Squeamishness - what is it?

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

Squeamishness is a condition that sometimes puts a person in a delicate position. You may be considered a fussy because you can't bring yourself to eat anywhere but at home, or spoiled because the sight of hair in the sink makes you hard disgust. And friends may even be seriously offended that you do not give a bite from your apple or ice cream. But you understand what is really behind such habits. We will talk about what lies behind the concept of disgust, later in the article.

Where does disgust come from

Squeamishness is a feeling that, by the way, only a person has. From this we can conclude that it arose only due to the development of our intellect.

You have probably watched more than once how a tiny baby, crawling around the apartment, tries to taste absolutely everything that falls into his field of vision. The baby is not embarrassed by either daddy's home slippers or the ball thatthe lap dog played. Only after growing up and overcoming the age of 5, he suddenly begins to show the same feeling, categorically refusing to drink milk with foam or turning pale and grimacing at the sight, sorry, of cat excrement in a plastic tray.

What happened? Psychologists believe that in the growing and, therefore, to some extent already forced to "survive" the body on its own, "memory" wakes up, or rather, a protective reflex that came to us from distant ancestors (although, of course, rejection of certain things is also helped by explanations of the elders).

We are all from the Stone Age

Squeamishness and aversion to faeces and all waste products are due to the threat to he alth lurking in them. On a subconscious level, we feel that they are dangerous - and this is true, since it is in them that clostridium develops, which can cause gas gangrene, cholera, dysentery, hepatitis. By the way, increased disgust is inherent in precisely those people whose immunity is weakened.

In addition, centuries of experience suggest that we be careful about everything that speaks of death. It is he who makes us wince at the sight of hair in the sink or cut nails. After all, they are also associated with something dead, rejected. Cadaveric poison is mortally dangerous for a person, so a program lives in us that does not allow us to face it closely.

Squeamishness helps protect space

Negative emotion - disgust - is also a way to protect personal space. It turns out that the possibility of common eatingfood is not acceptable to everyone.

Many people can hardly stand the habit of friends or close people to taste a dish from their plate. And most often behind this is not so much caution in front of bacteria that got on food in this way, but the desire to draw a border, to have a personal space closed from intrusion by anyone.

At all times, food was considered the source of life, and joint meals had a sacred character, denoting spiritual unity. And the reluctance to eat with someone from the same dish is a subconscious attempt to maintain personal space, to maintain a distance.

Why is it embarrassing to be squeamish now

In the Middle Ages, the problem of disgust did not stand, since it was even fashionable to show it. Representatives of the nobility now and then demonstrated the subtlety of their perception, wrinkling their noses or bringing fragrant handkerchiefs to them. So that the hypersensitive lady could put her foot on the road, the gentleman threw his raincoat under her feet. Here is this chicanery! But it turns out not - just the concept of hygiene in those days was so primitive, and the idea of \u200b\u200bthe danger to he alth lurking in objects or products was so low that people simply tried to save their lives in this way.

And in our time, caution and disgust are synonymous with distrust of the cleanliness of your partner, which, you see, can hurt and even seriously offend. We will not publicly tell someone that they smell bad, or defiantly refuse to eat at someone else's table. Most likely weLet's try to somehow get around this delicate topic. Why? Probably because a modern person is able to understand the true danger of some phenomena, which means that the manifestation of disgust is no longer a vital necessity.

What does disgust look like if it is excessive

The complete absence of disgust, as well as its excessive manifestation, are extremes approaching pathology and making life very difficult for a person.

In psychiatry there is the concept of mysophobia - a state of excessive disgust, or rather, even fear of dirt. A person suffering from this pathology constantly washes his hands, turns his house into a sterile pressure chamber and hardly tolerates being on the street or in public places, disdaining to touch anything. Any dirt can cause such a patient to panic.

However, no less, or even more dangerous, is the complete absence of disgust - after all, you can get an infectious disease or poisoning all the time.

As you can see, disgust is primarily a manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation, and any extremes in its manifestation are already a pathology.

What is social disgust

Squeamishness also has a social dimension. It can be attributed to legibility and fastidiousness in contacts with others. Outwardly, this manifests itself, as a rule, in the form of an unwillingness to communicate with someone who is perceived as unworthy.

The problem of disgust in front of real dirt and the danger emanating from it, inIn this case, it is replaced by the idea of moral impurity, and the reaction is the same - rejection. It's not for nothing that we say: "Hands on his back," thus denying bodily contact with someone who causes moral disgust.

For a long time there have been groups of people unworthy to be near a "normal" person: lepers, excommunicated, untouchables. Representatives of some professions were also ranked among the same outcasts - executioners, prostitutes, scavengers. Contacts with them seemed dangerous, impossible, but this time not from fear of catching an infection, but from fear of being “infected” with failure and poverty. That is, social disgust is a protection against the possibility of becoming the same as someone who is not worthy of our society.

Squeamishness is ambiguous and sometimes difficult to explain.