In a world shaped by screens, notifications, and constant digital interaction, one of the most powerful tools for connection remains profoundly simple: human touch.
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On a recent episode of Trust Me Mom, I spoke with author Alex Simakovsky about his book More Than a Touch: Rediscover the Healing Power of Handholding. What started as curiosity about a small, everyday gesture evolved into a deeper conversation about how touch shapes our nervous systems, strengthens relationships, and helps children feel safe and regulated.

After years of pandemic isolation and rising levels of what many experts call “tactile hunger,” Alex’s work feels especially urgent.

rom Childhood Instinct to Adult Afterthought

Alex’s inspiration for the book came from noticing how naturally children reach for one another. “In your youth, handholding is such an intrinsic, natural, almost everyday occurrence whether it's with a parent or with a friend” he explained. And then in adulthood, handholding becomes something that’s much less common. As we grow older, handholding often turns into a spontaneous or situational act rather than an intentional one. Alex began to wonder what might change if adults reclaimed it with purpose.

That question connects deeply to his upbringing. A first-generation American whose parents immigrated from the former Soviet Union, Alex grew up in a household centered on holistic wellness. His father worked as a chiropractor, a profession rooted in touch-based healing, and his mother helped run the practice.

“Chiropractic at its very core is a touch-based medicine,” Alex shared.  “This was very intrinsic to me growing up.”
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The Science Behind Touch

While More Than a Touch highlights handholding specifically, the book explores touch more broadly and its measurable effects on the body. Touch “affects how stress hormones are released,” Alex said. “Oxytocin, cortisol, and the balance of all these regulatory hormones are directly impacted.”

Research shows that consistent, supportive touch can calm the nervous system and reduce physiological stress. When touch is missing, the opposite can happen. Isolation, particularly during COVID, revealed just how deeply physical separation affects both emotional and physical health.
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“There are real benefits and real drawbacks when you’re lacking physical connection,” Alex noted. “Isolation has a very clear effect on human physiology.”

Touch as Emotional Regulation for Children

One of the most powerful sections of the book focuses on how parents can use touch to support their children during moments of anxiety, overwhelm, or emotional dysregulation. “There are exercises and practices that you could do with children when they’re going through bouts of anxiety or stress or having tantrums,” Alex said. “The book kind of mentioned several practices that I think are pretty impactful.”

One of those practices is hand-in-hand breathing. A parent gently traces their finger across the child’s palm in rhythm with the child’s breath. “It creates a sensory experience,” Alex explained. “It centers them, helps them understand their own breathing pattern, and it’s also a bonding moment in that window itself.”

For many children, especially neurodivergent kids, traditional breathing exercises can feel frustrating or inaccessible when emotions are high. Parental touch offers regulation without requiring verbal processing.

Another technique involves placing hands gently on a child’s shoulders during distress. “They’re going to feel that pressure on their shoulders,” Alex said. “And it’s just going to give them that little sense of separation from the moment and a little sense of relief from what they’re experiencing in that moment, to know that they are supported, they’re loved, and they’re not alone.”
 
The 30-Second Rule

One of the simplest but most memorable ideas in the book is what Alex calls the 30-second rule. “I think 30 seconds is a minimum amount of time we should devote to these types of practices,” he said.

That small window is often enough to shift the nervous system, whether between parent and child or between partners. It is not about grand gestures but about consistency and intention. 

Handholding in Adult Relationships

Touch does not lose its power as we age. In adult relationships, handholding can open doors to conversations that might otherwise feel impossible.

“I think holding someone’s hand in a difficult moment can open up a window to a conversation or to a dialogue that otherwise might be difficult, if not impossible to have,” Alex shared.

He recalled a personal moment from early in his relationship with his wife. “It allowed us to really reset in that moment,” he said. “It kind of showed to each other the devotion we have to each other, and from that moment, the whole conversation reset.”

In moments of conflict, touch can communicate safety and commitment before words ever do.
 
Cultural Lessons We Should Not Forget

The book also explores cultural approaches to handholding, particularly in parts of Southeast Asia and India where same-sex friends often walk hand in hand without stigma.

“This has always been a signifier of trust, of integrity,” Alex said. He points out that modern self-consciousness and cultural homogenization have caused many societies to abandon these deeply human expressions. “We should seek to preserve and enhance these very human interactions,” he said, “and not look to do less of them.”

