Mental Health Blog

Touched by an Accident
Written by Roanne DeGuia-Samuels, LMFT

I managed to roll out from under my father’s green 1984 Mitsubishi, my sky-blue kindergarten uniform torn at the hemlines. I called him kuya for just about three days; he was my father’s new hire, an inexperienced driver who didn’t know how to use the handbrake to keep the car from rolling onto a five-year-old kid.

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I heard a shriek, and even without seeing her face, I knew it was my mother’s. Frantically, she pulled my small body from that dark cave that smelled like dirty gas fumes. I could hear loud panting coming from her chest—did the shriek come from there?

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Fortunately, the car rolled slowly, but it must’ve crushed one of my hands under its tire because they trembled like the leaves of the makahiya at the most subtle touch. Moments later I was changed into clean clothes and in bed, my mother caressing my forehead. I don’t remember her ever using a thermometer to check for fever; instead, the maze-laden veins in the palms of her hands acted like a stethoscope. They listened to my body when words were inaccessible to me.

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Some details of that accident escaped me, except three things. First: the piercing, angry look in my father’s eyes when he learned that kuya, the driver he trusted with his wheels, couldn’t be trusted with his own daughter. Second: I couldn’t manage to open any doorknobs for a few days because of my twisted wrist, so someone else opened doors for me. Third: the memory of my mother’s hand gingerly brushing my forehead, the back of her hand feeling the side of my face, and both her hands alternately caressing my chest with Vicks.​​​
 

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Haplos ng Pagmamahal (Touch of Love)

There’s a running joke that Filipinos (and other islanders) use Vicks from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads. Even after living in America for 25 years, you won’t find me with kids and a backpack absent of my Vicks. I keep the jumbo in my luggage for far-away trips and the travel size in the allotted 7x8 ziplock for carry-on bags that no TSA staff can deny entry to. The only exception is when I’m traveling to the Philippines—Vicks peddlers are everywhere, from the lolas in the neighborhood to the smallest sari-sari store.
 

There have been articles that debate the scientific lack of proof for this translucent, sticky menthol stuff—used melted in hot water as a decongestant or dabbed on the soles of your feet at bedtime to curb fever into oblivion. I don’t disagree with the science (or lack thereof); instead, science has misunderstood the Vicks phenomenon.
 

If Vicks were delivered through a patch or a wooden popsicle stick so that my mom wouldn’t get her hands sticky, I doubt Vicks would have reached its popularity. It’s not Vicks but the hand that delivered the touch to ease pain, suffering, an ailing body, or a lonely soul that made the relief possible. It was my mother’s touch that eased my trembling wrist—the same touch that probably quieted the loud panting in her chest.
 

Touch was a quiet conversation between our nervous systems.
 

Mine and my mom’s.
 

It is touch, through the amniotic fluid, that lets babies in utero receive the message: you are important enough to be sustained. The last thing to go during our final breath—aside from our auditory senses—is the touch of a loved one. Perhaps, no matter how much we believe we go on alone in this world, there is a longing to be held, to be in contact, to be touched.

 

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Touched by Nature

My parents owned a pharmacy in the Philippines and knew what drugs to recommend to customers, from a raging headache to food poisoning. Despite this, seeking hilot from Manong Efren was not an extraordinary treat. We sought hilot for “lagnat lamig,” a fever that can’t be detected by external touch but that mothers usually sniff out by keen observation of how their children present differently—their affect, their color (namumutla—pale), or their energy levels. Hilot has an uncanny niche where it can heal something or at least give relief before a doctor can even pronounce a diagnosis.
 

Most people in the modern Philippines understand this without needing an explanation. They seek doctors for disease that needs curing, and hilot for ailments that need healing.

 

Manong Efren gives a diagnosis, but their names haven’t made it into any medical book or DSM version (and may never will). While touching someone’s back with a short, quiet pause, you might hear Manong Efren say, “Daming lamig sa likod mo, Neng,” or “Mukhang pasmado ang talampakan mo,” as if his hands were an X-ray machine.

