Emotional Caresses Are the Best Food for the Soul

The art of emotional caresses goes beyond simple physical contact. It implies caressing the soul with a glance, it means talking to a child tenderly in order to say “I’m proud of you”. It’s an “I’m thinking about you, I respect you and love you”. These caresses are the music that gives our emotional brain the air it needs to learn how to value another person.

Eric Berne is a psychiatrist and the founder of the Transactional Analysis. He defined emotional caresses as the basic units of acknowledgment that seek to, above all, provide individuals with stimulation. We’re talking about a type of transaction. A wise exchange where a type of language is used that acts as authentic food for that delicate psychoemotional universe which defines and sustains us.

“And I have reached the decision that if scars teach, so do caresses.”
-Mario Benedetti-

No matter how much we may defend our independence or that occasional pleasure provided by solitude, human beings are social by nature. In order to survive, in order to be happy and secure, we need this kind of stimulus: emotional caresses. However, and here is where the real problem lies, to this day we continue to be humble apprentices of the emotional world.

As we already know, there are those who skimp on the energy and the will needed for reciprocity. There are also those who think, for whatever reason, that they are not worthy of receiving them. And there are many skilled architects of negative emotional caresses, those of sarcasm, contempt, and indifference.

The same ones that a child receives when he is not cared for or valued by his parents. The same kind that someone feels when they don’t receive affection from their partner. It is a topic with many nuances, one which we wish to delve into with you today.

Emotional caresses are on the endangered list

Affection, as well as respect, don’t require physical contact in order to be shown or validated. Emotional caresses, for example, can also be given in the workplace when, for example, a manager shows trust to his workers. He reinforces or values them with words of admiration, respect, and gratitude. In fact, just as Berne said, this type of act constitutes the basic unit of every social activity that each of us should know how to apply.

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is not educating at all.”

-Aristotle-

The wider the repertoire of emotional caresses that we dedicate to others and which, in turn, we receive from them, the more rich and skilled our coexistence will be. However, in this society, so indoctrinated in modern knowledge, we are losing touch with our ability to connect with others with a simple glance. We can no longer make verbal reinforcements or offer a just word at the right moment. Now, emoticons are our biggest conversational reinforcements, which we sometimes rely on excessively.

We should be able to develop an emotional language to show acknowledgment, reciprocity, empathy, and respect. Children, for example, don’t only need emotional caresses from their families. The school and their educators should also be intuitive in this type of reinforcement which halts common dimensions such as frustration, isolation or insecurity.

Likewise, organizations and companies should also be able to create more favorable climates of acknowledgment and value towards employees, at the end of the day, encourages creativity and productivity.

Caressing yourself, caressing others

Emotional caresses should flow between us like a warm breeze that blows around on a summer afternoon. In tranquility, illuminating whoever might need it, lifting up he who has fallen, drawing smiles on the faces of people who not long ago felt only bitterness.

Claude Steiner, the author of the well-known book, Achieving Emotional Literacy, addressed an aspect that’s worth keeping in mind. There are people who don’t know how to offer emotional caresses. Furthermore, there are also those who quite simply believe they don’t deserve them. These are people that, at a given time, and due to whatever reason, stopped caressing themselves. That is to say, they stopped valuing themselves, stopped feeding their self-esteem.

This type of behavior fits into what’s known as “the law of scarcity”. That is to say: don’t ask for positive caresses and don’t reject negative caresses. In reality, we should all live in that opposite world governed by “the law of abundance”:

Offer positive caresses.
Also, accept them.
Be capable of asking for positive caresses.
Be capable of rejecting negative ones.

The art of knowing how to put emotional caresses into practice

Emotional caresses are, above all else, the craftsmanship of valuation. Valuing someone is showing them that “You exist to me, you are important”.

That reinforcement manifested through a compliment, a thank you or even through a consolation, favors the validation of that person’s self-esteem. It also favors their cooperation in society. Therefore, we all win.

However, and this is good to know, emotional caresses have a dark side. Here, we’re no longer talking about art, but instead aggression. It would be represented by the following actions:

Using emotional caresses as a form of psychological manipulation.
Making use of hypocrisy as a tool to exert power or achieve a certain objective.

However, and to put your minds at ease, human beings have many more positive behaviors than negative ones. Because, at the end of the day, that’s how we survive as a species: offering affection, tenderness, attention, consideration…Thus, it’s always good to remember what the principles and benefits of emotional caresses are:

Emotional caresses can be offered at any moment, place or time.
They are cheap, easy to offer, and produce great side effects.
They are above social classes, age, gender, and race. It is a universal currency.
They are the best antidote against fear, frustration, doubt, and any other psychological problem.
Emotional caresses promote good mental and emotional health and well-being. Without a doubt, they are the best food for the soul.