The Power of Holding Hands

I feel like I am holding a big secret that can literally change your life! Yes I am dramatic… but indulge me! Here is the story…

At some point in the last few years I heard about a study by James Coan, from the University of Virginia, in which heterosexual couples were invited into the lab to see how hand holding effects the feeling of stress and threat. The wives would receive a small electric shock and wore electrodes on their ankles and watched screens that warned them when a shock was coming or assured them that they weren't due for a shock. Meanwhile, the researchers scanned the wives' brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 

As predicted, when the wives knew they were due for a shock, their brain scans showed activity in brain areas that handle threats. But when the wives held their husbands' hands during the same threat, their brain scans looked calmer than when they weren't holding hands. The wives were also tested while holding the hand of an unseen stranger. While holding the stranger's hand, the wives' brain scans were less calm than while holding their husbands' hand, but calmer than while not holding anyone's hand.

Recently I have been insisting that my couples hold hands when discussions get heated in their sessions with me. I have seen a bit of resistance and even had one couple refuse, but the majority find the conflict diffuses way faster and is less likely to explode.

When couples are in conflict, their brains are often in flight or fight mode, high alert… feeling threatened and in danger. If couples could calm down and feel less threatened, they would have space again to use their problem solving skills.  One way to think about it is that handholding frees up neural “bandwidth,” allowing the brain to focus on things other than potential dangers. 

A few days ago I started to feel curious… was this just my antidotal experience? Were there any studies, more quantitative and scientific that backed up my gut feeling? 

From Jakubiak & Feeney’s study of 140 couples in 2019: 

“In a set of experiments, we tested whether a touch intervention would remind partners in a couple that they are interdependent or overlapped, make them feel secure, and ultimately allow them to avoid stress and behave constructively during the conflict. 

In our first experiment, we assigned couples to hold hands (affectionate touch) or to hold weights before and during a conflict discussion in the laboratory. As expected, participants assigned to touch affectionately engaged in more constructive conflict behaviors (coded by objective observers) and experienced less stress (self-reported and observer-rated) during the conflict than those who held weights. Holding hands also had a unique benefit for people who tend to struggle with their relationships.  For those people, touching helped them behave less destructively during the discussion.”

It seems that the simple act of hand holding when arguing can reduce stress and facilitate constructive ways of arguing: touching reminds couples that they are on the same team!

Touch also has notable biochemical effects. Hand holding results in a decrease of the stress hormone cortisol, says Matt Hertenstein, an experimental psychologist at DePauw University. "Having this friendly touch, just somebody simply touching our arm and holding it, buffers the physiological consequences of this stressful response," Hertenstein says.

Affectionate touch causes us to release oxytocin, a hormone that is involved in bonding. Touch prompts the release of feel-good endorphins. "Oxytocin is a neuropeptide, which basically promotes feelings of devotion, trust and bonding," Hertenstein says.

Researchers with the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Haifa report holding hands with a loved one causes brain waves to fall into sync. The more synchronized the brain waves between partners, the less pain a person will feel. Synced brainwaves mean partners feel a greater sense of connection and empathy for one another. The study also found that the more empathy a comforting partner feels for a partner in pain, the more their brainwaves fall into sync. And the more those brain waves sync, the more the pain goes away.

Now you have even more reasons to hold hands…

Are you looking for help with your relationship? Do you feel that a relationship coach could help you working on your couples skills? Is communication an issue? Have you ever considered couples therapy or counseling? As a psychotherapist and relationship coach, I am uniquely positioned to help you through these moments of disconnect and conflict.

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