The art of emotional caresses goes beyond mere physical contact, is to caress the soul with a glance, is to speak tenderly to a child to tell him?I’m proud of you, aren’t I? I care about you, I respect you and I love you ?, it’s the music that gives our emotional brain the breath to learn to value itself.
Eric Berne, psychiatrist and founder of Transactional Analysis, has defined emotional caresses as basic recognition units that seek above all to stimulate individuals. We are talking about a type of transaction, a wise exchange in which we write a type of language that acts as a true food for this delicate psycho-emotional universe that sustains and defines us.
- As much as we defend our independence or this occasional pleasure of loneliness.
- People are social beings by nature and.
- To survive.
- Grow in happiness and security.
- We need these kinds of stimuli: emotional caresses.
- However.
- And here is the real problem.
- We remain today humble apprentices of the emotional world.
Because as we already know, there are those who save energies and wills in so-called reciprocity, there are also those who for some reason think that they are not worthy to receive them, and there are, of course, skilled architects of negative emotional caresses. , those made by sarcasm, contempt and indifference.
The same thing that a child who is not assisted or appreciated by his parents receives, the same as a person feels when he does not receive affection from his partner, a topic with many nuances that we want to delve into this article.
Affection, like respect, does not need physical contact to be demonstrated or validated. Emotional caress, for example, is also exercised in the workplace with this manager who delegates his trust in his workers, who strengthens them or values them with words of admiration. respect and gratitude. In fact, as Bern would say, this kind of act builds the fundamental unity of any social act that each of us should be able to apply.
The wider the repertoire of emotional caresses we dedicate to others and receive in return, the more enriching and skilful our coexistence will be; however, in this society with so much modern knowledge, people lose the ability to connect with the gaze, to make a verbal reinforcement, to offer a just word when necessary. From now on, emoticons are our biggest reinforcements, which we usually overuse.
We must be able to develop an emotional ecology to create more sustainable scenarios related to knowledge, reciprocity, empathy and respect, children, for example, do not need emotional caresses only from their families, schools and educators must also be intuitive in this type of experience. to address common dimensions such as frustration, isolation or insecurity.
Similarly, organizations and businesses should be able to create more favourable climates where recognition and value of human capital stimulate employee creativity and productivity.
Emotional caresses should flow between us as the serenity of a warm wind passing from here to here on summer afternoons. In peace, enlighten those who need it, give wings to those on the ground, draw the smile of those who until recently felt only bitterness.
Claude Steiner, author of the famous book?Emotional Education ?, touched on an aspect that deserves to be taken into account: just as there are people who do not know how to offer emotional caresses, there are also those who simply believe that they do not deserve them. at any time and for whatever reason, they have stopped stroking therself, that is, they have stopped courage, fueling their self-esteem.
This type of behavior is part of what is known as the “scarcity law”; that is, the person does not ask for positive caresses and does not reject negative caresses, when in reality we should all live in the opposite world governed by the “law of abundance”, in which:
Emotional caresses are above all the art of appreciation. To value someone is to show a “you exist for me, you are important”.
However, and it is important to know, emotional caresses also have their dark side, from now on we are no longer talking about art, but about aggression, and this would be represented by the following actions:
However, for our peace of mind, in humans there are more positive than negative behaviors, because after all, this is how we survive as a species: offer affection, tenderness, attention, consideration?So you never get too much to remember what the principles and benefits of emotional caresses are:
Main image courtesy of Claudia Tremblay.