Then I went into critical awareness. I realized about halfway through that when I answered the questions on paper, I was intellectualizing. So she had me put the paper away and answer the questions in the here and now. I made the point that in the first world, vulnerability of any kind is looked upon as "weakness", that society judges people who have needs. Or, if we have needs, we can't show them. T started to smile. If we do show them, then we open ourselves up to judgement, embarrassment, and shame, especially for a need perceived by many to be a need we should not have as adults...something that should have been met in childhood. Society tends to sexualize touch between adults. People can use the "I don't have any needs" attitude to hide their own shame related to touch and anything else.