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Beware: Tickling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I was on the phone with my friend Elizabeth when I heard her 9-month old daughter Poppy screeching in the background.

“Ooooh!” I winced. “Is Poppy okay?”

“She’s not crying. She’s laughing!” Elizabeth explained. “Greg’s playing Tickle Monster with her.”

Oh, no! Not Tickle Monster! I thought, my heart racing. “Are you sure she loves it?” I asked gingerly.

“Yes! Why?” she replied in a way that said, This better be good.

“Well,” I started, “just because a baby’s laughing doesn’t mean they’re necessarily enjoying…”

“Are you serious? Believe me, she loves being tickled,” she said. “Anyway, I gotta get going.”

Click.

Shit!

I was sorry I’d said something, but at the same time I thought, How could I not have? You can’t tickle a helpless baby, for God’s sake!

Like many people, Greg and Elizabeth took Poppy’s giggles at face value. That’s the problem with tickling. It causes the same physiological reactions as humor — i.e., laughter, goose bumps, and convulsive muscle contractions — which means we can look like we’re having the time of our lives while suffering, sometimes greatly.

In the New York Times article “Anatomy of a Tickle Is Serious Business at the Research Lab,” evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander explains, “[T]icklish laughter is not the happy phenomenon that many have assumed it to be […] A child can be transformed from laughter into tears by going the tiniest bit too far […] [Tickling] does not create a pleasurable feeling — just the outward appearance of one.”

Historically, many cultures capitalized on tickling’s ability to cause pain. For instance, during the Han Dynasty, Chinese tickle torture was the punishment of choice for nobility because it caused sufficient suffering while leaving no marks. And in Ancient Rome, offenders were tied up, their feet soaked in salt, and then goats would have at them with their tongues. More recently, I read a harrowing account of a Nazi torturing a Jewish prisoner by tickling him with a feather.

But today, it seems we’ve somehow managed to deceive ourselves into thinking tickling doesn’t have a dark side. Yet, I’ve heard plenty of personal accounts from people who shared with me their traumatic childhood experiences:

“I hated and feared being tickled as a child and still do. It reminds me of gasping for my breath while being suffocated and unable to communicate.”

“My mother always tickled me even if I said stop. It was so frustrating because I wanted to show her that I was having fun with her, but I felt powerless and controlled.”