What is it about light touch that's so freaky?

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Just now when I was driving my son to school, he reached out and lightly brushed his hand against the back of my arm. You'd think he had stung me. I barked "Don't do that" and jerked my arm away without even thinking. I apologized. I have always hated a light touch. It makes me angry and impatient. Why? It's so automatic it's visceral. If it's skin sensitivity, why isn't a deep touch worse. Why is a deep touch calming but a light touch nerve wracking?

Skin is more sensitive to light touch, that is why.

OK that makes sense, but some people love it. Butterfly kisses and all that.

I hate it. Every time my skin is brushed when I walk through the hallways at school my muscles and I get a little more tense and by the time I get home I'm a scrunched up little angry person. God help the first person to try to ask me anything.
I would say that's one of the reasons that I tolerated a chiropractor but not a physical exam. So I guess that excludes all activies that require a physical for the rest of my life oh well.
I have the same response when people touch my arms during what they perceive to be a friendly conversation.

I'm the same way. My husband is always forgetting how much I hate light touches. I'm always warning him that I will not be responsible for whatever injuries may result from my reflect actions.

When I was too young to be away from my parents, they never understood why I always craved a deep bath (I didn't know why either). My husband prefers I don't "waste" water by using more than I "need", but thankfully he sees that it's not a waste and that I do need the water pressure to calm my nervous system.

I told him that light touches to me feel like bugs crawling on the skin. When I get squeezed (like during a rare a massage), the tension in my body comes out like toothpaste from a tube.

Now I also understand why I've always been attracted to swimming along the bottoms of swimming pools.

i hate being tickled. light touches send intermittent signals up my afferent pathways, and they seem to overload my sensitivity.

it is like a microphone on an old cassette recorder that increases in sensitivity when there is no signal, and then when there is a slight signal, it overloads, and produces distortion.

if someone constantly shouts into the microphone, then the sensitivity is decreased to attenuate the signal.

i think it is a factor of autonomic nervous system "noise reduction", where "silence" increases the gain, and "loudness" decreases the gain.

Different receptors for different things. Light touch is for bees landing on you, deep touch is for hugging, so light touch is more alarming (at least that's my hypothesis).
Deep touch doesn't hurt unless you start squeezing so hard you pinch nerves and cut off blood flow, but light touch "hurts" even if there's no cell death/danger, because we're expecting it to.

Light touches tickle me.

I don't like light touch either. It makes me itch....even the soft brushing of my clothes against my body can set it off.

I'm sure I remember seeing a film about somebody with autism who got a lot of relief from being squeezed in some kind of squeezing machine that had originally been designed for livestock. I've always wanted to try that, because when I'm hugged, I prefer it to be very tight....the tighter the better, as long as it doesn't break any ribs.

I second this. I hate light/awkward hugs from people who you're not sure if you're allowed to squeeze. Like if the uncle you don't know well visits, or a second cousin... This is why I hate being a girl sometimes, because for some reason when women great each other they hug It's horrible. I don't know this person well enough to feel comfortable touching them, let alone full on hugging them, so they give me a light hug, which feels so... I have no adjectives. But it just feels terrible.
The only people I can hug without hating it are the closest of my close friends (really only one or two people) and my boyfriend.

As other have said, light touches tickle. There are parts of my abdomen that if touched lightly completely overwhelm me - MY SKIN SCREAMS AT ME!

I'm not too fond of light touch either. I couldn't tell you why. I prefer being hugged with a vice grip, hehe

Yes those "compromise hugs" never feel right to me either. The best compromise I've known is a brief but firm hand on the shoulder. I was in a bad state once and somebody gave me that, which was very helpful.....made me feel accepted and reassured without being engulfed. So I started using it on others. It's best to be kind of slow and deliberate about it, so the recipient has time to show signs of not wanting it and the giver has time to back off if need be.

It isn't.

it stays with you for too long.

It does stay with you.
I hate light touch and love it. It depends on my mood and who it's from.
Like, for example, in the car today, a baby reached through the chair and pulled the hair at the nape of my head lightly. My muscles tensed up and it gave me a chill and strong reaction, but felt wonderful. If my dad did that, I'd had the same amount of reaction, but it would be very negative.