Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (49 page)

Pulling back from your partner’s touch is a common but self-defeating way of trying to get control of yourself. It is a losing strategy that makes ticklishness more likely. It breaks contact with your partner, physically and emotionally, and makes his touch less definite and predictable. You need the exact opposite: You need to feel that you can control where you’ll be touched. You can’t do that if you’re “protecting” yourself. It’s hard to turn off your emotional radar and come down from “red alert,” but you can do this in a collaborative alliance.

If you remain ticklish to predictable, firm touch, your mind and body are probably really tense. Your tension level changes your subjective experience and can make your partner’s touch noxious, no matter what he does. So take a deep breath and relax your stomach and buttocks. Tension creates shallow, rapid breathing that leaves you feeling “sucked in”—withdrawn into yourself, suffocated, and afraid to breathe. Stretch out your body. Remind yourself that you are not being attacked, and that your personal space has not been invaded.

Tensing up offers no protection, increases your reactivity, and makes your partner more likely to overreact. Take more time to calm yourself down, even if you don’t want to or don’t feel you need it. Calm your mind and relax your body, but don’t shut your partner out. You’ll need a collaborative alliance when you resume in a minute, and he’s more likely to be patient if you don’t withdraw from him.

If you do what I’m suggesting, you won’t be ticklish when your partner touches you firmly. As you relax more and your ticklishness wanes, ask him to lighten his touch, so that you can work through another layer of ticklishness.

Your brain is great at detecting deception and discrepancies, and discrepancies increase ticklishness. You want to experience your partner’s
touch as coming from an “insider” rather than an “outsider.” To do this, track your partner and map his mind.

Once you read that his feelings and intentions are positive, your limbic system can relax. You can better control the perceived magnitude of things if they don’t catch you unaware. Your prefrontal neocortex can kick in “executive functions” to regulate your emotions, reactivity, and startle-response. That’s how you turn off your anticipatory negative reaction and decrease your ticklishness. It may sound like scientific gibberish, but lots of people need this, including those who don’t consider themselves to be ticklish.

Colleen became ticklish when Anthony’s hand simply moved toward her genitals. This was caused by a hardwired mechanism in her brain: Anticipation of noxious stimuli activates the same part of your brain as the tactile stimulation itself.
¹⁹⁰
Anthony didn’t understand this. He complained when Colleen pulled away before he even touched her.

Colleen was extremely ticklish when Anthony touched her between her legs, particularly when he touched her labia or played with her pubic hair. She usually stopped him at some point, if she let him do it at all. By that point, if they continued to have sex, Colleen had no sexual desire. She had hard feelings and no alliance with Anthony. She knew how Anthony’s mind worked while they lay there in silence. Innumerable similar sexual encounters killed any desire when she thought about having sex.

To dampen Colleen’s anticipation of noxious touch and give her something new to map out in Anthony’s mind, they used a method I developed called
palm over groin
. A person’s touch always communicates where his mind is (or isn’t). Particular styles of touch convey different messages. You can reverse this to signal to your partner that you’ve changed your mind. I knew that the mind-frame Colleen needed to see in Anthony could be conveyed with a particular kind of tactile stimulation.

When Colleen was ready, Anthony placed his palm
covering
her genitals, with his fingers on her pubic hair. His pressure was definite and
gently firm. He wasn’t trying to stimulate her pubic area by pressing down (at this point). He was telling Colleen that she didn’t have to worry about him trying to open her labia or putting a finger inside her. When touching a man, cupping his penis with one or both hands accomplishes the same thing.
Palm over groin
has been indispensable in helping women and men who have noxious sensations when their genitals are touched.

At the outset, Colleen didn’t believe this would work. Maybe she wouldn’t be ticklish when Anthony touched her stomach, but she was certain it would start when they got to her crotch. The first time they tried it (Colleen did it to prove me wrong), it still worked! Colleen’s ticklishness didn’t surface at all. Anthony took his time, focusing on not triggering her ticklishness rather than on bringing her to orgasm. Colleen pressed her pelvis into Anthony’s hand. They kept their collaborative alliance throughout the interaction.

