Don Miguel Ruiz, and his book The Four Agreements says this:

"Imagine that the human mind is the same as your skin. You can touch healthy skin and it feels wonderful. Your skin is made for perception and The Sensation of touch is wonderful. Now imagine you have an injury and the skin gets cut and infected. If you touch the infected skin it is going to hurt, so you try to cover and protect the skin. You will not enjoy being touched because it hurts.

Now imagine that all humans have this skin disease. nobody can touch each other because it is going to hurt. Everyone has wounds on their skin, so the infection is seen as normal, the pain is also considered normal; we believe we are supposed to be that way."

Sometimes I think a lot of what we see happening with people and their overly fragile emotions is very similar to this analogy. But people must allow themselves to be touched again in order to quell feelings of loneliness and isolation. Even if it's scary.

How can we help people see this?