A New York woman took to social media to plead for help with a crisis she says she is facing called touch starvation.
TikTok user Mayte Lisbeth broke down in tears as she told viewers on the platform about her mental dilemma and sought advice. Lisbeth said she longed for affection but had not had a meaningful hug in five years.
“I am really struggling with something, and I wanna talk about it,” she said before giving a disclaimer that her statement would not connect with people who are overstimulated by children or are sensitive to touch.
“I feel I am dying from touch starvation, y’all. I don’t – this isn’t. I don’t – I don’t get hugs. I don’t know. I feel like if I were to get the kind of hug that I f–king really want, I would crumble into pieces. I don’t know how do you deal with that. I really like, like need to be like touched.”
Lisbeth’s video went viral on TikTok, and it was also reposted by other users on Twitter and Reddit. Nearly 23,000 people commented on the TikTok video, many of them were in support of Lisbeth and offered her words of encouragement and advice. Many users on Reddit and Twitter also shared their own experiences and thanked the woman for being so vulnerable with her feelings.
“This breaks my heart, both because it resonates and because seeing another person being so vulnerable and raw is, for me, an emotional experience,” wrote one user.
Although the emotional video drew empathy and compassion from viewers – some offering to give Lisbeth a hug — it also sparked debate over the cause of her feelings.
According to Webmd.com, touch starvation, also known as touch deprivation or skin hunger, is a condition caused by the lack of physical touch. The condition became…
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