Daming lamig sa likod mo, Neng: You seem to have lots of cold spots on your back.
Mukhang pasmado ang talampakan mo: It looks like the soles of your feet (has imbalance of cold & hot spells).

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Indigenous cultures understand that nature is not to be conquered, lest we begin conquering others and ourselves. It must have sounded peculiar to Native Americans on Manahatta (Manhattan) Island when the British asked, “Do you own this land?” The notion of owning nature was foreign to people of the land and seas. How can one own something that is not meant to be possessed?

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On my last trip to the Philippines, on an island in Palawan, I met Kuya Herbert, a third-generation fisherman. The next day he took me and the whole clan about 45 minutes by boat from the main island to a secluded islet. It began to get quite windy and cloudy an hour after our arrival, and I wanted to gather everyone to leave—being stranded with just a small pot of rice isn’t fun. But Kuya Herbert watched the waves and confidently told me, “Ok pa, hindi darating ang ulan hanggang mamayang gabi.” It’s fine, the rain isn’t going to come until this evening. And that’s exactly what happened. I’m sure he can’t predict everything, but his senses have been honed by nature. His eyes can see deeper than the clapping of strong waves appear to me. His skin can feel the moisture in the air, perhaps similar to when rabbits dive into their burrows when rain is about to be summoned by the sky.
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Perhaps Manong Efren’s touch developed from surrendering to the wisdom of nature, which our bodies are simply an extension of. A baby in utero knows its mother because it can feel her. Kuya Herbert’s astute prediction of the weather was not solely from his own  brilliance but his ability to simply listen and be touched by nature.

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Touch and Pakikiramdam

The word kapwa resonates deeply with Filipinos in America. Filipino clubs, organizations, and talks are named after it. Kapwa is a beautiful word and, like a tree, is seen as the trunk of Sikolohiyang Pilipino.

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In the motherland, the concept of pakikiramdam resonates like kapwa does for Filipinos in America. Both describe Filipino culture—neither is higher than the other—but the order in which they are understood matters. In Filipino American psychology, kapwa provides a relational framework of reciprocity that contrasts with the mainstream individualistic worldview. It’s a breath of fresh perspective for Filipino Americans who feel entangled by the expectation of extreme self-reliance while pulled by invisible threads of family loyalty and the lure of potlucks.
 

Pakikiramdam is the deep attunement a mother has for her infant. Since words are not available to express need, a mother—through patient observation and presence—learns her baby’s language: his cry. She discerns cries for hunger, irritation, or a rebellious cry when she leaves him for a couple of hours to run an errand. The sharpening of a mother’s pakikiramdam may be based on instinct, but many of her acquired skills are also learned through the art of noticing and by practice develops her instincts.
 

Like a pencil to be sharpened, pakikiramdam involves trial and error. A mother may give a crying child a bottle when what he needs is a diaper change. The bottle does nothing to solve the situation, but it gives the mother feedback to try something else. The feedback loop of adjusting and readjusting until the mother “gets it,” and the baby is validated that the mother “got him,” is the beautiful dance that occurs in pakikiramdam. The reciprocity of “getting each other” is the unconscious initiation that naturally leads to kapwa. “She can sense my inner world (loob); therefore, she is a part of me and I in her (kapwahan).”

The psychological bubble that exists between two people to enable both to feel safe and connected is relatively closer in Filipino culture compared to Western culture. Filipinos can pack into a jeepney like sardines. In traffic, you can wind down your window to ask the next driver for directions. I’ve been to Divisoria, Manila’s bargain market, where the crowd literally moved my body forward—the collective moved as one.
 

Physical touch requires close physical proximity, but close proximity does not always guarantee connection. Connection that interferes with someone’s agency results in codependence, and the obsession to control outcomes interferes with real connection.
 

When integrating healing touch and pakikiramdam, co-transference is active in the room. Co-transference is the deep knowing that what I touch touches me; thus both practitioner and client are not left the same—hopefully for the better.