Love Deficiency: The Hidden Source of Chronic Stress and Sickness
“For when the Son of God put on flesh, he redeemed fallen humankind through the service of Love.”
— St. Hildegard
We often speak of vitamin deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, or gut dysbiosis as root causes of sickness. But what if one of the deepest deficiencies in the modern human experience is love? Modern neuroscience confirms what the Scriptures and Christian tradition have long taught: we are created for Love, and its absence harms us at the most fundamental level. Emotional neglect and social isolation are now recognized as risk factors for premature death on the same level as smoking or obesity.
The Biology of Love Deficiency
When a person feels unloved, neglected, rejected, abandoned, the brain responds as if under physical threat. The limbic system, responsible for processing emotion and memory, activates a cascade of stress responses: elevated cortisol, suppressed immune function, impaired digestion, thyroid and adrenal dysfunction, disrupted sleep, dysregulated heart rate variability, anxiety, emotional eating and addictions. These aren't just emotional wounds. They manifest in the body through chronic inflammation, autoimmune issues, metabolic syndrome, anxiety, and fatigue. The body is confused and dysregulated because something essential is missing.
You Were Made for Love - Why You’re Stressed
At the root of much chronic stress is a relational wound: a mother who was too overwhelmed to attune to her child, a father who was emotionally distant, a betrayal or divorce, a friend who disappeared when we needed them most, co-workers or boss who exploited you, church community that has forgotten you. When love is missing, stress takes over. Love deficiency can be the most chronic and invisible form of stress.
The Emotional Body and Soul
St. Hildegard of Bingen spoke of the soul’s deep integration with the body and spirit. She described illness not just as a breakdown of tissue or function, but as a disruption of divinely gifted harmony. In her medicine, emotional and spiritual disorders are never separated from physical symptoms. A soul that has been depleted of love through sin, trauma, betrayal, neglect, or inner disconnection from God cannot fully animate the body. Love deficiency isn't just a romantic problem; it's a relational and existential crisis. When we are not seen, known, or cherished, our sense of self begins to fracture. And the body keeps score.
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” 1 John 4:18
Fear and love cannot coexist in the nervous system. Where love enters, stress softens. Where love is absent, stress thrives. Love is the nutrient that stabilizes the inner world. Without it, no amount of supplements, protocols, or biohacks will bring true healing.
When we are not loved or when we don’t know how to receive love, we lose viriditas, the life-giving vitality that God infused into all creation. Chronic stress is a withering of that life force. It is a silent famine of the heart.
God Is Love and Love Heals
For Christians, God is Love personified. And His love is not just abstract, it is incarnate, embodied, sacramental. Through Christ, we are fully seen, deeply known, and infinitely cherished. But that truth must be not only believed, but experienced.
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
— 1 John 4:8
Healing love deficiency means learning to dwell in that truth and extend it to our own body, mind, and story. It means receiving love from God and people, so that we can finally feel whole.
To reverse the physiological effects of chronic stress, we must create loving and safe relationships, starting with God, then others, and including one within ourselves. We need to regulate the nervous system through proper breathing, touch, presence, reception of God’s love, not just as doctrine, but experience, repair attachment wounds through healing environments, stop treating stress as a productivity issue, and name it for what it often is: a sign of love starvation.
Love Is Life and medicine
Yes, you sometimes need the right labs, protocols, and supplements. Yes, you may need to change your diet, detox pathways, or sleep habits. But none of that will be sustainable unless the love deficiency is addressed.
You are not a machine. You are a soul in a body that thrives on love.
The beginning of her last visionary book, Liber Divinorum Operum, starts with a vision of God who is Love:
“When I was sixty-five years old, I saw a vision of such mystery and power that I trembled through and through and then fell ill because of the weakness of my body. After seven years, I have finally brought this vision almost to completion by writing it down. (…)”
Hildegard sees God as Love in a cosmic vision, and hears the Voice:
“I am the supreme and fiery force, who sets all living sparks alight and breaths forth no mortal things, but judges them as they are. Flying around the circling circle with my upper wings, that is, with wisdom, I have ordered all things rightly. But I am also the fiery life of the essence of divinity; I flame above the beauty of the fields and I shine in the waters and I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars. And with the airy wind I rouse all things living with some invisible life, which sustains all things. For the air lives in fresh greenness and in the flowers, the waters flow as if they are alive, and the sun lives in its own light; and when the moon comes to its setting, it is kindled by the light of the sun so that it might as it were live anew; and the stars become bright and clear by living as it were in their own light. I have also established the pillars that contain the whole wide world, that is, the winds (…)
Therefore I, the fiery force, lie hidden in these things, and they blaze because of me, just as breath continually moves a human being and as a flickering flame exists within the fire. All of these things live in their essence and are not found in death, because I am life. I am also rationality, possessing the wind of the sounding Word, through which every created thing was made; and in all these things I blow, so that none of them might be in its nature mortal, because I am life. For I am life, pure and whole, which was not hewn from stone, neither blossomed from branches nor took root from man’s sexual power; but every living thing has taken root in me. For rationality is the root, and the sounding Word flourishes in it. (…)
Later she explains that the monster God-Love steps on has been conquered. That’s why she believed that there are no incurable diseases but God decides which is the best way to heal people: through prayer, or with prayer and adding natural medicinal ways that include lifestyle changes, remedies, and procedures.
“Moreover, she is treading with her feet a monster, dreadful in appearance and venomous and black in color, and also a serpent. This means that true Love, through the footsteps of God’s Son, bruises discord’s injury, which is misshapen by its excessive vices and horrifying because of its many perversities, and poisonous in deception and black in perdition. Likewise, she bruises the ancient serpent as he lays traps for the faithful, for upon the cross the Son of God reduced him to nothing.”
Arise and fast from stress
Love deficiency is not a life sentence. Nor is it an excuse to stay stuck in self-pity, resentment, or relational passivity. This is not about waiting for others to change or hoping someone finally sees or values us, or clinging to the past as identity. Healing comes when we step out of limiting ourselves and when we choose to love. Paradoxically, in giving love, we receive love. In becoming a vessel of mercy, forgiveness, and generosity, even when others don’t reciprocate, we open ourselves to God’s own love. And that’s why the invitation to FAST FROM STRESS is a challange to see with the eyes of the heart and step out from SELF to loving LOVE.