Afterwards, Colleen asked Anthony, “So what’s it like to have a collaborative alliance in the palm of your hand? I never thought of having one in my vagina.”

Bemused, Anthony said, “I’m not sure. I’ve never had one before.” The shift in Colleen’s state of mind stunned him.

Palm over groin
gave Colleen the feeling of being in control of herself. Anthony made it clear he would move forward only when she was ready. He was focusing on what he was doing, but even more so, he was focusing on Colleen. He wasn’t doing this because I told him to; this was between the two of them. Colleen didn’t push him away, and Anthony tried to be with her. He let her map his mind so she would know he
wanted
her. Colleen started to believe she might get over being ticklish.

Palm over groin
made it easy for Colleen to map Anthony’s mind. The style of touch broadcasted his intent. She could see his intent lined up with his behavior. He wasn’t just being patient; he seemed invested, satisfied with what they were doing, and genuinely happy. Had she detected the slightest discontinuity among his words, his emotional demeanor, and his behavior, Colleen’s brain would have gone on red-alert. This would have categorized Anthony as an “intruder” and increased her ticklishness.

In our next session, Colleen said, “I’m actually surprised I can stop my ticklishness when it happens. I didn’t think I ever could. I’m more hopeful it will get better. I don’t expect perfection, but will it ever stop?”

“Resolving ticklishness in the moment has a cumulative benefit. But facing issues that keep you chronically tense and anxious also reduces your predisposition.”

“Can you help me with this?”

“Maybe. For instance, what do you think about when Anthony touches you and you’re ticklish?”

Without moving a muscle, Colleen suddenly became unreadable. “I don’t know what I think when I’m being tickled.”

“I think you know what you’re thinking when you’re ticklish. And I don’t think you’re thinking about being with Anthony. I’d guess you’re not with him at all.”

Colleen was wary. I hadn’t seen this cold, hard side of her before. “You mean I’m thinking about something else? Or I’m fantasizing about someone else?”

“I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure you’re not thinking of you and Anthony as a team. You’re not thinking of the two of you as a unit.”

“I get pretty hysterical sometimes. Maybe I’m not thinking anything.”

“Colleen, you have being tickled many times by your family. You probably thought about it between times. So when it happened repeatedly—or when it’s happening with Anthony—it’s not completely unfamiliar to you. You’re having lots of feelings about what’s happening. I’ll bet you think the same things with Anthony that you thought with your family. You don’t have to tell me, but let’s not treat you like you’re brain-damaged or screwed up.”

Colleen’s shot me a discerning look. Anthony interjected, “Doc, maybe she really doesn’t know.”

“Colleen, you can have control of this situation. Just do it openly. Just say you don’t want to talk about it.”

Colleen looked down at the floor. Then she looked over at Anthony and bit her lip. Then she looked at me. It looked like she was about to take a leap of faith.

“I’m thinking,
You’re doing this to me again, aren’t you? You are so selfish. You don’t care about me. You only care about yourself!
I’ve thought it so often it’s a litany in my mind.”

Colleen’s disclosure hit Anthony like a bombshell. In the aftershock, Anthony’s first reaction was embarrassment for being so stupid. Colleen could play his game and beat him at it. He hadn’t recognized she was covering up and keeping her mind from being mapped. Although Anthony had screwed his share of women, he had no first-hand experience of
being with
a woman in bed. Because he had so little experience of positive emotional connection, he didn’t realize something was missing. Anthony looked at Colleen. He was clearly unsettled but not out of control. Ruefully, he said, “I should have guessed. When we have sex, I’m an attacker doing something to you and you’re fighting me off.”

Colleen didn’t say anything. Anthony paused long enough to clarify this was her response. “I guess that captures how I feel too. I feel like you’re constantly fighting me off. I never let myself really think this through … I guess you see me the same way I saw my family.” Anthony slumped in his chair, staring at the carpet.

