0. Five-second conclusion: post-breakup humans do not run on one meter
A relationship ended. For a few days, it hurt. Then, roughly three days later, the thoughts were being sorted through long AI conversations. Sorting became writing. Writing became a multilingual content system. Before long, there were twelve languages, GitHub, quality checks, automation, and something that could only be called a content factory.
Later came another problem: an intense urge to touch, squeeze, hug, press, and bury the face in something very soft. A large TPE pillow was bought for ¥18,500; its regular price was around ¥22,000. After repeated use, the urge to “knead something soft” largely disappeared.
Great. The body seemed satisfied.
Except “chanchan” still came out. So did “mamma,” especially in safe, private contexts such as being alone in a car or in bed.
This suggests that at least in this case, tactile seeking, comfort, spontaneous vocalization, memories of an ex-partner, the practical decision about reconciliation, and the tendency to turn distress into a production system were not one single mechanism.
The post-breakup human was not a single-meter machine. It was an organization chart.
1. Three days after the breakup, a factory somehow appeared
Breakup recovery does not normally finish in three days. A longitudinal study of 156 young adults found a temporary rise in depressive symptoms around the breakup, with average symptoms returning to pre-breakup levels within roughly three months.[1]
So starting a project after three days does not prove complete emotional recovery.
What is unusual is the speed of conversion.
breakup
↓
long AI conversations
↓
break the event into parts
↓
“this could be an article”
↓
write articles
↓
articles multiply
↓
translate into 12 languages
↓
human operation becomes impossible
↓
automate
↓
add quality gates
↓
content factory
Post-breakup processing accidentally spawned manufacturing.
Research on romantic separation also suggests that rebuilding one’s self-concept matters: poorer recovery of the sense of self can precede poorer well-being after a breakup.[2]
That does not mean building a content factory is a proven therapy. The safer claim is simpler: a stopped relationship was followed by the construction of a new structure that could keep moving.
2. The next piece of equipment: ¥18,500 worth of softness
Then came the tactile problem: wanting to hug, press, squeeze, knead, and bury the face in something soft.
The selected equipment was the “Hitsuji no Iranai Makura — Gokuyawa,” a large, soft TPE pillow. The manufacturer currently lists the model at ¥22,000.[3]
The actual purchase price was ¥18,500.
As a pillow, expensive.
As the thing actually used for sleeping, hugging, face-burying, squeezing, kneading, and receiving a vaguely body-like softness input, it was closer to home tactile infrastructure.
It was not literally the same as human tissue. Temperature, surface, internal structure, motion, and biological properties are different. But the “soft mass that yields, shifts, and pushes back” was close enough to hit an important sensory target.
Weeks later, the major change appeared:
the urge to knead something soft was largely gone.
3. Research #1: touch can reach a “that is enough” state
This is not scientifically absurd.
Studies of repeated pleasant touch have found that both liking and wanting can decline with repetition under some conditions. A 2014 experiment repeatedly stroked participants’ forearms and observed reductions in pleasantness and the desire for more of the same stimulation, a phenomenon discussed as touch satiety.[4]
A related 2020 study using repeated slow pleasant touch also found a decline in average pleasantness ratings across trials.
A laboratory brush on the forearm is obviously not the same thing as kneading a TPE pillow at home. Still, the general pattern has a close scientific cousin:
repeated access to a desired tactile stimulus can eventually reduce the desire for more of it.
Body: shortage. Pillow: supplying. Body: inventory sufficient.
4. Research #2: human-like softness really can feel unusually pleasant
“Soft” is not a single dimension where more is always better.
Research using deformable materials has shown that perceived softness is strongly related to tactile pleasantness.[5] Another study found peak pleasantness around a range of compliance that overlaps with the mechanical softness of human hands and arms.[6]
In other words, tactile preference may be especially responsive to materials that deform in somewhat body-like ways.
That does not prove that any pillow “feels the same as a breast” or any other body part. That would be an unjustified leap.
A more defensible conclusion is that a sufficiently soft, deformable object may reproduce part of the tactile profile a person is seeking.
5. Research #3: touch also works as self-regulation
Touch is not only about pleasure.
In a 2021 randomized controlled trial involving 159 healthy adults, both self-soothing touch and receiving a hug were associated with lower cortisol responses after a standardized stressor compared with control conditions.[7]
A 2026 randomized trial found that a 14-day self-soothing touch practice reduced momentary stress, fatigue, and loneliness from before to after sessions, with changes comparable to a brief meditation condition.[8]
So hugging a soft object, touching the body, or seeking pressure does not have to be explained entirely by sexual desire. Humans use tactile input as part of state regulation.
This makes the economics of the pillow even stranger:
buy one expensive pillow, accidentally receive a sleep device, tactile input device, and self-soothing accessory.
6. Unfortunately for the neat theory, “chanchan” and “mamma” survived
The story would have been clean if it ended here: “touch was missing; the pillow supplied it; the problem ended.”
It did not.
After the kneading urge faded, “chanchan” still appeared. “Mamma” still appeared. They tended to surface when alone, relaxed, in bed, in a car, or while digging deeply into old memories.
In this article those words are not real names. They are labels for spontaneous vocalizations that became associated with comfort and memory.
Their persistence matters.
