Life Without Pain
There was the time she burned the flesh off the palms of her hands when she was 2. John was using a pressure-washer in the driveway and left its motor running; in the moments that they took their eyes off her, Ashlyn walked over and put her hands on the muffler. When she lifted them up the skin was seared away. There was the one about the fire ants that swarmed her in the backyard, biting her over a hundred times while she looked at them and yelled: “Bugs! Bugs!” There was the time she broke her ankle and ran around on it for two days before her parents realized something was wrong…
Could she feel a punch to the face? Could she walk across burning coals as if she were walking on grass? Would it hurt if she were stabbed in the arm? The answers are no, no, yes, no. She can feel pressure and texture…”Everyone in my class asks me about it, and I say, ‘I can feel pressure, but I can’t feel pain.’ Pain! I cannot feel it! I always have to explain that to them.”
Source: New York Times Magazine.
I saw this article. I cannot imagine not being able to feel pain. Maybe she could become a professional wrestler or some other profession where the inability to feel pain would be huge advantage!
What about emotional pain? Does she feel a sense of loss after a romantic breakup? Research has found that physical pain and emotional pain share some of the same brain pathways. The reason we refer to negative emotions as “heartbreaks” is because of the sensation of physical pain that emotional loss exhibits.