Thursday, February 7, 2013

Huggery

We learned in our training this weekend that hugs are important.  

Eminent US family therapist, Virginia Satir, regularly made a startling claim:

“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”

Well, I told ThatManILove that every statement, and every day, we’re trying to give/get 12 hugs from each other.

Day 1?  We rocked the casbah.  Laughed every time.

Day 2?   We got all 12 in, again.  

Day 3?  I think we had hugged twice, so far, by evening.  Our day, yesterday, went kind of crazy.  He got up with me at 4:30 a.m., and went to the gym with me.   It had been a rough day on each of us, individually.  Lots of meetings, etc., super different schedules.  So, again, by 7:30 p.m., two hugs - not even enough for survival, according to Satir. We had a bunch of catching up to do, and ended up making a concerted effort to get all of our hugs in for the day!  And...it helped us have a really good healthy conversation, too, about some stuff we needed to resolve.  I’m liking this hugging stuff!

But really, it’s kind of become a game. We’ve hugged good morning, we’ve hugged good night.  We’ve even hugged in the middle of a conflict.  I may have to invent a meter for measuring hugs.  Think that will work?

So...today is Day 4.  As soon as we get home from the gym, I’m going to try to snag four or five hugs...so we can get a head start on the hug-o-meter for the day.



I love Hagen's cartoons!!

So, go!  Hug somebody!!

3 comments:

  1. Great advice. We're big huggers here, too. I hope, though, that no sweaty people hug you at the gym!

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  2. Um, any bonus points for length of hug?

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  3. I agree whole heartedly. I love to hug. But the police seem to frown on it…especially when the women scream and yell stop. It’s getting where I can’t go outside anymore until the bruises heal from the beat down. It seems not everyone enjoys a good hug.

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