The Ick! An abrupt and unanticipated feeling of disgust toward someone we previously found enjoyable or attractive

where there's lots of hiking trails and um for those of you who do ask, our retreats are very easy. They're great for people who've never done them. There's lots of activities outside of meditation so you're not just sitting there quietly for days in on end focusing only on your breath. Lots of talks, yoga, times uh especially good for people who've Always wanted to go on a retreat, but thought it might be too intense.

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For tonight's talk, right when I was uh sort of musing, where will I get a fun topic? Uh I was doing counseling with someone and This person mentioned watching a viral video where people talk about getting the ick. And the moment I heard that, uh, I have to admit at that moment it was not a phrase that I was aware of, but I immediately knew what it denoted. It's not a very difficult term to figure out, in case you are curious.

It's fairly agreed upon that the term the ick is a sudden intense state of aversion. disgust, repulsion, or disregard to someone who was right up until that moment a potential friend or romantic partner or someone we enjoyed being around. It's the most commonly the it results from Watching someone do an idiosyncratic behavior that suddenly one finds impossible to uh feel comfortable with. It's a fast automatic gut feeling that has

practically no rational cognitive appraisal to it. When we get the ike from someone, they do something very often uh uh you know inconsequential, but there's no weighing of the pros and cons of the friendship or how uh worthwhile they are as, you know, a possible uh person to date or whatever. It's simply we're with someone and then they do something and suddenly all of our

uh we no longer feel comfortable being around them or we're no longer attracted towards them. Um and so uh when I was mentioning I was giving this talk over The last couple of days, every single person I talked to said that they had in the last couple of years gone through the ick. uh just f you know, the top of my head, one friend said uh she liked a guy until on like the second or third date they went to uh a place where there was dancing and the moment he started dancing

She immediately that was it. No more romance. No more uh no more possibility of connection. She just found his moves to be so awkward and ungainly that she was just like immediately put him In the friend zone. Another uh close friend said she liked a guy until you know they had a little Zoom conversation, and then when he showed up, he had wide hips.

That was it. Um I literally remembered uh many, many, many years ago, uh probably around thirty years ago, uh, going on a few dates with someone, and then the moment they said that they liked Pearl Jam. It was almost impossible for me to view them as a feasible uh, and I think that's still a valid.

uh litmus test for a human being's taste. No, I'm not serious. But um apparently there's a viral clip out there where it's Some women talk about getting the ick, watching a date, taking pride at bowling, which I think is just fantastic and it's just hilarious. So the Ike is not just a 180 degree shift from attraction to disgust. The ick implies a shift to repulsion that's due to seemingly arbitrary insignificant causes.

There, for instance, somebody just shows up and they are wearing a ugly shirt. If I had worn tonight, I think this is a very nice shirt, but if I had worn an ugly shirt and you suddenly decided that's it. I don't trust that Buddhist teacher anymore. His tattoos are weird, his shirt is ugly. That's an example of the ick. It's it's an abrupt Uh change of heart based on an insignificant

um event. And it's very often very perplexing, not just for the person who's no longer finding themselves to be of interest. to you, but it's also perplexing to us. Why do we have this strong sudden aversion over something that just feels so arbitrary, insignificant? Now I wanna just be very clear up front, and I think this is a really vital distinction. When we talk about the ick, we are not talking about situations where we pick up on what we'll say is a tell.

or something very revealing that indicates that person is condescending, emotionally unavailable, dangerous, dysregulated. So for example, when a woman picks up on a man's toxic toxic masculinity, like he suddenly uh uh decides he's gonna order all the food or starts to you know, try to feed her from his fork or do does something really repellent. That is not the ick. That is a legitimate, fast, accurate appraisal, uh a prime example of thin slicing at its best.

And there that's not the ick. That's just you've picked up on ATEL that this person is just not right for you. And I will go so far as yes. for some people finding out that uh they're the person they were interested in has voted for a party they find to be uh or supports a politician that they find to be racist. That's not the egg that's a

Uh that's a change of heart based on important data that would really play a role in determining how safe they felt in the relationship. No, the ick is a change of heart based on meaningless. or seemingly meaningless data. It's where we um often uh no longer become attracted to someone who's a very

fine, uh emotionally regulated and you know, uh worthwhile person, a sudden feeling of boredom or disenchantment that has nothing to do with their core character. It's just a behavior that triggers This um Response And it's often as I think any person with a psychological background would note it's often a expression of avoidant attachment or relational anxiety.

uh it's a defense, in other words, a against becoming intimate and vulnerable. We've all had relational wounds in our life, and very often Those relational wounds came in intimate, vulnerable uh connections. So after the an accumulation of these wounds were very often jumpy and look for any reason not to become vulnerable, not to become uh not to become uh intimate and connected and in some way emotionally uh

uh uh reliant or connected with someone. So those with relational avoidance have certainly found their perfect stomping grounds in our disposable culture. You know, we live in a world with Zara, HM, Shine, different uh Forever Twenty One, all these um Amazon, all of these fast fashion and fast products that are immediately available in every conceivable style.

