The Thinking Practitioner Podcast:

Episode 175: The Affection Question (with Kory Floyd)

Whitney Lowe  

Welcome to the Thinking Practitioner Podcast,

 

Til Luchau  

a podcast where we dig into the fascinating issues, conditions, and quandaries in the massage and manual therapy world today.

 

Whitney Lowe  

I’m Whitney Lowe

 

Til Luchau  

and I’m Til Luchau

 

Whitney Lowe  

Welcome to the Thinking Practitioner.

 

Til Luchau  

The Thinking Practitioner Podcast is proudly supported by ABMP Associated BodyWork and Massage Professionals, the premier association for dedicated massage and body work practitioners like you. When you join ABMP, you’re not just getting industry leading liability insurance; you’re getting practical resources designed to support your career, from free top tier continuing education and quick reference apps like Pocket Pathology and Five Minute Muscles, ABMP equips you with the tools you need to succeed and grow your practice. ABMP is committed to elevating the profession with expert voices, fresh perspectives, and invaluable insights through CE courses, the ABMP podcast, and Massage and BodyWork Magazine, featuring industry leaders like my co-host Whitney Lowe, myself Til Luchau, and the Thinking Practitioner listeners like you can get exclusive savings on ABMP membership at abmp.com/thinking. Join the best. Expect more from your profession. And you’ve heard us talk about Jane before, and we keep mentioning them as a sponsor for a reason. We’re selective about who we partner with. We want sponsors whose values align with ours and who genuinely serve this community. Jane fits that bill. They’re a practice management platform built specifically for health and wellness practitioners. Simple enough for solo practitioners, but powerful enough for clinics and groups, what really caught our attention is Jane’s reputation for customer service. Real humans available by phone, email, or chat, even on Saturdays. That kind of support is increasingly rare, and it says a lot about a company. If you’re looking to simplify the business side of your practice, check them out at a-t.tv/jane and Thinking Practitioner listeners can get a free first month by entering Thinking 1mO. That’s Thinking 1mO at checkout. Welcome back to the Thinking Practitioner. I’m Til Luchau, and today we’re turning towards something that sits underneath almost everything we do as body workers, but that we rarely name out loud the topic of affection, the simple, profound human need to be touched, cared for, connected to. My guest is Dr. Kory Floyd, professor and chair of human development at Washington State University, and one of the world’s leading voices on affection and human connection. His research blends communication, evolutionary biology, and physiology to show how affectionate touch shapes our health and what happens when we don’t get enough of it. He created affection exchange theory and wrote the Loneliness Cure, along with more than a dozen other books. And his work makes the striking case that affection isn’t a luxury or a nicety; it’s a biological need with measurable consequences for our health when we don’t get enough of it, and I I’ll be honest with you about the personal aspect of this. As I’ve talked about before here on the podcast, I lost my wife of nearly 40 years to cancer in 2024 and just a few months ago came through a difficult romantic breakup. So these experiences have given me a really personal, acute appreciation for the role that our work and affection and the relationships we have with each other, the role those can play in our clients’ loneliness and loss of affection. I think all of us can think of clients who come to us because of the human connection first and foremost, besides whatever physical or other complaints they may be seeking help with, so I’m looking forward to thinking about that larger topic out loud with you all and with my guest, Kory. Welcome. It’s good to have you here.

 

Kory Floyd  

I’m delighted to be here. Thank you.

 

Til Luchau  

Maybe we’ll start at the foundation. So, what does affection deprivation actually do to a person physically, emotionally, etc?

 

Kory Floyd  

Well, I’ve conceived of the idea of affection deprivation as that distance between the amount of affection that we feel like we need in our lives to be happy and to thrive, and the amount of affection that we actually receive, and if you’re lucky, there’s no distinction between those at all. You get the amount of affection that you need. You feel fulfilled in all of the things that that does for us physically, and emotionally, and psychologically. But for many people, that isn’t the case. They wish they had more affection in their lives. They feel deprived of those behaviors: hugging, touching, kissing, verbal behaviors, expressions of love. 

 

Til Luchau  

How widespread is that? Do you think? How do we know about how common that?

Kory Floyd  

Well, we’ve done we’ve done some population surveys. In the United States, at least, and found that it’s around about 40% of people report that they don’t get enough affection in their lives, or they don’t get the amount that they wish they did.

 

Til Luchau  

Interesting, and I would imagine that varies with demographic and age. Is age a factor? Speed. You’re from middle 60s. 

 

Kory Floyd  

Surprisingly, gender is not. Education is not. Age tends to be the primary predictor. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Even geography is not a predictor. So it doesn’t really matter where you are in the country. You’re sort of equally likely to experience it.

 

Til Luchau  

And so back to what it does to us what’s that? What’s that? What’s the big pictures description of what actually happens when we have that deprivation going on?

