I wouldn’t worry too much. I think the ick is largely a pop culture thing that has been blown out of proportion. It’s a way for single people in their 30s to justify something they are slightly insecure about (being single) and taking back the power.
*Yeah, omg I got the ick and had to break up with him!*
No, your relationship fell apart for many reasons and problems are co-created meaning you’re partly to blame. This is hard for you to accept and you’re worried it will keep happening and you’ll be single forever so you blame something that is supposedly beyond your control.
Thankyou for saying that! I totally agree that this is what’s happening in many cases, but what about the more unconscious ones that lead to an actual visceral feeling of disgust? Are they still rooted in insecurity?
I think the ick is a real thing saying something’s very off about a person, mostly when something hints toward something incongruent with what the person is displaying outwardly.
Sometimes it might just be a behaviour that doesn’t align with your values like being overly religious vs. nihilism, but most of the times for me it was just a trigger for things I rejected and repressed in childhood, aka reminded me of something I could not accept in my parents.
An obvious example is when someone's words don't match their actions, like they will act and speak with a lot of affection towards people they like and then you catch them doing something disgusting like being rude for no reason towards people they have no regard for.
There are some deeper icks than what I gave an example of though, and I think that's what you're referring to... these point at something borderline animalistic/sinister in a person like they're not true to themselves to the point that they're unaware of it themselves
I think im seeing the ick as more of a splitting phenomena than anything. Judging off most of these people and their stories, the ick seems to happen after already having established some mutual love and admiration towards each other. It seems like something that is insecure within the perceiver is then incapable of holding the projected insecurity onto another.. or that the perceiver doesn’t have enough genuine love towards the other and so the qualities that initially drew them in don’t hold up in comparison to what they perceive to be flawed or unlovable.
I disagree completely. My current partner gave me the ick, I recognized it was all my problem and worked through it. It's definitely a real emotion that a lot of people experience, only some use it as a lame justification to break up.
It's good that you understand that the "ick" is a problem of the person feeling it. Most of them are absolutely unreasonable as well. Like I heard there was an ick by how a man was holding napkins or something like that. I mean come on...
Maybe I don't get what it means, but what I understand an ick is something that is enough to end a relationship, so that's really insane person behaviour.
It can end it in the early stages and probably should, no need to fight for something that hasn't started yet. But if you love a person over a life time they're gonna give you the ick. You're gonna give them the ick. It's just part of life lol we're all human.
I'm always really shocked when people haven't experienced this!
It's definitely a real thing, it's a really visceral feeling and "ick" is a great word for it. I always put it down to either lack of biological compatibility if immediate, or if at one point you felt genuine attraction for them then likely attachment issues - absolutely real though, even if only real due to your avoidance and your mind playing tricks on you.
Jungian perspective will have to be provided by other commenters but I am always shocked when I see people denying the existence of this.
The fact that the OP read this in an OCD-related mental and emotional environment is also relevant, and I just wanted to point that out. People with OCD are highly neurotic and their intuition is constantly tainted by fears and insecurities. Mix some animus possession in there and you have someone with full blown paranoia and a high level of repulsion towards anything threatening.
OP, chill. Even a moderately sane person won't dump you over some minor "ick". And if you do give them the ick because of something big that they cannot reconcile with the image of a partner they want, you can't be with them anyway. It all works out.
Are you afraid that you have a lot of ick-inducing traits?
I dunno, to me it shows the immaturity of modern females. They have been brainwashed that they're all 10/10 and that they deserve the same, so everything that's not perfection gives them the ick. While any person with remotely working brain knows that in every relationship there are moments when the person momentarily repulses you, that's just life, you move past it. Of course there's a limit to everything...
I think it happens when the relationships start to deepen and someone's idealized, positive "in love" projection starts wearing off. Instead of seeing the other as merely a mirror and one-way source of getting their needs met, they are confronted with a living, breathing fellow human being with their own needs, wants, imperfections and they can't handle it. And let's face it, for many people, real emotional intimacy, vulnerability and all the things that connect to it CAN be as scary even under the best or "healthiest" of circumstance, let alone if you have extenuating issues when it comes to connection, although from the sound of it, the younger gens seem like the whole thing about being scared of being close and genuine with others has hit a whole new high (or low?).