Ancient art from Egypt and Greece depicts hands clasped as symbols of connection and loyalty, reinforcing just how historic and universal this gesture has always been.
 
Touch in a High-Tech Future

In the closing chapters, Alex brings the conversation into the present and future, shaped by AI, remote work, and digital-first relationships.

“We rely so much on conference calls, Zoom meetings, long-distance relationships,” he said. “How much of a grounding effect just reaching out and holding somebody’s hand could have in so many different scenarios.”

In his own life, that intention shows up in small, everyday moments. “We make it intentional,” Alex shared. “Even if we’re just watching a show after we put our kids to bed, we’ll try to hold hands while we’re watching the show.”
 
A Simple Gesture That Carries Real Weight

One of the most moving stories in the book describes a father and daughter whose relationship had always been loving but emotionally distant. In a single moment of handholding, that distance collapses. “That physical connection reminded her of that special bond that they have,” Alex said. “That’s the power of handholding.”

While hugs are powerful too, Alex believes handholding holds a unique place. “It’s a simple gesture,” he said, “but it carries so much weight and so much meaning in how it’s done, when it’s done, the situation, the moment that it’s done in.”

In a world that often feels fragmented and overstimulated, he leaves readers with a question worth sitting with: “Could we all be doing it with a little bit more intention to help us feel better and improve our relationships? Certainly with our children, this is a huge opportunity that we should all look at more closely.” 

“Talking about teens is one of my favorite things,” therapist and author Katie K. May told me at the start of our conversation. Katie is the author of You’re On Fire, It’s Fine, and her work centers on helping families understand what’s really happening beneath intense teenage behavior.
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In our conversation, Katie unpacked why some teens experience emotions as overwhelming and all-consuming, what parents often do (with good intentions) that accidentally makes it worse, and how to communicate in a way that builds trust, safety, and emotional skills over time.

Katie’s Story: Pain, Coping, and Breaking the Cycle

Katie’s expertise comes not only from clinical training, but from lived experience. She shared openly that she “struggled as a teenager,” raised by a single dad who “didn't have the skills to parent, let alone parent a fire-feeler, deep-feeling teenager like me.”

To survive, she used what she now recognizes as coping strategies –“self-harming, using substances, doing anything I could to escape the pain that I was feeling inside of me.” The turning point came in her mid-20s: “It wasn't until a surprise pregnancy… that I really had the motivation… to realize that there was a world that was bigger than the pain inside of me.” That realization led her into healing and eventually into the work she now does with teens and parents.

Who Are “Fire Feelers”?

Katie coined the term fire feeler because she “really wanted a way to illustrate for people who are not fire feelers what it is like to have the experience of having these big and overwhelming emotions.”

A fire feeler is a teen who feels intensely, reacts quickly, and takes longer to calm down. In Katie’s words, these are “your zero to 60 in 10 seconds flat kind of kids… and who take a really long time to calm down once they are triggered.”
And the internal experience can feel consuming: “The way that I describe this is that your feelings are so big that it feels like you're on fire with your emotions, that you're all consuming.”
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This framing matters because it shifts the lens. If a teen feels like they’re on fire inside, of course their brain searches for relief. As Katie put it: “It makes sense that a person's brain would come up with solutions to make that fire go out.” Those “solutions” often look like the behaviors parents fear most: “self-harm, self-destructive behaviors, drugs and alcohol, binging, scrolling, numbing out, lashing out, cutting off relationships.” And her reframe is crucial: “So what most people see as the problem is actually a solution for a fire-feeler who's overwhelmed with their own emotions.”

Why “You’re Fine” Can Backfire

Katie made an important distinction between invalidation and validation and emphasized that many invalidating responses come from loving parents who are trying to help.

Invalidation can sound like minimizing: “that's not a big deal,” or “everyone has friend troubles.” Or it can sound like quick fixes: “Go take a walk… take a nap… go get a snack.” These are well-meaning, but for a fire feeler, they can land painfully.

Katie used a metaphor that sticks: “It's so easy to make this feeling go away… it feels like a little squirt gun of water for this person. Like it's not helping make the fire go out.” Worse, the teen may internalize the message that something is wrong with them: “It's giving this underlying message that it is easy to make these feelings go away, but it's not for me. So, there must be something wrong with me that I can't make this go away.”