 

Kory Floyd  

The primary thing it does to us is it make us makes us feel less safe in the world. We feel less connected to other people, and therefore we feel less of that sense of safety that we have when our relationships are strong, when we have a solid attachment base to other people, and so when we’re deprived of affection, particularly if we’re significantly so, then we feel a real sense of vulnerability in the world, and we may become hyper attentive, we may become hyper vigilant to our safety, see threats in our environment when they aren’t actually there, and that can have really profound effects on things like our ability to sleep or the ability of our immune system to function properly.

 

Til Luchau  

So a lot of people come to bodyworkers. I’m still just digesting that 40% number, and the idea that age being a factor means that probably more than 40% of our older clients are going to be having some kind of gap between what they’d like and what they’re getting.

 

Kory Floyd  

Sure.

 

Til Luchau  

So a lot of people come to us seeking affection without ever naming it. I think that’s my theory. And how does your research support the idea, or doesn’t it, that touch from a practitioner and like a professional setting can meet that need continually? Meet an affection need.

 

Kory Floyd  

There’s a fair amount of research on at least on massage therapy that shows that it has some beneficial effects on our sense of loneliness, our sense of connection, and certainly it can help with a lot of the physiological effects that tend to go along with affection deprivation, things like sleep quality, immunocompetence, reduced chronic pain, things like that. But I think that to some extent, not too. not to an absolute extent, but to some extent, the body doesn’t really differentiate between touch received in the context of a close interpersonal relationship and touch received in the context of a professional relationship. Now, our mind can differentiate those, of course, I know when I go to get a massage that that’s not the same kind of touch that I get from an intimate partner. But to some extent, the body doesn’t make that same distinction. And the good news in that is that we really can benefit in a lot of the same ways as long as we feel like we are receiving that touch in a safe environment. 

 

Til Luchau  

The body doesn’t differentiate. You’re saying touch is touch.

 

Kory Floyd  

To the extent it doesn’t,

 

Til Luchau  

because we, you know, we’re learning so much about contextual effects of interventions and how much setting the stage and creating expectancy, all that kind of thing, leverages what we do. But you’re saying there’s

 

Kory Floyd  

there’s a decent amount of research that shows. Take the example of stress. That if I’m going through a stressful experience, like maybe I’m a child and I’m going to the doctor to get a shot, right? Very stressful experience for many kids. You know, many kids want to hold somebody’s hand during that time, and there’s an analogy I think to the way that that adults deal with stress there. And research shows that it is more beneficial to hold the hand of a parent or somebody that we care about than it is to hold the hand of a stranger. However, it’s still more beneficial to hold a stranger’s hand than nobody’s hand.

 

Til Luchau  

I get it.

 

Kory Floyd  

To some extent, those effects are additive. It’s better if the touch comes in a close relationship, but some touch, as long as we feel safe with it, is better than no touch.

 

Til Luchau  

I want to dig into the specific effects of deprivation, and your story about holding the hand made me think of a workshop I was in recently about free diving, going under water while holding the breath, and we were practicing on land, lying on our backs, relaxing, holding our breaths, and we did it. And then she said, “Okay, just hold the hand of someone nearby, and we didn’t even look to see whose hand we were holding. It was just somebody, and the time that we could hold our breath was measurably long. Context, just that sense of like I can be with this breath holding. I got some hand,

Kory Floyd  

yeah.

 

Til Luchau  

So here’s you know, let’s tell us a little more about the those effects. That’s as fascinating. You mentioned sleep deprivation, stress resolution. What are the other effects of that?

 

Kory Floyd  

Yeah, there’s a fair amount of overlap actually between the effects of affection deprivation and the effects of loneliness, so conceptually they’re quite similar. And I’ll go back to that idea that when we feel disconnected from others, or when we feel like we’re not getting the affection we need, we feel more vulnerable in the world. We feel like the world is a more dangerous place. So that hyper vigilance that causes us to see threat where it is where it doesn’t exist, or to interpret ambiguous signals like a facial expression as more threatening than they actually are. That’s a form of stress, a form of chronic stress that we sort of carry on our shoulders that entire time, and anyone who knows anything about stress knows it has far-reaching, both psychological and physiological effects on the body. It’s a it’s a very detrimental kind of experience to hold in a chronic sense because it affects our ability to function properly to dig. digest properly, to sleep properly, to heal from wounds. We don’t heal from injury as quickly, and not to mention the psychological effects. Of course, we feel more distress. We feel more less able to regulate our emotions in stressful situations. It has relational effects, of course. It it can contribute to prolonged conflict, for instance, or prolonged disengagement emotionally from a relational partner. There’s almost nothing about affection deprivation that is positive.