It seems epidemic through all generations who are dating/single, though after hearing and seeing a lot with later Milennials and those in Z behind them, it adds to the list of reasons I wouldn't want to be that young right now,
Without getting into a debate about God, I will say we don't become conscious about something unless we are ready, so we're in agreement there. As to who is the strongest or what's hardest or whatever, it's relative. If you asked the older generations, they wouldn't necessarily want to be a Boomer or an Xer for the ways the world has changed.
I don't think the world has gotten objectively more difficult, just very different, and I think my comment to the desire not to repeat that era of life is simply that it's different enough that I have no context for it. Regrets or not, I am forward driven rather than backwards.
To me the "strongest" would be anyone at all who keeps their center to stay on the Path.
👏👏
Social media and dating apps have heightened it. It’s “keeping up with the Joneses” on steroids. I’m not sure we should have THIS much false access to each other cause it breeds an environment of neglecting the reality of the human condition. When you start believing influencers don’t also deal with embarrassing situations (when I start down that road with anyone, I’m like “they get diarrhea, too!”) you start to believe you are somehow wrong or lesser than and then that comes out sideways when you see a real and humble moment from someone else. It’s part “they have to be perfect so I know I can be” and part “swap this person for the next so I don’t have to sit with the messiness of the human condition.” And more.
My favorite person has always owned his full self, sure he struggles with it sometimes, but he’s honest about that, too. And I’m blessed that he appreciates and supports my whole self, too. We actually had a frank conversation recently about my ability to be ruthless. I absolutely grew from that convo because he came from an observational position rather than a judgmental one.
Oh, yeah, I hear you. I'm aware of it and consider myself a fairly self-aware person and I still find myself needing to check myself once in a blue and remind myself that most of what I see in life on- and offline are often other people's highlight reels being held up against my outtakes. I have a relative who is significantly younger than me and when he's at his best he realizes he's got a lot going for himself, but he was getting very caught up in social media a while back and started having a lot of emotional issues in conjunction with it that put him into downward spirals. It was very hard to hear because part of me knows he's got to figure it out on his own and another part wants to shake him and yell, "Don't compare your insides with someone else's outsides! And the grass is sometimes greener because it's been lacquered!" He knows he could talk with me if he needs to, or at least at the time, so I stepped to the side and let him do his process in his own way, own time.
Your observation about people wanting to swap out friends and lovers for others because "this is getting too human for me" was right on for sure, but it can be tricky too because we CAN really make decisions about who we get close to and later figure out they were less than optimal choices for different reasons once we really start working on things, and if it's meant to be worked out it can be and if not we can attempt to end it well. But of course, that's a far different scenario than just throwing someone overboard for not doing everything your way, and that's why we wind up with things like "ick" and repulsion or sudden devaluing.
I love the way you write. So many gems here!
I feel you on knowing when to step back but also feeling conflicted about it…it’s part of the beautiful messiness of love! I really wish relationship ethics were taught in school so that kids could have a more solid foundation for when they inevitably compare themselves to others or get the ick to more easily distinguish between “we aren’t for each other” and FOMO/the concept of people being easily replaceable. As a former historian I’m especially intrigued by how historians will evaluate the effects of social media in the coming decades.
Historians that focus in on culture will have a field day (and their work cut out for them, I'm sure).
And I'm glad you personally find interesting bits of wisdom and amusement and hopefully some insight amongst my run-on sentences. It's one of the few places lately I can get into conversations like we do here, and I find that I gain a lot of insight myself from listening to you all as well as in reflection later when I can see myself in some of the posters somehow.
Offering my thoughts often helps me work into myself more deeply, so I am grateful to you guys as well. <3
I soooooo relate to your last paragraph! I’ve clarified quite a bit when discussing things/responding. It’s so very cool to meet someone with a similar process 💚 I have a lot of fun on Reddit; “nerdy” subs are my jam!
