What Is It About?
Napkin Version
Disgust is part of a survival mechanism that repels us from toxins in our food and environment.
Being a human animal can be offensive at times, e.g. when our body produces a bad smell. We can also feel disgusted when we judge another’s behaviour as offensive or ‘toxic’ e.g. when we see poor hygiene standards, or if we think their attitude, views, or values could be harmful to ourselves or others.
At a basic level, Disgust reflects the gap between our own standards (hygiene or moral), and the standards that the other person appears to have.
Disgust urges us to distance ourselves to keep ourselves healthy, and in some instances, to avoid someone’s unsavoury qualities from ‘rubbing off’ on us. This ensures we won’t be associated with the offensive person, and rejected because of it.
Handling Disgust
In The Moment
Training our brain to use a relevant process helps us to focus more effectively and move on more easily. Using it often will also help our brain to catch Disgust sooner, making it easier to manage.
Disgust can alert us to a genuine risk, but also to something quite harmless in reality, or something that results from a complex situation. So it’s usually helpful to understand the situation and other’s perspectives better first. Then with that in mind, assess the actual risk to us.
Before we decide our best approach, it’s usually worth considering whether the person is aware of it, and whether they will care about it (or can do something about it). This will help us to work out our options for resolving it.
Now we are in a better position to decide how we will handle it - e.g., simply appreciate what it is about and carry on, avoid it/reduce the impact of it, respectfully raise it, put up with it until our brain adapts, or just move on and leave them be. See the Working Through Disgust section below, for more detail.
Self-Reflection
If the emotion feels quite troubling, it’s usually worth checking if something else is going on first.
By resolving things in ourselves and clearing any other residual emotions, we can reduce the intensity of the emotion - now and when we encounter it again in future.
Doing so also makes us less likely to ‘attract’ other difficulties that leave us feeling the same way.
See the Processing and Clearing an Emotion page for a generic process to resolve and clear an emotion.
Working Through Disgust
The actions we choose to take in response to an emotion can make a significant difference to how well we adjust and move on from it.
The more we take genuine actions that are uplifting and ‘right’ i.e., are good for ourselves and everyone else (including the environment and other living beings) - for now, and over the long-term, the better our experience of life becomes.
The options we have for handling Disgust will depend on the situation, whether the person is aware and sees it as a problem, and how much risk we may be exposed to. The following may help us to decide the best approach:
Working to understand situations and differences better, and avoiding snap judgements, since these can be inaccurate and bring other difficulties.
Considering how much harm it is actually doing – is it genuinely posing a risk? Or is it just that their standards don’t match ours?
Reducing our exposure e.g. less time and/or more distance.
Respectfully and discretely raising it with the person, or with someone who is better suited to raise it with them. If we choose this approach, it is usually better to:
Bring it to their attention in a quiet, non-judgemental, respectful, and if appropriate, light-hearted way.
Acknowledge it as out of character for them e.g., “I know you’re a very considerate person, so you may not realise...”.
Avoid judging them for it, as this can invoke feelings of shame, defensiveness, anger, or other difficult emotions.
Keep it genuine, and suited to the relationship style. Choose the approach that suits you both (and the situation) best – for the most part, personal hygiene is better handled with care.
For a more delicate approach, it may help to focus on a suggested action/product that might help, and the experience (rather than them), with a slight touch of gentle humour if possible e.g., “you might want to try a different deodorant, as I can smell your scent from here”.
Distracting our focus away from it, until our brain adapts.
Looking for common ground (and ideally positives in the person) to help shift our focus from honing in on the negative aspects.
Silently appreciating that they are showing us qualities that we don’t want for ourselves, in a quick, obvious, and effective way.
Taking the free lesson, and upping our own game in how we look after our hygiene, present ourselves, and treat others.
Respecting their freedom to be whoever they want to be.
Clearing Residual Disgust
Emotional energy can stick with us, even after we have worked through and resolved whatever caused it.
There are a number of ways we can clear the energy, including doing something physical in nature, imagining the emotion leaving our body, or for more intense emotions, there is a variety of different therapies and alternative forms of energy healing that can also help.
This short video has been created to help the imagination process:
Imagine holding a ball of energy in your hands, and ‘charging’ it with the feeling of love, and anything else that would help to offset it (especially any feelings that were missing in the situation)
Imagine any residual Disgust energy flowing out of your body, into the ball, and being transformed into the positive equivalent.
Once all the residual energy has left, imagine the ball shooting far out into the atmosphere and dissolving into pure white light energy.
