Holding Hands Reduces Pain Because Our Brains Link Up
We know instinctively to hold someone’s hand when they are in pain. It seems the kind thing to do. And it really does help. Holding someone’s hand reduces the amount of pain they feel—a phenomenon known as tactile analgesia which, until recently, has been a bit of a mystery to science.
There are plenty of theories on how tactile analgesia works, but not much concrete evidence. One obvious idea is that our attention shifts away from our own pain to the person holding our hand. Another is that hand holding provides reassurance of social support and safety. Survival instincts are not best served by being alone when injured. Fear increases our perception of pain levels and so having someone hold our hand can help reassure us of our safety.
All well and good, but hand holding is far more interesting than this.
Studies show that the type of touch which is most effective at reducing pain is skin to skin contact and is even more effective when the person holding our hand cares about us. Pain is reduced more effectively when the hand holder feels empathy.
Social neuroscientists are fascinated to know how this works, so they have been unpacking the details.
The first thing they tested was whether we can tell how someone is feeling just by holding their hand. We can. In fact, we can discern a whole range of emotions via skin contact; not necessarily consciously, but in a way that is registered unconsciously. This is one of the fundamental assumptions of therapeutic bodywork—that we can communicate emotion via silent touch—so it is good to finally have scientific research catch up.
One of the ways scientists measure our emotions is to record the changes in electrical conductance across the skin and so skin-to-skin contact provides a means of direct emotional communication. Until now it has not been established experimentally that we sense other people’s emotions via skin contact.
A new piece of the jigsaw is that when we place our attention on someone, our skin conductance come into synchrony with theirs as our emotions coordinate—a phenomenon known as interpersonal physiological synchrony. If they feel positive, we feel that same positivity. Certain hormones can amplify this effect, for example, feeling affection releases the hormone oxytocin which strengthens physiological synchrony between us.
What researchers have now found is that when we are in skin to skin contact our brains also hook up—there is interbrain coupling meaning that our brains process information in the same way, coding, and decoding in coordination such that we experience a shared perspective. We start to think in the same way. But we also start to feel the same way and it is this brain coupling that is now thought to reduce our perception of pain.
All this from the simple act of holding someone’s hand.
[For a more detailed exploration of somatic empathy see my new book ANOTHER SELF (UK book, US book)]
References