 

Til Luchau  

Wow, and you said it’s it’s comparable to loneliness. A lot of the same things apply. You mentioned stress as the common factor in so many issues and complaints, and certainly we’re very aware of that in our field, including pain and chronic pain. Stress being a contributor to that, but also the pain response itself. One way to conceptualize it being a protective threat deal, you know, threat handling, threat coping response. So this has lots of implications. We spend a lot of energy in our field in the education process, but in the certification process too, with caution, carefulness, boundaries around affection. It’s really important that this be handled in a way that is beneficial and not a threat to our clients, because these are very human things that are in our field. All that caution and care is necessary, but what? What if we switch the lens a little bit and to think of what we’re good at, not what we need to be careful about? How do we really own the power of what we offer without letting our carefulness eclipse that?

 

Kory Floyd  

One way I think about that question is that a portion of what body work offers is a sense of safety. I think of it maybe a sense of warmth within a structure, and so that structure can provide at least cognitively a sense of certainty, a sense of safety that I know when I go to a body work professional that what I’m going to receive I can lean into because I can feel confident that it’s not going to cross a line it’s not going to feel threatening to me and so I have the ability to lean into it in a way that sometimes people struggle with even within their personal relationships, right? Because relationships don’t necessarily have that same structure or offer that same certainty. And so, when you when you reframe

the question as what what are body work professionals good at? How can they lean into what their benefit is? That’s where my mind goes first. Is they can provide a structured sense of safety, where that touch and body manipulation that a client receives can be received, can be enjoyed, can be leaned into for its therapeutic benefit, largely outside of that sense of uncertainty or that sense of threat, that an affection-deprived person may be inclined, more inclined than normal, to see in social interaction.

 

Til Luchau  

That makes so much sense that the safety is the context that. Our work happens, and maybe that’s the essence of what we provide. And that structured environment is such an important part of what helps create it. I think in my own maybe personal development, but also in my professional work, I’m really asking the question: What is there besides structure that creates that experience? Because I spent working on ethics boards, teaching ethics courses at various schools, doing consulting in situations where boundaries had been a problem. I just I’m really aware of how important those are, but I’m also aware of how necessary they are, but not sufficient. In other words, that there is some essence there beyond just having a very structured approach that creates this sense of safety and affection. Yeah,

 

Kory Floyd  

yeah. You know, I’m not a body work professional, so it’s it’s I can only really address that I think in the abstract. It one thing that I think about is that I have a I have a mental health counseling background, and one thing that is very important and and and sort of repeatedly we’re repeatedly reminded of is the importance of conversation around these topics, that boundary conversation, that benefit conversation. What is therapy? What is therapy not? What is the relationship between you and me as a client and a professional? What is that relationship not? As a therapist, I’m not your friend. I’m not trying to replace that role in your life. This is a very different kind of relationship, and to some extent, there’s a parallel I think within body work. I know when I go to get a massage that the therapist is not touching me out of affection for me, right? It’s that that touch isn’t coming from a place of emotional attachment to me, it’s it’s coming from a a professional place, and and that doesn’t mean that that the therapist and I can’t have a warm, even affectionate relationship or connection to each other, but that isn’t the genesis of the behavior. Where in a personal relationship, it is same thing in in mental health counseling. You and I are talking about very sometimes very intimate things, sometimes very challenging things. I’m providing a sense of listening, a sense of feedback, holding space for you. But I’m not doing that because I’m your buddy. I’m not doing that because I’m your friend. The way that somebody who genuinely is your friend might do. I’m doing it from a therapeutic perspective, and so you know that structure is important as a starting point. I don’t think it’s a limiting factor. I don’t think it needs to be, and for me, at least personally, many of the the most positive body work experiences I have had have been in those therapeutic relationships that do develop a sense of familiarity, where the therapist and I may talk about personal things, and I feel like I get to know them, where I maybe even see them outside of that context socially, and so when I go in, what that does for me is not that it changes my framework for what’s going on in the therapy room. I don’t suddenly then start to think about that therapist as a friend and this physical interaction as something more intimate. What it does is it expands my sense of safety and my sense of engagement in the relationship that I have with that person, whether it’s a massage therapist, a physical therapist, a chiropractor, even a cuddle therapist. Right? If I have over time developed a sense of closeness and safety with that person. It just expands cognitively for me. The I’ll go back to the word boundary that I draw around that relationship in a very positive way. It expands it in a very favorable and meaningful way.

 

Til Luchau  

Yeah, you name some important things in there. As I keep, I like continue my inquiry of like what’s inside the boundary as opposed to what’s out of it. You mentioned you mentioned attention. We’re obviously talking about touch. What else would we put squarely inside that boundary that makes it so effective?

 

Kory Floyd  

So I think something else that’s in that boundary is is a sense of validation that professionals can provide for clients. One of the most valuable things that I can do as a therapist is provide validation for the experiences that my clients are going through. I find it very powerful. For instance, to say to a client, you know what? I think most anyone in your situation would feel the way you’re feeling.

 

Til Luchau  

Normalizing, nor dating.

