Fear vs. Ticklishness question

I was thinking about this the other day. As much as some of us like to read stories involving intruders, kidnappers and other ne’er-do-wells tickling a helpless victim, I wonder if it would actually work. My immediate answer is no.

I think that fear would override someone’s ticklishness or at least the laughter response to it. Now bear in mind that I am talking about true fear. I have heard recollections if someone being tickled in a one of those extreme haunted houses. But I think that at a subconscious level, you know that is an actor that means you no REAL harm.

I hope that nobody here has her been on either end of this situation to know for sure, but just in theory...what do you think?

Yeah if someone was legitimately terrified vast majority of people almost certainly would stop being ticklish.

What are the haunted house stories you've heard??

I've wondered that myself, actually. Of course, I am not keen on terrorizing unwiling people, so I cannot try to make sure. But in theory, I believe it would still be possible to tickle a terrified individual, provided said person would already be ticklish. After all, we are more sensitive when we are afraid. If you hear suspicious noises in the dark, you feel a tingling in your skin and the slightest contact will startle you. In a way, this is not very different from ticklish anticipation.

In short, a kindapped, blindfolded woman tied up naked and barefoot on a table would actually have major reactions to some tickling her, especially if that person knows what she is doing. But that's my theory; I have never tried it myself, fortunately

Tickling is a very social thing, especially the laughter part, which is why you can get someone to start laughing before you even make physical contact with them. The dominant theory of why people laugh when they're tickled is that it's a way of learning to protect vulnerable parts of the body, and the laughter is an ingrained response that helps to encourage the play, and also keep it friendly and distinguish it from real fighting. The more someone likes you, the more likely they are to enjoy being tickled by you, and the more likely they are to laugh as a form of conscious or unconscious encouragement.

If you fight or get scared for your safety, though, your body fills with adrenaline and other chemicals , and your senses become focused and narrowed. In that state you don't process things in a normal way - you don't really feel pain or become aware of any injuries until later.

Some people might be so ticklish, or so conditioned to respond by laughing, that not even all the fear hormones and adrenaline can override it. But I suspect that in most cases genuine fear (as opposed to playful fear) would alter a person's reaction to being tickled so much that you wouldn't think of it as ticklishness anymore.

If someone doesn't know the person tickling them and doesn't want the interaction, and they're actually terrified, I suspect that any tickling would make them scream instead of laugh - it would process more as pain because of the circumstances.

TMF Jeff said:

If someone doesn't know the person tickling them and doesn't want the interaction, and they're actually terrified, I suspect that any tickling would make them scream instead of laugh - it would process more as pain because of the circumstances.

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I don't wanna sound like I'm splitting hairs, especially since you're making pretty strong and valid points. I agree with you in principle, but with some nuances. For instance, people don't necessarily laugh when they are being tickled. And when they do, their laughter can be quite scary, not necessary an indication of encouragement. If you've ever met an Asian in your life, you might be familiar with the "nervous laughter" they use when they perceive a tension in a given social context. Also, think about all those unconsensual tickling moments in primary school or when you "tortured" a sibling; it was not a terrifying experience, granted, but there was not always laughter, more likely screaming and gasping. All that being said, the screaming you mentioned in the paragraph above would still be a ticklish reaction, even though it wouldn't be laughter, right?

Also, I can speak only for myself, but I have a tickle fetish, not a laughter fetish. A strong reaction of distress or discomfort is just as likely, if not more, to be satisfactory to me. You should hear my wife at the end of our sessions

I see what you mean, but no I don't think the kind of screaming I'm describing would be a ticklish reaction. I've tickled plenty of people who screamed, or screamed and laughed at the same time, and I do know the kind of response you mean. But again, those situations (the ones in my own experience, and the ones you mentioned in school or with siblings) are all non-threatening, false-fear situations. The kind of fear someone experiences from social tickling of any kind, even if it's a stranger at work or in school, is very different from the adrenaline-driven fear of being in real danger.

I remember once tickling a girl who was facing away from me, in a very private and sensitive area with a soft feather - and when we talked about it later, it turned out that she somehow thought I had been using the electric toothbrush. Her brain completely confused what was going on and she had absolutely no clue what was being done to her. She processed it as ticklish because she knew the circumstances, but if she had been the victim of a kidnapping in that moment, I can imagine her brain telling her any number of crazy things were happening to her.

To use the specific example, a person who has been kidnapped and blindfolded in a real-life situation might be hypersensitive because of their nervousness, but I think in most if not all cases, they're not going to react ticklishly even to a touch that's intended to tickle. Like if you stroked their foot, their brain would overreact, and also be very confused, and they might even think you had sliced their skin with a knife.

Also there's a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush, which I also think would override any kind of ticklishness because your body is going to dial down all of your physical senses except the ones you need to win or escape - you're going to have tunnel vision, you're only going to hear the sounds that are directly related to your situation, and your sense of touch is going to de-sensitize. I've been in a few fights, and for a couple of years I was very intensely into martial arts, and when I've been in fights, real or sparring, I rarely feel myself being hit or hurt until later.