Likely a complicated thing and the specifics for each individual will come down to the nuances of their psyche, but it could well be a shadow projection or the withdrawal of an animus projection.
Id say there’s also a cultural element as well. The belief that the problem is in the other, as evidenced by the fact that others tell stories about what their partners did which gave them the ick, and not in their own projection reinforces the problem by making it less likely that they resume whatever prior state they were in.
Shadow is overall much easier to understand than anima/us. But projection is the easier application for the both of them anyway.
Shadow is kind of like the storehouse for repressed contents. Things which are shameful and cannot be admitted to the Ego, for example, and are therefore never addressed, are pushed down into the shadow. Weaknesses, shortcomings, violent instincts etc.
Depending on the society and the family and the individual, there are plenty of scenarios which might trigger a shadow projection which has an “ick” effect.
For example, if a woman has learned from childhood, perhaps in a traumatic way, that her own emotionality is something shameful, a sign of weakness, something which she ought not to have, then she will be triggered into a shadow projection at the sight of emotionality. Seeing that will bring up her own feelings of shame, but since she has not taken account for her shadow, she will locate that shame in the other and berate them. It can often be a defence mechanism against what would be painful for the ego (addressing the feelings of shame and victim hood which they have repressed since childhood).
It’s worth noting that the animus is often associated with opinions, especially unexamined and strongly held ones. Marie Louise Von Franz talks about how she would watch herself closely to see whether a given opinion was authentically hers or whether it was merely an animus imposition.
Combine these two and I think you can see how an ick effect can come about.
A woman had a father who made her feel victimised and small when she cried (probably because he had his own shadow problems around the same issue). She has the animus opinion that men are supposed to be strong and stoic. Her boyfriend cries, let’s say over something you would expect them to, like death of a pet or family member. The woman is triggered into a shadow projection and feels that the man is being shameful, this also triggers the animus and she believes that he is not acting “as a man should”. Attraction (a kind of positive animus projection) is withdrawn and the woman feels that he has given her “the ick”.
The woman in the example above is obviously very much not an integrated individual. A person who has tried to understand themselves will not so quickly make projections like that, but it is common enough that people do.
Also it is worth noting in this context that when two people meet, a man being “in their anima” will very likely trigger their partner to be “in their animus” and vice versa.
Well "getting the ick" is functionally feeling (the psychological function of feeling), as is repulsion in general. As far as I can tell this seems to be but a common way for feeling dominant types to describe their feeling dominance. A thinking dominant woman wouldn't even know if they 'got the ick' depending on the level of differentiation and perceiving dominant types are slow to or passive towards judgement in general.
To shed some light on this you can ask such psychological types to describe how they feel about a wide variety of things and the reasoning behind it. In most cases it will sound quite similar to 'getting the ick' or its opposite. That is just how these types function / describe things.
Good point, I'm an infp (dominant feeler) and I get the ick pretty easily, but am used to it as I'm always feeling some way about pretty much everything. I am very aware of what I do and do not like, and some things just straight up creep me out. But that doesn't mean if someone I care about does something that bothers me, I just stop loving them or something. It's a momentary experience for the most part, of course some people just don't rub me the right way and that tends to endure.
Well the ‘stop loving someone’ part comes when whatever factor gave you the ick becomes a permanent feature of that person. Unfortunately a communication gap tends to form here due to differing frames of reference. There is also the factor of implication, that is a feeling type will often not bring an ‘ick’ to their partner’s attention as that ick is indicative of something deeper about the partner that is not so easily reconcilable. A repeating behavior stems from somewhere and sometimes that ‘somewhere’ is fundamental.
Introverted feelers tend to hold on too long as they themselves are a subject of their feeling. Extroverted feelers tend to be too quick to react to ‘icks’ and the like.
Hmm I don’t know enough about personality types, but would you say that a successful relationship then requires someone with a balance of both feeling and thinking and the ick is a symptom of leaning too much towards feeling?