 

Kory Floyd  

That’s right. That’s right. And so, whether it’s a physical limitation that a client is going through, or it’s their emotional reaction to that physical limitation, I think that that is something that, when a boundary expands, a good therapist can provide for clients. Is that sense that you know what? What you’re going through is very understandable. It’s very normal, and so let’s treat it that way. Let’s rather than treating it as something that’s coming out of left field, listening is certainly a part of attention, and I think a talented body work therapist also tends to be a talented listener. They tend to be relatively empathic. At least that’s been my experience. And also, I think if there’s a good sense of safety, if there’s a good what we call in the mental health field connection to or alliance with that client. We call it a therapeutic alliance. I think something else that can be in that bubble is an opportunity for a therapist to help a client explore new ways of experiencing their body, and that can look different, I think, to different clients. But it can be a way of-I hate to use the term-pushing boundaries, expanding clients’ experiences in a safe environment. I think of this particularly with clients who have had trauma, and so often with trauma, as you’re well aware, one thing that can be very difficult is navigating touch, is navigating being touched because it can feel very threatening. So once there’s a strong therapeutic alliance, even in a body work relationship, there’s an opportunity there for a therapist and a client to explore: Are there ways that we can expand your ability to process touch in a manner that may have felt more threatening to you a month ago, a year ago.

 

Til Luchau  

I think that expansion idea is really relevant. I mean, we could simplify it and say that in a reaction that’s an aversion or a pain response, we contract some somehow our attention, our safety zone, our muscles, and that a lot of our work as body workers has to do with willingness to expand. Whether our zone of pressure, like you’re describing, but it could be a range of motion, it could be duration. Any of those factors are or what we’re looking to schmooze, coerce. Not coerced is too strong a word. You

said push, and we took that off the table. It is this invitation or this creating a context where that expansion can happen from the inside, not from the class side.

 

Kory Floyd  

An invitation,

 

Til Luchau  

yeah.

 

Kory Floyd  

And I think it’s so important because, among other things, it has implications far beyond that therapeutic relationship, right? Just like validation, just like normalizing, just like listening, providing attention-all of those are beneficial within that therapeutic relationship. But they also have downstream effects on, as a client, say my ability to engage with people that I’m close to or people that I have emotional attachments with, I may come back to those relationships with a greater sense of self empowerment. Let’s say a greater sense of self efficacy, a greater comfort level to share my emotional experience or to receive touch in an affectionate context because of the work that has been done in that therapeutic alliance,

 

Til Luchau  

anything we know about affection and self-care-I mean, that’s such a key factor in the sustainability of what we offer-is a client’s willingness to treat themselves with affection.

 

Kory Floyd  

Yeah, can you say more about that question?

 

Til Luchau  

Well, there’s so only so much I can do in an hour or 90 minutes on the table, and a lot of the things people deal with, whether it’s on the emotional realm, say loneliness, or the physical realm, say knee pain, come down to be able to listen to oneself and make different choices in the moment. And that practice.

 

Kory Floyd  

I’m sorry. When you talk about self care, are you talking about self care for the therapist

 

Til Luchau  

or the client? We’ll get we’ll get to the therapist. Yeah, for the client. What role do we have in catalyzing or increasing the likelihood of self care?

 

Kory Floyd  

Yeah, I think a big role is is education, is bringing attention to that topic to begin. Because as many of us, it’s easy to overlook the idea that it’s even important. Let alone realize that we may have to learn how to do it. And so, again, there’s a parallel in counseling. We would call it psychoeducation, where in addition to treating you, I’m also teaching you about the struggles that you’re dealing with and ways in which they’re relevant and things that you can do about them when you’re not sitting with me. And I think there’s a really strong parallel to that in, say, the massage room where you can bring that to the forefront of a client’s experience and say, you know in between our sessions, here are some things that you might think about. Here are some things that you might consider as a way to help sustain and build on the benefits that you’re seeing from our time together.

 

Til Luchau  

There’s awareness raising, asking questions about you know sleep, body movement, things like that can really bring a client’s awareness into what is happening in their lives. Suggestion: psychoeducation, like you’re describing, is a really important piece. I have a personal hunch that there’s something less or something different than cognitive, non-cognitive. We’re doing too, where someone experiences themselves as the the recipient of affection, that they’re more likely to treat themselves that way too, just through some sort of expansion of their realm of possibilities. Yeah,

 

Kory Floyd  

I I would I would think the same. Yeah, I would think the same. You know, one thing that strikes me about that relationship is that, for some people, it may be one of the only spaces where they do feel safe, heard, seen, attended to, cared for in the way that a body work professional can provide, and I think to some extent, even if it’s not talked about, even if it isn’t brought to consciousness in that room, even at a subconscious level, there’s a manner I think in which I internalize the message that not only can I receive this in a way that’s non-threatening, not only is that possible, there’s benefit to me to do that, and so I may internalize that message of let me think about other ways in which I can replicate this space, this experience of connection, of safety, of feeling seen and heard and validated in my own life, because nobody can go to massage therapy every day, right? And so, I think the more I notice those benefits to myself, I might be able to clue in on my own. Even again, even at a subconscious level, that there are other ways, there are other avenues that I might be able to fulfill some of those same needs in my in my personal life.

