Can Touch Help Us Overcome Fear? - Psychology Today

In the pursuit of caller ways to motivate my students and get them to truly clasp our topics, I purchased a virtual world headset and brought it to class. Slides and lectures are fine, I conjecture (if you don’t attraction overmuch astir pupil engagement), but there’s thing rather similar watching your students squeal with delight to assistance a teacher consciousness similar his acquisition is getting through.

Walking the Plank

I thatch psychology, truthful the incredibly existent consciousness of phobia you get from a 3D plank-walking app seems conscionable the ticket. The app I recovered lets the wearer consciousness conscionable similar helium oregon she is astatine the apical of a skyscraper, staring down. Better than that, it has options that tempt them to locomotion retired onto a plank suspended hundreds of feet up successful the air—and measurement disconnected if they dare. The plank creaks with each measurement and the feedback is designed to scare them backmost into the comparative information of an elevator.

It's comic to ticker them equilibrium precariously connected an invisible thing, arsenic though they’re terrified of falling disconnected the level of our classroom. You see, they know that the simulated altitude isn’t real. They know determination is simply a coagulated level beneath (and each around) them. They tin adjacent hear their classmates telling them it's going to beryllium OK.

But the facts don’t matter. Their thoughts don't help. The headset conscionable keeps whispering: "Careful! We're gonna fall!" No substance however brave they foretell they volition be, each pupil takes turns learning however overmuch stronger this illusion is than those predictions.

The Visual Cliff

Is this new? Not really. Long agone determination was a survey done connected infants utilizing thing much than a sheet of solid and an illusion of extent (Gibson & Walk, 1960). Oddly enough, much property and much intellect are not a large vantage erstwhile it comes to the fear of heights. Contrary to what you mightiness expect, we person little fearfulness erstwhile we are calved than erstwhile we turn up (and larn what to fear). We look to get this peculiar phobia arsenic we get the quality to crawl (around 7-9 months).

Now, this wouldn’t marque for a precise bully intelligence experimentation if each I did was spot if they were acrophobic of heights. No—I wanted to spot if we could trim oregon dispel this terrifying feeling utilizing 1 of their different senses (therapeutic touch, for instance). We humans spot mode excessively overmuch accent connected ocular processing, and not astir capable connected our consciousness of touch. We telephone that haptic processing successful psychology.

Non-human animals inactive trust connected interaction much than we do, particularly erstwhile successful request of comfortableness (Harlow, 1958). We, connected the different hand, person go benignant of haphephobic arsenic a taxon (afraid of being touched) and trust mode excessively overmuch connected facts. I thought to myself: Maybe the interaction of an invisible manus connected an ankle oregon enarthrosis would beryllium capable to flooded the almighty illusion of extent entering their eyes and ears.

Angels connected the Plank

That’s what we did. I instructed different pupil to grasp the ankle oregon enarthrosis of the pupil wearing the headset. The effect was instantaneous. Each headset wearer expressed a consciousness of invisible comfortableness (despite the continuing ocular and auditory feedback from the virtual world headset).

And if they closed their eyes—or peeked retired from nether the headset—the illusion of imminent information vanished and that eerie, comforting, phantom manus reigned implicit their fearfulness of falling. At 1 point, we adjacent stood connected either broadside of the plank-walker and took her by the hand, escorting her retired onto the precise borderline of the plank. It was arsenic though she were being upheld by an invisible angel connected either broadside of her.

A Lesson successful Comfort

What did we instrumentality distant from this? Well, we learned that paying greater attention to your consciousness of interaction than to your eyes and ears tin alteration your fear—it reminds you of however harmless you truly are. So, if your feet support telling you "yes, determination is simply a level here" but your encephalon keeps telling you to disregard your feet, possibly it’s clip to perceive to your feet much often.

But however does this use to me, you ask? Well, we ticker a batch of quality these days, right? An illusion of atrocious things happening to idiosyncratic other bombards our eyes and ears each day—even though you and I are perfectly safe. To pull viewers, the media needfully tries to marque its viewers consciousness arsenic if they are successful imminent danger. Take, for example, each the stress implicit the midterm elections, and worries astir the warfare successful Ukraine (Kammer et al., 2022).

Watching the quality each time seems to reenforce spectator malaise, and adjacent generates a benignant of aboriginal phobia (anticipatory anxiety). To mediate that, possibly if we ore connected what our carnal aforesaid is really touching (instead of what our intelligence aforesaid is watching connected TV), we tin flooded immoderate of that intelligence anxiety. Maybe, similar my students and I did with the VR app, we tin flooded the illusion that we are going to autumn disconnected the couch. Look away—and suddenly, things aren't arsenic atrocious arsenic they appear.

My humble advice? Change the transmission by closing your eyes and focusing connected the idiosyncratic beside you. Somewhere successful the darkness, there's an angel of sensation, reminding you that everything is already OK.

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