Disgust, it has been stated, is seen as disgusting. We turn away from what disgusts us, and so we tend to want to turn away from what discusses what disgusts us. But it is part of the human condition, and so, if we want to face and improve that condition, we turn away from it at our peril.
Disgust, or as we say “the ick factor”, needs to be acknowledged. You don’t need to feel guilty for your feeling of disgust. It is a feeling. But just as certain health care providers learn to cope with their disgust in order to provide healing to one’s body and mind, so do others who seek healing for themselves and for their loved ones. There is a learning curve as well as a spectrum of disgust. We all may be at different points depending on our own life histories.
In this website, as we discussed in “First Things First,” we are aware of emotional triggers and try to make space for people’s feelings as much as possible. Disgust is a big trigger we are intentional about approaching cautiously. However, it is part of the messiness of life and
addiction and recovery and so we try to respect it and not give it too much power. As in many things in recovery, such as naming secrets to take away the power of the secrecy to silence the truth and prevent healing, we explore some realities and topics that might evoke levels of disgust, but we do so with foresight and do so in order to let in healing.
Scientists of emotions have studied how disgust varies in kind and intensity from person to
person and family to family and culture to culture. There are also some human universals, related to what is eaten, to death and dying, and to what is considered inappropriate sex.
Disgust is a basic human emotion. Its evolutionary value has been geared to protection of health, avoiding real or perceived contagious elements. It has roots also in how humans see themselves, alike or different from animals. The more disgusting something is considered, the more it is seen as something “animalistic” or “going against the grain of human nature.”
There are also times when human contact with others is considered disgusting, such as in caste systems, though disgust in those circumstances would be something reviled and considered disgusting itself by others. Negative aspects of disgust have been seen through the centuries in various “purity codes.” More recently these have been applied to people with certain illnesses such as AIDS; again, in ways that have been been themselves seen as disgusting and discriminatory and unjust. Addictions, of course, have also been considered disgusting. The history of putting people away “out of sight, out of mind” is rooted in feelings of disgust. There can also be a caste system of hierarchies within a caste system based on those who have been found disgusting projecting that same disgust upon others. In this dynamic, certain addictions are seen as more disgusting than others. It is why prison populations of inmates tend toward adhering to strictly segregated spaces based on the nature of offenses as well as the other segregations of race and ethnicity and sexual orientation and gang affiliations, for example.
The category of disgust most at play in recovery, and in sex addictions particularly, falls under the heading of “socio-moral disgust.” The responses here are also varied. Rozin, et al,
unsurprisingly find that robbing a bank, which violates social and moral codes, does not, for
example, illicit the level of disgust as other violations such as brutal murders or sexual offenses. Spectrums abound of how people react and their reactions may change over time with experiences and how a culture changes its “norms.” Over-indulgence itself, Rozin, et al wrote, elicits disgust responses. As more behaviors and substance uses are seen as addictive, it might be that there will be less of a disgust response. And remember that people who have been called disgusting also will often think of themselves in the same way, or think of their actions as disgusting. Facing that, but not getting stuck in it; perhaps using it, the way certain kinds of shame and guilt can be used, is part of recovery.
*See this 1999 chapter on disgust, for more on a history of the psychology of disgust in human affairs.