If “wanting to knead something soft,” “chanchan,” “mamma,” “wanting the ex-partner,” and “wanting reconciliation” were one single drive, satisfying the tactile part should have turned down the whole system.
It did not.
That means the organization chart needs more departments.
7. A post-breakup organization chart: at least four departments
Tactile department
Handles softness, pressure, hugging, squeezing, kneading, and body-like deformation.
Current status: substantially satisfied by repeated tactile input from the soft pillow. The kneading urge dropped sharply.
Comfort-vocalization department
Handles spontaneous sounds such as “chanchan” and “mamma” that emerge when vigilance is low and the person feels safe enough to loosen control.
Current status: still operating.
Memory-and-attachment department
Stores good memories, touch, affection, acceptance, and the emotional meaning of the former relationship.
Current status: memories can remain valuable without requiring the relationship to restart.
Practical-decision department
Evaluates values, living conditions, family issues, future plans, and whether a renewed relationship would actually work.
Current status: reviewed independently from whatever sound the body makes in a car.
Therefore:
“chanchan happened” does not automatically translate to “reconciliation requested.”
8. Why can the vocalization remain? The boring but strong hypothesis is context plus habit
There is, of course, no scientific literature specifically explaining the words “chanchan” and “mamma” in this personal usage.
Calling it “regression,” “maternal deprivation,” or an attachment disorder from a few anecdotes would be internet fortune-telling, not science.
A more conservative explanation is available.
Habit research shows that repeated responses can become strongly tied to contextual cues and can be triggered relatively automatically in particular environments. Habits are often more context-specific than goal-directed actions.[9]
Adults also use overt and covert self-talk, and self-talk is studied as part of emotion regulation. Research on hearing one’s own voice during self-talk suggests links with self-referential and emotion-regulation processes.[10]
A plausible, non-diagnostic model is therefore:
safe private context
↓
vigilance drops
↓
a familiar comfort-linked vocal pattern is triggered
Under that model, it is perfectly possible for tactile wanting to become satiated while the vocal routine remains.
9. Does “content factory after three days” prove an iron mental state?
Not exactly.
High productivity immediately after a breakup does not prove that grief or attachment vanished. Breakup research suggests that average emotional recovery usually takes longer than a few days.[1]
What was clearly strong was the behavioral conversion pipeline.
Instead of keeping every thought in a loop, the material was converted into:
- conversation,
- classification,
- research,
- articles,
- reusable structures,
- translation,
- GitHub history,
- quality checking,
- automation.
So the best description is not “nothing hurt.” It is “when distress appeared, there was an unusually wide pipe from distress to analysis and production.”
Months later, that same factory was being used to investigate the breakup itself.
The accident investigation committee became a publisher; the publisher became a factory; the factory learned twelve languages.
10. Final timeline: relationship cleanup became manufacturing
breakup
↓
a few genuinely rough days
↓
AI wall-bouncing
↓
arguments begin to organize in about three days
↓
articles
↓
content factory
↓
12 languages + GitHub + QA + automation
↓
separate urge for soft tactile input
↓
¥18,500 TPE pillow introduced
↓
hugging + squeezing + kneading + face-burying
↓
tactile urge largely satisfied
↓
chanchan: “still here”
mamma: “same”
↓
discovery: tactile and comfort-vocalization systems are not identical
The most useful conclusion is simple:
Humans do not process “I miss something,” “I want touch,” “I want comfort,” “I make this sound,” and “I want the relationship back” on one meter.
The pillow appears to have passed the tactile unit test. It did not erase comfort-linked vocalization, and it had no authority over the separate practical decision about reconciliation.
Current system status:
Pillow: tactile unit test passed.
Chanchan: running.
Mamma: running in safe private contexts.
Reconciliation decision: separate system.
Content factory: inexplicably still expanding.
Note
This article organizes one person’s experience using related research. It is not a medical or psychological diagnosis. No study has established the specific cause of the words “chanchan” or “mamma” in this case. A pillow or comfort object is not a complete substitute for human relationships and should not be treated as a medical treatment device.
References (10)
- Acolin J, et al. “Trajectory of depressive symptoms in the context of romantic relationship breakup: Characterizing the ‘natural course’ of response and recovery in young adults.” 2023 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Mason AE, et al. “Facing a breakup: Electromyographic responses moderate self-concept recovery following a romantic separation. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- ヒツジのいらない枕 公式サイト：枕ラインナップ・極柔（TPE／やわらかめ／22,000円、2026-09-04確認）。 hitsuji-zzz.com
- Triscoli C, et al. “Touch satiety: differential effects of stroking velocity on liking and wanting touch over repetitions.” PLoS ONE / PubMed pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Tactile perception of pleasantness in relation to perceived softness.” 2020 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Physical correlates of human-like softness elicit high tactile pleasantness.” 2021 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Dreisoerner A, et al. “Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial on stress, physical touch, and social identity.” 2021 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Maier F, et al. “Self-Soothing Touch Reduces Momentary Stress, Fatigue, and Loneliness Comparable to Brief Meditation: A Randomised Controlled Trial.” 2026 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Bouton ME. “Habit and persistence.” 2023 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Neural Effects of One’s Own Voice on Self-Talk for Emotion Regulation.” 2024 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