And all of the items look, uh, at least on the websites or in the store windows, terrific for Earth, but quickly fall apart and wind up in landfills. On Amazon one can purchase from an endless array of headphones from seemingly endless array of electronics.

suppliers and all the headphones look great and they're all inexpensive and they look cool until they stop connecting with your smartphone. And then many just decide, okay They're worthless, they throw them in the trash and order another pair, rather than learning more about these headphones, how to reset them, how to fix them, and so forth. So we become used to a disposable culture where we discard stuff the moment the clothing, the toaster, the whatever we've ordered becomes inconvenient.

Well and this creates the idea that there's always the perfect thing out there. And why should I put up with this flawed one? And Just as we have that relationship with Amazon and fast fashion, it's also been brought into the way people use Tinder and Bumble and Hinge and OKCupid and Match and I don't know all the others. But uh there's so many others that people say um these apps present the illusion of limited limitless choice. There's o just like there's a better

Product always out there. Why should I put up with this one? There's a better person out there, one without any um demands, difficulties, challenges, someone who will never be dull or ne needy or awkward. Why am I putting up

with this person, um, when there's always a person out there who's probably will have be less demanding or whatever. So um I've heard many men Say I'm ready for a relationship with But and women as well, but certainly many men say, I'm ready for a relationship, but really what they're only ready for is someone who's n has zero expectations. They don't want to deal with any difficult emotions, any expectations, any

desire to plan for the future, any even hopes that they can plan for the upcoming weekend. So really that's not

A relationship. That's an illusion. All relationships require tolerance and forgiveness. The Buddha taught tolerance at the word in Pali was Kamana Kamana, uh throughout his teaching. And in the Savasava Sutta, a very important one, he said when one reflects properly, what which means when you're wise, one sees we have to endure periods of cold, of heat, of mosquitoes, of wind, and he goes on, and he says we have to endure the fleeting awkward or ill spoken actions of others.

And if we fail to develop toleration, the Buddha says we'll probably wind up suffering um dukkha and we'll wind up probably alone because to have any lasting relationships or friendships are all based on times of tolerance and some degree of forgiveness or being willing to overlook the foibles of other people. We're all raised in unique to a degree family systems that create profoundly limited views in us about what's reasonable.

and unreasonable. So from my own family, uh, you know, that I grew up in, my parents were both art lovers and our church was going to museums and galleries on the weekends. And if you acknowledged aloud that you didn't love or my parents would have guessed and secretly viewed you as some form of Cretan. Um and if certainly if you said a word during one of my mother's beloved uh art films, uh like Fellini and Rossellini and uh

Uh oh uh I'm there alluding my name, but if you whisp or even so much as asked to w said a word during any film, my mother would consider you to be an uh an imbecile. So I still have those triggers in me when I meet people who just, you know, uh don't have any love of art. I have to overcome that sort of gut feeling that creates the sort of the beginning uh feelings of uh a kind of what is what what uh this kind of ick coming up in me.

Uh in our relationships, in my and my relationship with Kathy, I don't wipe counters every time I use them. Uh Kathy does. Uh on the other hand, Kathy places everything from empty cat cat food cans to milk cartons in the sink. and my family never did that. So we each have to tolerate the w the what to us are the strange behaviors of the others. It's essential to tolerate The small inconveniences, so we can focus on what really matters in others, which is the foundations of.