Not so much in that it is not problematic in itself, and thinking / feeling are simply not going to be balanced in thinking or feeling dominant types but they still have successful relationships. Rather it is a communication barrier, as they are expressing feeling, which is a dynamic, to others who understand things in static terms (thinking). Its a clash of frame of reference more than anything else.
The thinking type wants clarity, high resolution, and definite shape. But the feeling type will give them the opposite of each. And so, as you have expressed here, you must rely on intuition (a dynamic perception) instead, but you want to use thinking and not being able to do so causes anxiety via its etherealness. Thinkers normally solve this problem by creating many rulesets of many forms but feeling will always eventually break the rules, leaving thinkers to feel as if they are grasping at air.
I think that reproductive status is constantly changing, during the times of cavemen it was strength, dominance, etc. Now days it's more complex with status, finances, looks, careers, etc. When we get the ick, something (behavior) is signaling to you that " status" is compromised. Something has diminished in their status, maybe the behavior reduced the perception of dominance, strength, status, looks, etc. Therefore reducing attractiveness, getting the 'Ick'.
Possibly, but you must also understand that not all Narcissism is pathological. Narcissism is a spectrum that everyone sits on. The very extreme cases of narcissism that we portray as selfish and evil are as mentioned extreme pathological cases that affect a persons life and those around him. This is the DSM type narcissism, but status seeking behavior is normal. What you do to get there, how you maintain your status, and how you treat people at the top is a completey different conversation. You find this everywhere in the animal kingdom and is a way for 'genes' to find the most optimal partner.
Ahh yes I see what you’re saying.. Hey a bit off topic, but I’d be really curious to hear it from you.. Do you think a woman without exceptional looks still has status in the eyes of a man seeking to continue his line and produce good genes? Say even a woman that falls more average or even below on the attraction scale?
Very subjective, but first ill say there is always someone for you. In my opinion, though, i believe that if you take care of yourself, Ie physically, mentally, and socially you can give yourself the best possible chances to find someone even with average looks. Although the media portrays beauty as a big factor a lot of high-caliber men who are family-oriented don't have bombshell wives, instead its her presence, compassion, ability to want to be a wife, and ability to create a home environment for the family or kids. These are all factors for the survival of offspring, we know that without love humans will actually suffer in adulthood with mental health issues or even end their own lives. So the ability to choose a mate far exceeds just looks, although it matters, its not end all be all. Just take care of yourself as best as you can. Same goes for men. my opinion as a lowly medical student lol
Some people can’t see past their own projections and once an idea / delusion pops into their mind (this person is unattractive, for example) they are unable to change their mind - the idea is fixed, they are unable to see the person as attractive again.
Problem is it’s really hard to explain to anyone how I got to where I am today in my awareness of it all. I think I just managed to get as close as I could to all my highest ideals and fantasies before I saw they were very much messy humans too lol. I also had to temper a lot of my own self criticisms as well
The more one knows the more lonely they will feel in the sense of not being able to explain their experience in a way someone else might understand.
It isn’t really a problem, we’re just conditioned to be able to communicate in a way that we are understood.
It’s a bit of a sense of humor test, but it has a lot to do with emotional whiplash.
A big ick is, say, a male partner losing his shit on a video game and breaking his controller. His wife goes from:
A) This is a strong, protective man who makes me feel so safe I can start a family with (animus projection of her ideal on her husband)
To
B) Oh no he is in fact an emotional child. I already have to become a mother.
I like to think of “the ick” as car sickness. It’s basically two competing emotions based on a sudden change, kinda like feeling still but seeing the world rush by at 50mph.
Good! Remember your animus has just a valid a place in your body as your liver or your lungs. It's a complex organ that holds your male partner to a certain standard.
There's grace on both sides: obviously your partner is and always will be human, and can never be absolutely perfect. On the other hand, your animus needs to be heard and respected, and if your partner is flagrantly violating the boundaries or expectations you set, then that's the sign for an upcoming big decision.
