizer of the psychic apparatus and help in our evolutionary development after differentiate between the border of the inner world and the outer world, between the me and the you.

One of the most important pioneers in the study of upbringing and mental development in young children was the Austrian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist René Spitz, a direct disciple of the great Sigmund Freud.

Spitz studied the importance of adequate stimulation in early childhood, physical contact, affection and love. as a catalyst for proper child psychological development that allows its evolutionary maturation. For this, he focused his observations on how care and assistance activity was developed in orphanages and hospitals where there were children who had either been abandoned by their mothers or were orphans.

And, he described the dramatic consequences of offering babies a impersonal, routine and rigid formal care, with poor stimulation. Then they started talking aboutHospitalism syndrome”. And, its psychological consequences were meticulously recorded in institutionalized children who became:

“Dehumanized beings, some got sick, others died or went crazy unless they found someone before, after a critical period, the child ceased to be receptive to love.

Hugs and anaclitic depression

hugs nourishcarry emotions and is the nonverbal first language that we process through the body and nervous system.

That is why affective contact is vital for our personal balance. Without it, not only do we not develop properly, but we disconnect from life and die. The children developed what was called Spitz “Anaclitic Depression”As adults, we simply feel low and depressed, this weakens our immune system, which increases the risk of getting sick.

During the pandemic we have all understood better than ever that just when we are going through moments of great vulnerability, when words are too small and useless to express the immeasurable magnitude of what we feel, hugs, human contact comfort us and we do not feel it at all just like through a screen.

Perhaps for this very reason, not being able to meet, touch and hug each other during this pandemic has made it rough and tough, more difficult for many to face and bear. The iron restrictions brought suffering in the sad and limited farewells of funerals, in the cold isolation of hospitals, in the helpless solitude of our elderly in residences and in houses converted into isolation cells.

Hugs and hunger for contact

We have discovered that we can’t live on pictures as this society advocates us and that affective distance disconnects us and devitalizes us.

Already, Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute in Florida, mentioned an effect that she observed in an increasingly technological society and it was the “contact hunger”. He coined this expression to reflect people’s unsatisfied desire for greater social contact and concluded that the social relationships in which we touch each other are important for emotional well-being.

But we also know that we can reverse the deficiencies so the magic hour has arrived fill the tank of affections and feel the joy of hugging, kissing, touching each other again. So let’s get together without delay to feel and celebrate life again with a “big hug”.