“I
do
feel like I’m fighting you off, but I’ve been afraid to say it.” Anthony nodded in woeful agreement, still staring at the floor.

I said, “You’re having these feelings about Anthony. But these are
your
thoughts and feelings, so maybe they are about
you
.”

“What do you mean?” The woman who had taken the leap of faith and spoken up vanished and the
I am someone who needs careful handling, I am delicate, be careful with me
Colleen reappeared.

I spoke slowly and gently. “I said before that your thoughts with Anthony were probably the same as when your family tickled you and you hated it. Back then did you ever think,
You’re doing this to me again. You are so selfish. You don’t care about me. You only care about yourself!
?”

After several seconds Colleen said, “Well, yes.”

“How often?”

“Often.”

“Pick a number.”

Tears ran down Colleen’s face. “A hundred. Hundreds! I lost count!” Finally, thankfully, she relaxed and convulsed into sobs.

After a few minutes I said, “Those were moments of great anxiety and meaning. The kinds where, scientists think, your brain wires itself interpersonally. They’re called ‘moments of meeting.’”

“Are you saying those thoughts are wired into my brain?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not those thoughts exactly, but maybe those themes. We don’t really know exactly how it works. But you were having powerful emotional and physical interactions—powerful enough to trigger involuntary reactions in your brain.”

Colleen nodded. “Does this mean my thoughts and feelings about Anthony have nothing to do with him?”

“No. He’s doing things that trigger those kinds of thoughts and feelings. When you have these reactions toward him, it’s personal. But maybe that’s not the only reason these thoughts and feelings come up. Maybe your mind is predisposed to go this way, like a groove in your brain.”

Colleen was predisposed to see Anthony and their relationship in ways that triggered her own ticklishness and pushing away. Now she feared he would be angry to learn her family dynamics set him up to be the bad guy. But Anthony’s dominant reaction was relief. He thought back to times he felt Colleen was seeing him as trying to control her when he wasn’t.

Colleen went into a slump after our session as she considered her past and the possibility that it had affected how her brain functioned. It took several days for her to pull herself out. When she was functioning better she suggested they make love. This was a pretty big move because they hadn’t had sex in three years. This time Anthony and Colleen made sure they were together, and dealing with Colleen’s ticklishness was their first priority. They did
hugging till relaxed
and
heads on pillows
for a long time and reached a deeper, quieter connection then ever before.

If you’ve never experienced sex without anxiety, you don’t know the difference. You assume whatever you’ve felt is inherent in the act. Only
when your anxiety drops
below
your baseline do you realize, in retrospect, how anxious you were.

Colleen had difficulty recognizing how truly anxious she was because she didn’t
feel
nervous. You can carry a whole level of anxiety you don’t even know is there. You can’t see your anxiety because it’s what you grew up with. When you’re wondering who’s going to be the family’s next tickle victim, you get accustomed to constant anxiety. You’re nervous when you see it coming—and when you don’t. This kind of anxious home environment shapes how your brain lays down its neural connections. Colleen repeatedly had anxious thoughts and physical anxiety when her family tickled her.

The same was true for Anthony. He didn’t like thinking about how his parents had tickle-tortured him, or his disappointment in them, but both existed in the previously existing holes in his autobiographical memory, things he “sort of knew but never really thought about.” On the surface, Anthony didn’t look at things analytically
or
emotionally. His view was that he just didn’t think or feel much about these things. In truth, he avoided making meaning of his past experiences.

However, working on ticklishness brought up a wealth of vivid memories, perceptions, and feelings that fleshed out both their childhoods. As we worked back and forth between reducing ticklishness in real time and reprocessing prior experiences, Colleen and Anthony were able to relax together physically and emotionally. Their lives made more sense to them in ways that grounded them, and they felt more in touch with themselves. It was as if their minds no longer needed to be organized around
not
remembering things. They recalled a host of events as vivid images and visceral reactions (right brain autobiographical memory retrieval), sifted through the details (left brain analytical thinking), and then integrated this into a fuller picture.