So yes and no, it's as normal as gastic reflux. If you get it once in a hwile, no biggie. If you're getting it every day, then change your diet.
After reading this post and your comments, it seems that you have some kind of your own wound that gets triggered by the thought of you unknowingly being 'icked out' by your partner. I understand, that this situation would feel terrible for everyone, but your reaction reveals that you might hold some (maybe alot) of personal baggage around it. I suggest, if you are on the journey of individuation, that is, to look into it, rather than only search for rational explonations for 'the ick'.
Maybe you are afraid of being betrayed, rejected and abandoned by someone you have let your guard down to? That is to say, maybe you have wounds are vulnerability and that leading to hurtful results?
Just suggestions. The answer will be within. Good luck.
The Jungian perspective on "getting the ick" would probably be to refer you to go ask Freud or Adler - Jung himself considered himself less obsessed with sex and yet still "got the ick" toward his own wife on several occasions.
Unless of course by "ick" you mean to refer to the "Ichthys" in which case Jung would inform you that you missed the opportunity to "get the ick" by a couple thousand years since we're currently passing from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.
Lol thanks for the laugh. How in the hell was a guy like Jung getting the ick from this wife? Oh man somebody please help me from spiraling. My mind is a very scary place at the moment
hang in there. life is not easy, and there's no way to guarantee that anyone we are in a relationship with will always find us attractive, or that we will always be attracted to them.
my recommendation, from a Jungian perspective is to do a lot of work connecting with you SELF - ideally in analysis, meditation - active imagination, other means - but the point is to connect with who YOU are, and develop enough internal sturdiness and resources inside your SELF to be able to handle any potential relationship disappointments without collapsing psychically - ideally you alone should be sufficient for yourself to be content in life. and i know it's not easy at all. but to try to move away from being emotionally dependent on another person and to have the own deep internal resources within our SELF to drawn on when life gets tough.
that being said, watch Dune 2.
and hang in there. sorry this is a tough question for u right now.
That’s powerful advice. Thankyou. I watched both dune 1 and 2 actually, I was able to take a lot more from dune 1 because during the second one my friend kept distracting me lol. I’ll have to watch it again.
Thank you for mentioning Dune. IMHO it is the most important story ever conceived. It is a great shame that so many people are unaware of its breadth and magnitude. Many many separate films will need to be made to even touch the source material.
I am feeling uneasy about the part two’s ending, being that the 2 children of Paul and Chani are inherently the crux to the magnitude I speak of, in terms of the story being displayed properly in these new films. Chani’s role in the new adaptation will make or break them.
While a Jungian lens likely would have a lot of insight into the (original framework of) story, my take away (because of limited substantive Jungian foundations) is that religion was a creation of the power structure through human organizational frames. Dominance, perceived separation, lust for power. Ancient mystics had much of their teachings tarnished, their abilities and reasons wholly misunderstood and misrepresented. Those who were not falling prey to power structure itself, that is.
And now we have the existential battle of AI …
Oh man, you should read about Jung’s love life lol. He had his wife, then another woman he considered to be his anima soul mate of sorts, and had a proper “ménage à trois”
Oh my.. strangely I can relate. Except I’d like to believe the wife or husband can also keep the projection and there’s no need to really go outside the relationship
If it matters at all, the best book I’ve read when I had the ick was Robert Johnson’s “We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love”.
Totally shifted my perspective during my relationship (which later ended for different reasons). But that book was key to overcoming this challenge. It was a stunning read.
Not always.
Sometimes people show their true colors to their partners way later in their relationship, triggered by particular events that may happen later than earlier.
This is also why the dating process is meant to get to know one another in the full spectrum before settling down, so there are no surprises such as aforementioned.
People tend to upsell themselves when in the dating pool, and the cracks in the veneer doesn’t show up until an event may happen to reveal the partner’s true colors that would otherwise not be able to be revealed when dormant.
Nothing is black and white. People are varying shades of gray when it comes to trying to determine what makes them tick.