 

Til Luchau  

It’s we’re talking about the client receiving affection. What about the other direction? What about the issues around a therapist receiving affection for our clients? Because that’s often the case too. Our clients are deeply appreciative and expressive of that appreciation, but sometimes it seems harder to receive that for practitioners than to give it. What can you tell us about that?

 

Kory Floyd  

Well, again, I don’t occupy that space, so take everything that I’m saying as the speculation that it is.

 

Til Luchau  

I think we can assume that a lot of mental health dynamics apply. Maybe not precisely, but we learn so much. I do see a

 

Kory Floyd  

lot parallel. Yeah, and and on that note, I think that I sort of have two parallel thoughts here. One is that in both body work professions and in psychotherapy, my guess is that there’s a certain sense of

self-selection into those professions. So, what I mean by that is that I don’t think a lot of people would go into massage therapy if they weren’t comfortable with touch to begin with, or people going into psychotherapy if they’re not comfortable with conversation and with listening and talking about difficult subjects. A certain amount of self-selection probably goes into those relationships, such that the people who enter those kinds of helping professions may have a facility with, in this case, something like affection or or interpersonal connection with other people that maybe is a little better than average. We may just be a little bit better than the average bear when it comes to the ability to make those kinds of connections. That’s one thought, but the parallel thought is that when one spends their day offering massage, doing physical therapy, offering psychotherapy. There also, and I’m again speculating based on my own experience in therapy. There also can be a sense that by the time I get done with my day, the last thing I really want to do is go home and listen to somebody else, or the last thing I want to do is go home and have my kids hanging all over me, or be getting a lot of touch. I might have this sense that I’m kind of touched out for the day, and that can sort of work against, I think, a therapist’s ability to get their affection needs met now, not in an absolute sense. There are other ways to give and receive affection besides touch. But I wonder to what extent, and again, I just have to sort of throw this question out speculatively: to what extent therapists in body work professions may feel that by the time they get home, I may not really have the motivation. I may not have the bandwidth to be particularly tactile with close relationships in my life, because I have sort of given everything I have in terms of touch, or as a therapist, I’ve given everything I have in terms of attention at the office. So those are those are two parallel thoughts, and in a way, they they sort of work against each other. We have this maybe higher facility to give and receive affection, and yet professionally, we do so much that is parallel to that. Again, it’s not genuine affection, but it’s sort of affection adjacent. That maybe we we don’t have as much bandwidth. I don’t know. What are your thoughts on on those options?

 

Til Luchau  

I’m really curious about that. Well, I want to share those, but I’m curious about that distinction between genuine affection and affection adjacent too. Can we unfold that a little bit, and then happy to share some more? What did you What did you mean in there?

 

Kory Floyd  

What I mean is that the things that we do in therapeutic professions very often approximate the kinds of behaviors that occur in close relationships? So for you, the touch; for me, the intimate conversation, sharing of secrets, things like that. One of the reasons in in psychotherapy, and this may be true in in body work as well, that so many clients have boundary ambiguity, that so many clients start to think of the therapist as a friend and treat them as a friend, as a personal relationship, is that the things that they do with that person when they’re together, they only do in their close relationships, and so there might be some extent in which the brain says to you, “You know what? You only act this way with your close attachments. This must be a close attachment, right? Yes. And so that’s what I mean by affection adjacent. It isn’t really coming from a place of affection. The behavior, it’s coming from a therapeutic genesis or perspective rather than an attachment perspective. But the brain can process it as if it belongs in the same category, because those are the things that it makes us think of. I’m treating you the way I would treat an intimate partner, or you are treating me that way. I guess more specifically, so this there must be intimacy here.

Til Luchau  

That’s right,

 

Kory Floyd  

and it can be that we in in in in in mental health work we call it transference. So the client starts to treat you as if you are a personal emotional attachment to them. I I think probably the same thing can happen in body work. So that’s what I mean.

 

Til Luchau  

Absolutely, and of course, counter transference where we start to think clients as intimate partners in some ways. So help me with this though, because this is really rich and important. The difference between genuine attachment and the attachment in a therapeutic context. I guess my way of thinking about it has been that it all love. There’s just a different set of boundaries or context or ways to manage that around that.

