I remember being surprised when I learned disgust is considered a core emotion.
Unlike the others (fear, anger, sadness, and enjoyment), we tend to not recognize or talk about disgust as easily.
Today, let’s dive into the good, the bad, and the ugly of disgust so you can spot it and process it when it comes up for you!
What does disgust feel like in the body?
When we’re disgusted by something, we feel it in our gut.
Disgust lowers our blood pressure and causes discomfort in the stomach.
It also tightens the muscles in the face, so it’s likely to show up as a disgusted facial expression.
What is the positive intention of disgust?
The emotion of disgust alerts us when we’re ingesting, hearing, or otherwise absorbing something that feels poisonous or toxic to us.
It can be triggered by the obvious stuff – the smell of something rotting, any food we strongly dislike, infectious disease, graphic depictions of physical injuries/surgeries, etc.
And with those triggers, we’re often immediately able to identify we feel disgusted.
But there are other triggers that are harder to be aware of – like memories of abuse from someone who was supposed to protect you or finding out a friend has dragged your name through the mud.
In these cases, disgust is more likely to be identified as anger and/or sadness, leaving the disgusted part of us unprocessed.
What happens if I ignore my disgust?
If disgust goes unprocessed, the main symptoms are anxiety, depression, and low levels of confidence.
When we suppress it, we’re unable to listen to our body’s natural impulse to get away from that which disgusts us, making us far more likely to stay in situations we shouldn’t.
Bummer city.
Processing disgust
Step one:
As soon as you identify disgust, name it. As simple as this step is, it has incredibly potent results.
Like we said last week, emotions want to be named. Think of them as a baby or baby animal that wants attention. As soon as you acknowledge emotions with compassion, they will start to calm down.
Step two:
Breathe deeply and allow the sensations in your body to unfold. Try not to feed the emotion through additional thoughts. It’s normal for thoughts to come up; we just want to come back to the breath when they do to avoid becoming overwhelmed.
Step three:
Stay with the sensations of disgust and keep your awareness on them as the energy shifts around your body.
This is hard to do with disgust since it’s such an uncomfortable feeling, but emotions only have a lifespan of a couple of minutes if we don’t feed them with thought.
Step four:
Once you feel the wave of disgust peak and then die down, notice any insights that come with that. What is your body telling you? Just notice.
Results of processing disgust
Processing disgust whenever it comes up for you leads to decreased anxiety and shame, a calmer state, and a deep awareness of things (and people) to stay away from.
The lesson here is to trust your body.
Emotions aren’t good or bad – they just ARE.
Allowing yourself to process disgust restores the body’s mechanism to decide how much toxicity it can handle before it becomes too much.
When you feel disgusted, believe your body that something needs to change, and process the emotion to find out what that looks like.
Next week, we’ll look at processing enjoyment!