Secure attachment. Someone friends and partners who are reliably available, attentive. soothing um Uh expressing delight. These are what really matters. It doesn't matter if somebody wears a a strange shirt or uh orders a strange drink or dances w oddly or uh wears their pants too tight or takes pride in their bowling or is uh you go on and on and on.

the degree to the prevalence uh socioculturally of the ick, the fact that it's now become a thing, points to in many ways the skewed priorities endemic to a disposable consumer culture, that we view people like objects we can dispose of. Um, but there's more because I like to throw in as much uh stuff as I can that's germane to a topic. So

From another vantage point, the Ick reveals the profound role outdated evolutionarily installed or agendas installed by evolution play in our lives. We live in what's called an evolutionary mismatch. Which is the fact our brains haven't caught up to the world that we're living in. They're still living in we're still living in brains that

Were essentially wired to survive in environments that happened tens upon tens of thousands of years ago. So for example, of an evolutionary mismatch, um Our ancestors had to deeply care about what everyone thought about them because they only would meet eight or ten people in their entire lives. So we still live in brains that take it very personally. If we're sitting on a bus and someone sits across from us, gives us a weird sort of judgmental look, or somebody that we've

just met is sort of not making eye contact, that's triggering the evolutionary mismatch. So the clinical psychologist Naomi Bernstein at the University of Dallas notes that we have long out of date evolutionary priorities built into our attachment systems. We have installed in us a predilection to desire people who appear genetically fit. that are associated with higher chances of passing down their genes.

So very often, if we notice even the slightest physical anomaly, for instance, Someone wears a pair of sandals and they have strange-looking toes, or they have an odd walk, or they have thick glasses, or slightly asymmetrical fig features. Even though these Uh, have nothing to do with their personality, their availability, their attunement, their Uh, how supportive they are, how kind they are, how good a partner they are. Very often these features can evoke the ick.

as to these deeply ingrained evolutionary install priorities, they sele suggest a lack of fitness, i.e., physical health. You see, throughout the course of evolution Those who dated with the biggest, strongest, or the people who, you know, uh sometimes women who had the widest hips or whatever, people who suggested that they were

uh going to be healthy and childbearing. Those were the people that passed down their genes. Now today those concerns are absolutely, frankly, pretty meaningless, but Tell that to our gut feeling. But it goes much deeper than that. Evolution also installed attraction to those who are either who have either attained tribal status or

or seem destined to. That was also a huge concern for our ancestors. People would seek to mate with the people who seemed to have the highest tribal status, those are the people who would uh be safe, be uh have access to the most resources so that they our offspring would live or have the highest chances of living longer and getting the best care. So we might find ourselves experiencing a loss of attraction when we encounter evidence. that someone's status could could wane.

uh you're on a date and you find out they're between jobs or uh they choose strange clothing or they suddenly tell terrible jokes. All of these traits can hijack that sense of, oh, this person is not going to be attain very good tribal high tribal status. I could be hitching my wagon to the wrong uh to wait, I'm hitching to the wrong wagon, whatever. Uh so uh

Uh this is not conscious. This is just the evolutionary primed predilections doing all these judgments. It's not our cognitive conscious thoughts. Um many uh evolutionary psychologists say the it is a prime example of the um the evolutionary mismatch where we're living in brains that are no longer suitable for our current life and the concerns we have today, which is not finding people who are the tallest, fastest, strongest, or

suggest that uh they will have the most uh robust tribal status. What we should be concerned about today in the twenty first century is whose emotionally available kind makes us feel appreciated, safe, seen, and so forth.

Finally, lastly, the Ick calls attention to a prime example of how deeply influential our gut feelings are in biasing and conditioning all of our perceptions and all of our choices. This is very basic. To the work of Antonio Di Masio and pretty much all Uh every uh cognitive psychologist today notes that we like to believe our feelings are caused by the world around us. But actually, and so we believe, for example, that we feel good because we're on the beach.

And we like to believe uh we feel bad because we're waiting for a train on a platform, an exposed platform in the winter. If someone smiles, we f believe that's what makes us feel welcome. And if someone uh doesn't for a moment make eye contact, that's why we believe we don't feel so good about them. But, but, but, but Feelings are not don't actually work that way. Feelings are the way our brains prepare us. for or anticipate what's gonna happen next.

whether there's going to be a threat or an opportunity, they are what's called predictions or guesses, and they're based on many, many factors beyond the situation we're in. So for example, let's dr let's dial or drill this down. If you're having a very stressful week.

with many demands and uh you know obligations and you're very busy and you've been running from one call or responding to one email after the next And then after work you meet up with a new fr uh a new friend or uh a date and they ask you to make a vacation plan. Your brains will trigger a feeling uh expecting engulfment, which will cause your stomach to tighten, your shoulders to tighten, and you'll blame that. On

of a causation was actually the week you're having. It had nothing to do with the fact that your aunt your friend wanted to make a vacation plan. I was listening uh to uh I can't remember a while ago, an interview with a cognitive psychologist who mentioned how, you know