So as a general rule, without knowing the exact specifics, I'd say that unless there's a social component overriding it, then real fear would negate ticklishness in proportion to the amount of fear/danger.

That said, you could probably seduce a kidnappee into feeling comfortable enough with their circumstances, convincing them that they were in no physical danger, that they would become receptive to ticklishness...

Tenebrae said:

I don't wanna sound like I'm splitting hairs, especially since you're making pretty strong and valid points. I agree with you in principle, but with some nuances. For instance, people don't necessarily laugh when they are being tickled. And when they do, their laughter can be quite scary, not necessary an indication of encouragement. If you've ever met an Asian in your life, you might be familiar with the "nervous laughter" they use when they perceive a tension in a given social context. Also, think about all those unconsensual tickling moments in primary school or when you "tortured" a sibling; it was not a terrifying experience, granted, but there was not always laughter, more likely screaming and gasping. All that being said, the screaming you mentioned in the paragraph above would still be a ticklish reaction, even though it wouldn't be laughter, right?

Also, I can speak only for myself, but I have a tickle fetish, not a laughter fetish. A strong reaction of distress or discomfort is just as likely, if not more, to be satisfactory to me. You should hear my wife at the end of our sessions

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Turns out this is a very fascinating question! I am starting to feel like in those movies wherein you have a character staring at 100+ reflections of herself...

Thank you so much Jeff for your insight. Right now I am wracking my brain over this, while my wife is laughing at me ("Look what you use your intellectual capacity for?" ). I can see Myriads D) of possible theories and can't really verify any of them. I suppose part of the reason I can't let it go is because your theory, brilliantly supported by reasonable arguments as it is, throws off decades of non-con fantasizing

Tunnel-vision, flight-or-fight, adrenaline rush... this would certainly explain why the UFC has never had to write up a "no tickles" rules (I always wondered why no one seemed to have EVER tried to tickle a fighter during those clinches). I understand better in light of what you said. After you've been pounded on the head and stomach enough times and have wrestled against painful joint locks for a few minutes, you wouldn't even feel a tickle. Totally makes sense.

However in the case of our kidnapped victim... It really boils down to what a tickle really is, doesn't it? Is it a social construct or is it merely a sensation of touch that the brain interprets as unbearable? Or does it lie in the Myriads D again) of nuances that exist in between these two extremes? I read in a French research paper (I am no scientist, so please accept my gross simplification) that tickling is some sort of a "short circuit" between the pleasure and pain responses. The brain cannot decide, and as a safety measure generates a "I want this to stop so I need to pull out" response, hence the "distress" we feel for it. The pleasure we (as amateur or experienced ticklephiles, no matter) take in this activity would be the product of our social acceptance of the practice, the context in which it is performed.

So back to our unwilling victim (who must be in an ever-increasing state of despair with us chatting over her helpless body like this ), I can really imagine what you said would happen. Like for example, if I took an electric tooshbrush to her sole, she might (emphasize "might") think that we're trying to drill through her foot. She might even feel pain as a result. But would this last? Would it be the same acute pain as with a drill? She must surely figure out after a few seconds that the sensation occurs only at the surface of her skin. What happens then, is it tickle torture, is it just an annoyance? Would she feel... nothing at all? What if we told her beforehand that we're gonna torture her by tickling her, would it change anything?

I still tend to think that we'd get very strong reactions because of the intensity of her predicament, rather than "tunnel vision". If adrenaline really blocked pain, not to mention tickling, victims of torture would be impossible to torture, and we know from experience that rationally administered torture is a harrowing experience. But would tickling in the context of torture yield only pain? In the defense of this argument, there are the works of Solzhenitsyn who did describe such a scenario (and in addition of being the greatest writer of the 20th Century, he is a world-class authority on torture), but he mentions it only in passing, and we might have misinterpreted what he meant by "tickling". Also, we know how much we can be misled by our own brain. Phantom sensations, dreams... There is even the case of that French guy who died to frostbite after being locked inside a freezer... which was not running on any power source. The poor guy had imagined he was cold, to the point of dying. So once again, your theory makes sense.

Jeez, this is so interesting... I'm super excited by all the implications. Thank you so much for your contribution; I'm gonna go to sleep and I'll ponder on that some more tomorrow. If I come up with anything relevant, I'll post it here

YouNeverKnow175 said:

What are the haunted house stories you've heard??

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Nothing spectacular. A couple minor incidents where certain actors in those extreme haunts where they can touch you have briefly tickled patrons.

This has at the very least turned into an interesting discussion with no ethical way to test any hypothesis. Unless of course we have a volunteer...��

Honestly, I think this would play out much like adrenaline overriding pain. I broke my hand some years ago in an unfortunate incident. I didn’t feel a thing until the adrenaline wore off and then...ugh.

When played right, and safety and trust are built in to the structure, fear in a bdsm play scene can be quite intoxicating. The same holds true for tickling