The cost of not feeling emotions

Dr. Paul Brand was a medical doctor that specialized in treating patients with leprosy, a disease that effects the nerve endings in a person, preventing them from feeling pain. In 1946 Dr. Brand made a break-through discovery for the disease at that time - he discovered that the physical deformities that often accompany the disease were not an intrinsic part of the disease, rather the deformities were a result of not being able to feel pain. When a person with leprosy cuts themselves they may not see it, and since they can’t feel pain the wound goes untreated. The untreated wound eventually gets infected and escalates to more sever problems that lead to physical deformities.

In 1976 Dr. Brand famously said, “If I had one gift which I could give a person with leprosy, it would be the gift of pain.”

The irony of the cure to leprosy is that the cure would allow the person to feel pain. So many of us see pain as a negative thing. We avoid pain and medicate pain. But the biological benefit of pain is that it alerts us that something is wrong with the body. Pain prompts us to get out of certain situations or to seek help. But for a person with leprosy, the inability to feel pain is potentially life threatening.

Sometimes people come to therapy because they don’t feel emotion. It’s not that they have a disorder that prevents them from feeling emotions but rather they’ve slowly avoided painful emotions so much throughout their life that all their emotions stopped registering. They are aware that things are happening in their life that should be triggering emotion but it’s not actually resulting in feeling anything. They have an emotional form of leprosy.

Emotions are like the dashboard lights in our car, they tell us what is happening under the hood. Painful emotions are the “check engine” lights coming on. The car may be running just fine but the dashboard light is telling you that something is wrong. If you don’t get the car fixed some time soon it could break down.

Just like physical leprosy though, the problem with emotional leprosy is that it prevents us from knowing that there is something wrong internally and prevents us from opportunities to grow and mature. Feelings of regret and guilt, for example, signal to us that we may have caused harm to another person. Awareness of those feelings can motivate us to make amends where necessary, restore connection with them, and attempt healthy change in order to prevent causing that same harm to others.

Feelings of sadness indicate that something we valued is no longer available in the way it once was. Acknowledging sadness brings about a sense of reminiscence about what we once had, gratitude that it was once a part of our life, and leads to emotional healing and growth.

Feelings of anxiety communicate that we are afraid that one of our needs is going to go unmet in the future. They can motivate us to make preparations in a more responsible way.

Feelings of fear tell us that we are feeling unsafe. The gift of fear is that it can direct us away from what is dangerous. At its best, fear points us towards safe people in hopes of producing secure attachment with them.

Pain is not our enemy. It is often helpful information that can lead to healing. Rather than dismissing painful feelings, our job is to take them seriously and give them space to communicate what they have to say.