 

Kory Floyd  

Let me go back to the example I was giving before of massage therapists that I’ve had in the past with whom I develop something that really does approximate a friendship. So we may see each other socially, or we may talk about our personal lives and things that are going on in our lives in in the massage room. That’s wonderful as as an experience for a client. It makes me feel safer, more secure, more loved and and cared for in that relationship, and and for some therapists, I really have developed, I mean, genuine feelings of attachment for that person. That’s all wonderful, comma, and it should not change what that therapist is doing to me therapeutically,

 

Til Luchau  

and what we don’t do outside of-that’s right.

 

Kory Floyd  

That’s right. And I think that is-that’s the hook. That’s the underlying observation that even if I develop feelings for a client or they develop feelings for me, I still have a therapeutic obligation to that client, and that can’t or should not color the way that I go about doing my job as the professional, and it should not color the expectations that I have as a client for the massage that I’m going to receive.

 

Til Luchau  

You’re you’re making me think one of the fundamental questions in our work is whose needs are being served here, with the obvious answer being it’s about the client’s needs.

 

Kory Floyd  

Right, right.

 

Til Luchau  

And then you’re also making me think of an of something, and one of my teachers would say, Bruce Tift, he would say the purpose of boundaries is to keep our heart open.

Kory Floyd  

I like that. Yeah,

 

Til Luchau  

and that that’s we need the we need boundaries that are clear enough, definite enough, structured enough in order to keep the heart open. But the heart open is the point.

 

Kory Floyd  

That’s right. That’s right. In order to find safety within that boundary, even if it’s expanding, that again one can really lean into the benefits of that connection, both the client and the and the therapist, and I don’t, you know, I think that as long as professionals keep their focus on benefiting the client as it needs to be, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the idea that we as therapists also benefit often from that relationship.

 

Til Luchau  

Yes,

 

Kory Floyd  

you know why else would we be in the profession if if there’s not sort of something that that that draws us that that attaches to us in the work that we do that feels like it feeds our own hearts as well as provides the opportunity to be therapeutic for the client.

 

Til Luchau  

I’m aware of research that shows benefit to the giver of affection as well. Oh gosh,

 

Kory Floyd  

yeah, and actually, we have shown in my own research that at least when it comes to health, the the size of the effect of the benefit is actually larger for the person who’s giving the affection than for the person who’s receiving it.

 

Til Luchau  

That’s I yeah that’s fascinating, and I think most of us have experienced a time, or maybe every day when our practice is really where it should be, of feeling better at the end of the day. And oh gosh,

 

Kory Floyd  

yeah, absolutely, absolutely,

 

Til Luchau  

and still having the attention on the client’s needs, still working within these contexts that let us lets our hearts be open. That’s a

 

Kory Floyd  

yeah, that’s a perfect illustration of what you were saying of your heart being open within that structure, so that the structure isn’t ambiguous. You know what you’re there to do, and because you know that,

and because you have a clear sense of structure and a clear focus on the client, you are free as a therapist to lean into the benefits that you receive as well. I think that’s a really beautiful thing.

 

Til Luchau  

Thank you. Yeah, that’s that’s the essence. That’s it. A couple other details I want to make sure we can touch on before we wrap up. Your work has suggested that there’s a right amount or a right zone of affection that you can have a deprivation, but there can also be an excess.

 

Kory Floyd  

That’s right. Is

 

Til Luchau  

there something you can tell us about that? Yeah, I mean, you gave the example of like going home, the practitioner touch saturated and not wanting to touch anyone. Is that along those lines?

 

Kory Floyd  

Well, it is, but that’s a state. So I may be touched out today, but maybe not tomorrow. When we talk about that that sort of zone of of. Where touch is is beneficial for us, it’s really more of a trait. It’s really more of an individual difference, such that you know I know people, you know people, who you know seem like they can’t get enough touch. Like hug me more, and I’m I’m probably one of those people. I would be on the far end of the continuum.

 

Til Luchau  

I’m raising my hand too, by the way. 

 

Kory Floyd  

Exactly. And there are people on the very extreme other end that are sort of touch averse, and not only do they not need much touch, it’s harder for them to process for a variety of reasons. But we all have that zone where you know below this is too little, but above this is too much. And one of the key concepts in my theory of affection is that both of those extremes are aversive. It’s sort of intuitive for us that getting too little touch is aversive. The the the sort of counterintuitive idea is that you can have too much of a good thing. That there is a point at which it’s not just a sense of diminishing return. It’s that actually beyond that point, the more touch or affection we get, the worse off we are. So that

 

Til Luchau  

beyond a relation

 

Kory Floyd  

actually changes direction at that point.

 

Til Luchau  

Can you give us an example? How does that?

