Ask a psychologist: Is it weird to have a teddy as an adult?

Do you have a teddy?

Do you share your bed with a fluffy stuffed animal (or three)?

Have other people shamed you for keeping this ‘childish’ behaviour as a ‘grown-up’?

You’re not alone.

In fact, research suggests that up to a third of adults continue to sleep with some kind of comfort object

In my work as a psychologist, I am in the privileged position of hearing about the hidden parts of clients' lives. Day by day, I listen as people share with me, parts of themselves that they fear others might judge or negatively evaluate.

One of these commonly secret practices is going to sleep cuddling a teddy.

Let’s break down some of the psychological principles behind why you might like cuddling with your teddy at night and the benefits it conveys:

#1 It provides comfort and security

Many adults choose to sleep with the comfort object that they received in their childhood. This could even go as far back as holding onto the baby blanket from their infancy.

As humans, we all come out of the womb and into the world with an innate need to form attachment relationships with people around us. However, our primary caregivers cannot always be in complete physical proximity to us, especially at night. As such, forming an attachment (i.e a close emotional bond) with a comfort object is a useful step in learning how to self-soothe and provide comfort to ourselves.

This is called creating a ‘transitional object’ and is a normal part of healthy development in attachment relationships.

Holding onto this transitional object as a reminder of our caregiver’s love, and our consequent ability to comfort ourselves in their absence makes sense even as an adult. As such, holding this object often bring about feelings of safety and security created throughout childhood.

#2 It heals our ‘inner child’

While some may use teddies to remind themselves of the sense of safety and security provided by their attachment to their caregivers, other people might not have had these needs met in their childhood.

Picture for a moment that everyone has a bucket of physical nurturance and emotional soothing that they need to feel safe and secure. We then go about our lives trying to get this bucket ‘topped up’ from our connections to others in relationships.

However, many children are born into environments in which this bucket couldn’t be full because their caregivers could not provide the physical nurturance necessary for healthy emotional development. As such, these children might need to find ways to meet this need for themselves. Forming bonds to warm snuggly teddies and stuffed animals is a way to get some nurturance and comfort in their ‘emotional bucket.’

Psychologists often talk about ways that adults can heal the emotional wounds created in childhood. As our needs for emotional nurturance do not change as we become adults, finding a comforting object can be a wonderful way for adults to continue providing the comfort they may have been missing in their childhood.

#3 It models healthy self-soothing practices to others

Imagine your child is distressed and finding it difficult to self-soothe themselves to sleep at night. These kinds of behaviours can become especially strong when a child does not have an appropriate role model for how to do this. By showing your child that you too have a comfort object in your bedtime ritual, you are more likely to normalise this to your child.

#4 It forms a part of a sleep-inducing ritual

Scientific research on sleep suggests that our body responds to both feelings of internal fatigue (e.g. eyes becoming tired, yawning, drops in energy) in combination with external cues and stimuli to tell us when it’s time to go to sleep. For example, people may find solace in completing regular routines and rituals before going to bed such as completing a skincare routine, putting out their clothes for the next day or reading a chapter of a book. With repeated pairings of these routines and consequent sleep, our brain comes to associate these behaviours with sleepiness. Over time, even the smell of your nighttime moisturizer could signal to your brain, ‘it’s time to wind down now.’

The physical features of the teddy, such as its texture, smell or even the feel between your arms could also take on these same sleep-inducing characteristics.

Therefore, having a cuddle with your teddy before bed could mean you become more aware of feelings of sleepiness and facilitate the onset of sleep.