What Validation Actually Looks Like

Validation is not agreeing with everything a teen thinks or does. Validation is communicating: I see you. I hear you. Your feelings make sense.

Katie said it starts before words, with presence: “The first is just presence and paying attention.” She shared a memorable line from her work with younger kids that applies to teens too: “Your attention flows where your nose goes.”
In practice, that can mean pausing what you’re doing and showing you’re listening, even when the topic seems small. Because, as Katie reminded us: “They're not going to come to us with the bigger things if we can't show that we're there… for the smaller things.”

Then, scripts can be simple: “That sounds really hard.” Or: “We're just naming, we're paraphrasing and repeating back… I see that you're really sad about this.”

​Raising a teenager with big emotions can feel overwhelming, especially when nothing you say seems to help. In this episode (Season 2, Episode 31) available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, author and therapist Katie K. May shares strategies for how parents can help their teens. Katie introduces the concept of “fire-feelers,” teens who experience emotions intensely and struggle to calm down once triggered. Drawing from her own lived experience and years of clinical work using Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), she explains why common parenting strategies like minimizing, fixing, or pushing for conversations often backfire.

​The Escalation Trap Between Parents and Teens

Katie described a common dynamic where parents and teens unintentionally trigger each other: “We call it the transactional model and it's this idea that what I do or say influences you and what you do or say influences me.”

A familiar pattern: teen is overwhelmed and says, “leave me alone,” then heads to their room. A parent follows, thinking, “They're being disrespectful,” or feeling urgency to fix things now. The conflict escalates until it reaches “a crisis point.”
Katie’s alternative is simple, but not easy: regulate yourself first. Let things cool. Then return to problem-solve.

She summed it up with a line that applies everywhere: “I like to say that you can't teach someone to swim when they're drowning… you can't solve a problem when you're both flooded with emotions.”

A “Text Check-In” Instead of a Face-to-Face Blowup

Katie also offered a concrete strategy for reconnecting after cooling down, especially with emotionally sensitive teens who may “read the nuance in your facial expressions and your tone of voice.”

Her suggestion: “I like something called the text check-in.” And she gave the script verbatim: “Text check-in, hey, I'm a little bit calmer, how about you? Are you ready to talk about this yet?” The goal is collaboration, not control: “You're inviting them to be collaborative in when and how we problem solve.”

Validation and Boundaries Can Coexist

For parents with a more authoritarian background, Katie emphasized that warmth does not eliminate limits: “Having the ability to validate your teen… does not change the fact that teens still need limits and boundaries and expectations.” But boundaries work best when they focus on what you will do, not demanding a teen’s emotional performance. Katie offered a clear example: “Hey, I really don't like the way that you just talked to me. I don't feel good about that. I'm leaving the room when you're ready to talk to me in a different way.”

And she reinforced why: “Removing yourself from situations like that are going to be more effective than demanding a different response.”

What to Say When a Teen Shares Suicidal Thoughts

When the stakes are high, Katie was very direct. If a teen discloses suicidal thoughts, start with: “Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for telling me.” Then: “Mind your face. Mind your tone. be a calm presence.” If the teen has acted on an urge, the first step is safety: “We wanna make sure that we're getting medical or emergency support… as a first step to stabilize.”

“Trying to Hold a Beach Ball Underwater”

Toward the end of our conversation, we returned to a question many parents ask: how can teens feel intense emotions safely instead of suppressing or numbing them?

Katie’s answer was one of the most powerful metaphors in the interview: “It's like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. Like you can only control it for so long before it pops out of the water and you never know who it's gonna hit in the face at that point.”

She explained why quick-fix strategies are tempting: “We use these short term strategies to make emotions go away quickly because it works in the short term but it makes life harder in the long term.” The real work depends on capacity and safety. For some teens, emotions spike so intensely that moving too fast can increase risk. That’s why she focuses on skill-building and support: “wanting to make sure they have the right skills to manage emotions and then having the right guide, which in my opinion is a therapist, to help them build tolerance… over time.”

The Core Message: “Parents Go First”

Katie closed with a point she wanted parents to hear clearly: “I really like to drive home the point that parents go first.”
If teens are learning skills, parents have to model them: “It is a parent's responsibility to learn how to manage their emotions, to model better management of their emotions if they expect the same of their child.”
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And she added one more clear recommendation: “If teens are in therapy, parents need to be in therapy too so that they can all be working on feelings and skills together and separately.”