 

Kory Floyd  

Well, yeah, go up

 

Til Luchau  

and rule the world. Yeah,

 

Kory Floyd  

when people, again, it’s an individual difference. So you sort of have to know the individual. But yeah, I’ll give you a concrete example. I gave a talk on this not long ago, and a woman in the audience came up to me after, and she said, “Okay, so my husband, I just, I’m always wanting him to hug me more, kiss me more, hold my hand more, put his arm around me more, and he just doesn’t. And I’ve tried everything, and I’m ready to just put my foot down and demand it. What should I do? And I said, “Well, I can understand why that might seem like a good strategy to put your foot down and demand it. Please trust me that it it isn’t. It won’t be for you because you need to respect your husbands or anybody in your life, you need to respect that we all have a range of tolerance, and you may have a much higher threshold for something like touch than your husband does. So, what’s going to happen if you start forcing it and flooding attention, hugging him, holding his hand when he’s not comfortable with that, is that that that induces a stress response in him. It’s not stress alleviating in the way that positive affection is. Affection that occurs within that range makes us feel better, makes us feel safer and more love. It feels like an attack, like an incursion, like he’s being violated. If you are forcing that behavior on him, you’re inducing a stress reaction, and thus, again, like we talked about before, all of those problems that follow from that. So that is not the right way to get somebody to expand their their range, as it were. Now the good news is that when we’ve done population studies, the percentage of the population who feels chronically excessively touched is quite narrow. It’s only about four to 5%

 

Til Luchau  

compared to 40% Maybe that’s right. Yeah. So

 

Kory Floyd  

deprivation is a much more common experience. Feeling overwhelmed with affection not particularly common, and it can be more episodic. I I have read some research that shows that this is a a common experience for a period of time after people become parents, that there’s a period when they can feel like again just touched out.

 

Til Luchau  

Yes,

 

Kory Floyd  

I need my space. Mommy needs her space. You know, you kids go somewhere else. I need a period of time when you’re not clinging me on me, touching me, hanging on me-that I can feel just a little bit overwhelmed. But that tends to be episodic, and after a period of time, we may outgrow that. It doesn’t necessarily become chronic for us.

 

Til Luchau  

That’s that’s great, and it suggests to me that the attunement is even more important than the delivery, in a way. 

Kory Floyd  

It is so much, and surprisingly or unsurprisingly, I’m not sure how this will strike you, but we find that in many close relationships and many marriages, for instance, there can be a significant difference. In that range, in the higher threshold, in the lower threshold, it doesn’t surprise me because, to a very large extent, that range of tolerance for us as individuals is, if not determined by, then at least conditioned by the family of origin, the family that we grow up in, and so I may come from a very affectionate family and marry somebody who didn’t, for whom touch is just I don’t particularly need it, or it feels stress-inducing to me, so I shy away from it. It feels threatening, whatever it might be, or I have a very high need for it, even higher than mine, where somebody can feel very insecure if I’m not hugging them and touching them constantly. So two people can come together in a relationship with quite a different set of expectations for that. 

 

Til Luchau  

I think that’s probably my personal experience, but also the people I know and talk to. That’s very common, and negotiating those differences is a part of what makes a relationship. 

 

Kory Floyd  

it is so important to do that. Yeah, it’s so important to talk about, and it’s also so important, I think, for both people when there is that kind of discrepancy to be not only attuned to but respectful of the other, so I’ll go back to the example of the woman in my audience, ready to demand affection. That’s not respecting that individual difference in, in this case, in her partner, but sort of demanding that they acquiesce to your individual difference, to the way that you are, and sometimes it’s easy to do that, and sometimes we do that without even realizing it. But being attuned to the fact that we may come into this relationship with very different experiences and very divergent expectations, that is just going to be a part of us growing together,

 

Til Luchau  

and I think in a in a client practitioner relationship, we’re attuning all the time as with touch, like how much pressure, how fast. That’s

 

Kory Floyd  

right. That’s right. And

 

Til Luchau  

there’s also you know, do you want to talk? Do you not want to talk? All these and the amount of disclosure, all that’s being adjusted, listened to, and adjusted, yeah, functioning relationship.

 

Kory Floyd  

Absolutely, that can be done through conversation. It can also just be done through being attuned to the way that a client’s body is reacting to you.

Til Luchau  

Yes,

 

Kory Floyd  

I think that you know, I think that talented therapists are are highly attuned and adjust on the spot.

 

Til Luchau  

People talk about that all the time. How it’s amazing on the table when a practitioner, you get it that they feel they’re listening to your body.

 

Kory Floyd  

That’s right. They get

 

Til Luchau  

you. It’s almost as

 

Kory Floyd  

if you’re in conversation with the body.

 

Til Luchau  

Yes,

 

Kory Floyd  

through a tactile medium.

 

Til Luchau  

That’s right. And you, as the clients are hearing us, listen to them, and that act is part of what is amazing on the client side.

 

Kory Floyd  

That’s right of being

 

Til Luchau  

acutely listened to, very tuned to. Okay, I heard you mention somewhere a couple interesting thoughts. One, touch being the first sense to develop, and that’s pretty. I’m pretty familiar with that idea, but some say, and you mentioned this, that it’s the last sense to degrade or to fade away. What does that tell us about how essential touch is? Because those are key moments in life when we first are developing, and then our exit as well.