Uh actually a better example than that is I was once talking to to a friend many years ago who said how often she would have a feeling of s uh fear or slightly feeling sick and she but if she was with a man she would mistake that for the feelings of attraction. So very often Mr. biological, physiological brain predictions that create gut feelings in us that have nothing to do with the situation or the person we're with create strong feelings, but we blame those feelings.

on the person we're with. If we're going through financial stress, and a date takes us to a new uh restaurant with a strange cuisine that serves small dishes, our brains will predict additional financial stress that will again tighten our stomach and that will make the food taste bad and then we'll think the person that we're on the date with has bad taste in food. If an elementary school, a high school or in high school, a teacher

who we didn't like, who was awkward and difficult to follow, and this teacher happened to wear corduroy pants and a corduroy jacket. Not a good sign, but suppose they wore corduroy all the time. We will forget this detail, but if a date shows up wearing a corduroy jacket and pants. we might experience a very strong example of the X. because they are our our brains are predicting, oops, this is not going to go very well. This person is not going to understand me and we'll start to feel fatigued.

slight headache, our energy levels will sink and we'll blame it on them. It's because they're boring or disinterested or whatever. So our brains create are feelings based on predictions which are based on countless factors outside of the situation that we are presently in.

This is Important. The Buddha's teaching in the Rut Sutta and the Paticha Samapada noted that all things. All of our perceptions, all of our behavior, all of our desire is rooted in feelings which. he noted, are automatic reactions to situations when we feel Positive feeling, we approach the person. When we feel a negative feeling, we move away, we feel aversive. And very often the Buddha said we have no idea.

What creates the feelings? In fact, he said feelings are very often a product of karma, that they are based on events that happened decades even in early Buddhism lifetimes ago. The good news is that gut feelings can be changed. We can change how we feel about ourselves and we can change the way we feel about other people.

Psychologists use priming as a way to change the way we feel about situations. So we might hold in mind someone that uh we've developed the ig for but visualize them in a place that we find very exciting. in a situation that we aspire to. We can visualize all of the things that we initially found attractive about them. Other ways to prime us is to write in a journal about all their more and most interesting and desirable traits. That's been shown actually to change.

The gut feelings we feel about people. we can override the somatic markers or gut feelings by simply paying attention to our in internal states. And when we notice that a strong aversive gut feeling is arising, What we can simply change the way we're breathing, soften our belly. Sit back. Very often I found um uh in the past when I would be uh engaged In a difficult conversation that felt kind of irritating, if I simply leaned back and breathed.

slower and soften my belly, my brain would change its predictions about what I had to do, how the conversation would go, then all the feelings would change, and then suddenly the conversation would be fine. So Let's practice that. Let's practice uh both learning how to regulate the feelings and then learning how to um soften the feelings towards people, places or things that have suddenly

needlessly, not not in situations where they should be, but needlessly at times where we've developed an aversion that is based on kind of inconsequential data. So thank you for listening.

Hope that that was in some way a worthwhile talk. And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna just practice relaxing. So...

a sense of what's around us, but if you can pull your awareness back into your body so you're no longer focusing on what's in front of you. You're now focusing on the sensations in internally, the sensations of your body. And just bring your attention to

If you want, breathe in and lift your shoulders all the way up to your ears, like you're trying to raise your shoulders above your ears. And then as you breathe out, drop them and let them. Find a comfortable position that creates a lot of space in your chest. Very often in each meditation I'll breathe in and expand my belly. And then as I breathe out, I'll just release it. So use your breath and your attention as a way to relax different areas of your body that feel at all. either contracted

There's nothing unusual about it, and it's simply an opportunity to practice self-acceptance and kindness, just with a lot of Joy that you've or appreciation that you've woken up from the Daydream of a thought, back to the world of your body You found refuge again in what's real rather than all the things that could go wrong.

It's just something to feel good about. Each time we realize we've drifted away, it's a form of a small kind of enlightenment So it's just an opportunity to bring ourselves back to the breath, to the sounds around us. To our phrase to the image of the The secure figure to the present.

The point is not to Completely change these appraisals, but just to pay attention to the feelings that are actually at the heart of what Is creating our both the times we feel safe and comfortable with people in the times we down. They're generated by feelings and those feelings very often not only stem from other events or times or situations from the past, but they're also feelings that we can learn to soften. So visualize or bring to mind the name of someone that you've been struggling with.