The ICK, The Cringe, and What Your Body Is Really Telling You
You know that feeling? When something just hits you wrong and you feel that visceral “ick” response? When you feel cringed out by someone or something, even if on paper you know you should be fine with it? These days we often call it “the ick” or “cringe,” but underneath, that is disgust. But what is it actually and why is it so important to understand?
Disgust Is an Ancient Protector
Disgust is one of our most primitive emotions. It evolved to keep us safe. Back when our ancestors faced real threats like disease and contamination, disgust was literally a survival mechanism. Your body would say: stay away from that. Do not touch it. Do not get close. That reaction kept people alive. But disgust is not just about sickness. Your body also learned to feel disgust toward anything that reminds you of your worst fears. Anything that threatens your sense of safety or wholeness. Especially if you have experienced trauma, especially if you have felt violated or dehumanized or deeply betrayed, your nervous system learned to use disgust as a shield. Your body said: I will repel this so it cannot happen again. I will feel sick at the sight of it so I do not move toward it.
Disgust and Trauma: The Story Your Body Tells
When someone has experienced trauma, disgust often shows up alongside shame. And the combination is devastating. You feel disgusted at what happened. You feel disgust toward the person who hurt you. And often, you feel disgust toward yourself. That deep, painful self–disgust can make you feel like something is wrong, contaminated, damaged. This disgust keeps you away and keeps you isolated. It tells you that you are too much, not enough, too icky to be close to anyone.
Your body is trying to protect you. It is saying: do not let anyone close. Do not let yourself feel love or be loved. Do not risk being hurt again. That protective reflex, that ability to feel disgust, actually saved you at some point. It kept you from staying in unsafe situations. It kept you from feeling even more overwhelming emotions like shame or guilt or dissociation.
The Problem: Protection That Got Too Good at Its Job
Here is where it gets complicated. Your disgust response is still working. It is still doing exactly what it learned to do. But now it is triggered by safe people. Now it can keep you from accepting healthy affection. Now it can make you feel that ick when someone who loves you tries to get close. In those moments, your body may struggle to tell the difference between the person who harmed you and the person who is safe. So it says: Repel. Cringe. Ick. Stay away.
This disgust response can show up in many ways. Intense phobias. Physical symptoms with no clear medical cause. Aggressive reactions when you feel triggered. All of this is your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do: keep you away from anything that feels like a threat. At that is necessary when you are in danger, but when you are no longer literally there, the cost is real. It can cost you connection, the ability to genuinely feel with safe people. It can prevent you from receiving love. And it can cost you the freedom to feel something other than disgust and shame.
Reclaiming Your Capacity to Feel
The work here is not about forcing yourself to feel something you do not feel. It is not about toxic positivity or just getting over it. The work is about understanding what your disgust is protecting you from. What did it save you from? What big feelings is it keeping at bay?
Sometimes, it can be useful to ask: 'If that disgust had a voice and could express what it truly feels toward the person who hurt you, from a safe and contained place, what would it say?' It is in that imagined expression that the real feelings can begin to emerge. The anger. The grief. The devastation. The things you have been too afraid to feel because they are too big, too raw, too overwhelming.
When we can access those feelings underneath the disgust, when we can let them be felt and expressed and witnessed. Your nervous system starts to understand that you survived. That you are safe now. And gradually, that disgust response can soften. It does not disappear. But it stops running your life.
You do not have to feel that ick forever. Your body learned that response for a reason. And when you honor that reason, when you tend to the wounds underneath the disgust, you create the possibility of something different. Of closeness. Of genuine connection. Of being able to feel affection without your nervous system staging a revolt. That is the work with this part of you, to understand the disgust. To thank it for what it protected you from. And then to gently, slowly, find your way back to wholeness.
By
Nathasha Sharma
Olatunji, B. O., & McKay, D. (2011). Disgust: The disease avoidance emotion and its dysfunctions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. This comprehensive review explains disgust as a disease-avoidance emotion and discusses its role across anxiety disorders, trauma, and psychopathology.
Reynolds, S. M. (2011). The uniqueness of disgust as a reaction to trauma. International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. This paper highlights how disgust as a trauma reaction contributes uniquely to PTSD symptoms distinct from fear and anxiety.
Simpson, J. et al. (2020). Self-disgust mediates the relationship between childhood trauma and psychotic experiences. This study explores how self-directed disgust links early trauma with later distress and psychosis.
Powell, P. A. et al. (2020). Self-disgust is associated with loneliness, mental health, and PTSD in veterans. Frontiers in Psychology. Demonstrates that heightened self-disgust relates to PTSD severity, loneliness, and mental health challenges in trauma-exposed populations.