 

Kory Floyd  

Yeah. Well, I think it for me. What it underscores is that of all of our senses, touch is the most critical to our survival. So we can, and many people do, live without the ability to see, or live without the ability to hear, or during COVID, many of us lived without the ability to taste or the ability to smell. But without the ability to touch, we would constantly be susceptible to threats in our environment. We would constantly

be susceptible to injury and infection and things that really are life-threatening. So. to me, that’s what that underscores is that of all of our sensory abilities, the one that is truly the most essential to our survival is our tactile ability.

 

Til Luchau  

Very true. So, and after all your research, all the thinking and writing you’ve done about this. What do you most want our listeners to remember about the power of what they offer?

 

Kory Floyd  

Oh gosh, if I have to narrow it down, I’ll repeat something I alluded to before, which is that. What people in many helping professions, including body work professions, offer is something that so many clients may not experience anywhere else in their life. You have the opportunity to create a space that may that may be genuinely unique in that client’s experience. You are the only one who listens to me. You are the only one who is attuned to the way that I’m feeling or responding to you. You’re the only one who sees me, and whether the client actually says those things to you or not, it still may be very true. And I found great value in the psychotherapeutic space in reminding myself of that, even if I don’t know it to be true for certain, even if the client hasn’t told me that, I find great value in reminding them that this may be the only space where this client feels validated, where this client feels attuned to and seen and cared for. Now it may not be, but if it is, what a privilege that is for me as a professional, and also it underscores what a responsibility that I have. What an opportunity, maybe that’s a better way to say it, that I have to provide that meaningful sense of connection, of safety, of certainty, of of love, we’ll go back to what we talked about before for that person. So, I think it’s it’s it’s it’s an awesome responsibility in many ways. But it’s such a great if we want to keep our hearts open to a client, it’s such a great opportunity to say that whether this is your only space in which you feel this way or not, I’m going to make sure it feels this way. I’m going to do everything I can to help co-create that space for you. So yes, there’s benefit in the touch and the pressure and the manipulation, all those things, and also there’s just great benefit in the space that we are co-occupying for this hour.

 

Til Luchau  

Beautiful, what a powerful ending. Now, what a powerful touchstone or home base to return to, also for us as practitioners. That if there’s doubt or we’re not sure what to do or what’s helping, returning to that simple affection and being willing to own that word even and describe that to what we offer is a powerful place to call home base to go back to.

 

Kory Floyd  

I think so.

 

Til Luchau  

So this thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us, and it’s given me, and I think probably a lot of our listeners, the encouragement to take that aspect of our work more seriously-the affection piece, and something as something powerful and worth doing well, and something to manage carefully. Well,

 

Kory Floyd  

let me let me turn that around and thank you and your listeners for what you do. This is so important, and and such a it’s such a great opportunity, so I I quite appreciate the invitation to be here and talk about these things with you.

 

Til Luchau  

Thank you so much for the time, and to everyone listening, if this has landed somewhere tender for you, I don’t think you’re alone. That might be exactly the point. Corey’s book is the Loneliness Cure, Corey Floyd, and you can find his research at coriflood.com. Thanks again for joining us today.

 

Kory Floyd  

Quite welcome.

 

Til Luchau  

This episode was also brought to you by the Academy of Clinical Massage and my co-host Whitney Lowe’s newly-evolved orthopedic medical massage specialist program. If you’re a soft tissue specialist, you deserve a path to becoming a respected clinical expert with a practice that’s both financially rewarding and physically sustainable. That’s exactly what Whitney and the Academy of Clinical Massage are help here helping you build. Whitney has completely redefined advanced continuing education with a heavy focus on personal learning, an interactive, self-paced path that adapts directly to your unique clinical background goals and interests. It’s designed to function as a complete practice accelerator system. You’ll master evidence-informed assessment protocols, unlock the revolutionary real-time clinical reasoning tools, and build the precise skill set required to solve complex pain conditions with confidence. Visit academyofclinicalmassage.com to start your personalized learning journey, and you can do this with an easy pavement plan as well. Whitney would love to have you join, and I can tell you from working alongside him all these years that you’ll be in very good hands. Thanks to all our listeners. And to our sponsors, stop by our sites for the show notes, videos, transcripts, and extras. Whitney’s site, AcademyofClinicalMassage.com. That’s AcademyofClinicalMassage.com. My site, Advanced-Trainings.com. We want to hear from you with your ideas or input about the show. Email us at info@thethinkingpractitioner.com or look for us on social media and YouTube under our names. My name Til Luchau, my co-host Whitney Lowe, and we would really appreciate it. Both of us and the sponsors would really appreciate it if you would rate us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, as it really does help other people find the show. So please take a few seconds to go do that. Thanks, as always, for sharing the word and for telling a friend.