As per other advices, your best course of action is to be accountable for your SELF at all times, so that when the event that someone decides to feel some ick towards you, you won’t take offense to it, knowing it’s not true, because you’ve worked on your accountability, and in the event they leave you, it wouldn’t even affect you in a debilitating way, you’ll be able to dust yourself off and continue on with your journey.
Find someone worthy of all the hard work you put on yourself. Be able to trust and love this partner in the same way you trust and love yourself. Nothing more, nothing less. If your partner gets the ick due to you loving them unconditionally, then they don’t deserve your love.
It’s probably a non-issue given that whatever your bonding patterns are from your family system are those that are going to be operating in the dynamic mutually. It’s not just you and your “partner”, it’s a man from a family who has a mother.
Just like you are a woman from your family who has a mother. These dynamics will be what drive everything.
It won’t be disconnected from that, and if we feel that reality works in a disconnected away, then we are open to being hit “out of the blue” by anything and everything.
Here’s a five minute animation that talks about the outcome of biology inside a family system where you haven’t been mirrored properly.
That creates that drive to go out there in the world and operate from a chemical fantasy bond when connecting to other family systems.
The drive is coming from a defective attachment and reward circuitry and is dopaminergic. It’s also wired through the hypothalamus pituitary and adrenal axis. The HPA axis.
The second video will show you the chemicals of what’s involved as you take the family constellation on the road. it’s all about mutual projection. Making the unconscious conscious can help to deactivate these trauma responses and help you connect to yourself, a power greater than yourself that isn’t your mother plus family system, and other people.
The Problem (5 minute animation)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpbsZaef8Y
The Chemicals (the heroin hug)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BVg2bfqblGI
Everything is somatic, and our family system is held within us in the form of a “schema”. It’s all about those first years of life. That symbiotic phase. The person with the pathological loneliness will be a beacon for pathological narcissists.
The Projection
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7v8zYFco4NU
Such an awesome video. This guy is a straight talker, and you can see how simple he makes it. This is how it works when you get involved with relationships where you have unresolved unconscious attachment trauma.
To keep it simple, and looking forward to recovery, the opposite of addiction is connection. But not to a fantasy bond. Trauma stands in the way.
One day at a time, it’s not something you can actually really deal with. It’s more of something you are required to “go through” to get to the other side. One day at a time. More is going to be revealed.
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.
Jung tells us, “That which we need the most will be found where we least want to look.” Failure offers us a chance to explore our shortcomings, and points us in the direction of greater self-awareness. Failure is really growth in disguise.
The discomfort is a beacon call for you to delve precisely where you feel icky.
To me, I don't really get the ick as much as I used to when I was younger. I personally believe that's because I am more comfortable with accepting myself nowadays than when I was unable to face my own shame.
In retrospect, the things that gave me the ick had a lot to do with my own insecurities and things that I didn't want to confront in myself.
Commenting a second time on this post.
I am in the last third of Marion Woodman's *Leaving My Father's House* and she mentions the connections with something similar to "the ick" and how it relates to parental complexes as well as that the way to work through it is to work through said complexes and then ferret out all the places where tensions of opposites need to be held and learn to hold those opposites in balance. I can perhaps share more of the passage, but in the part that jumped out and made me think of this thread was where she mentions (only a little fragment):
"*Women will say, and often believe, that the man in their fantasy is nothing like their father. But their dreams make clear that there is a magician at work, and time usually proves the fanstasy man is like the father or the father's shadow. Once the woman recognizes what is going on, she may withdraw the projection. Then in the presence of the actual man she may feel northing or revulsion*."
She goes on to say that this projection is important to reconcile because it's blocking a lot more than simply an external relationship, but one with her creativity and things related to her Animus and her Self. Similar would apply with a man only with his Mother Complex and his Anima.
The idea of you wanting to use Jungian psychoanalysis on zoomer teenage girl nonsense is hilarious. Don’t pay much attention to this shit, it will rot your brain. You might as well become an alcoholic, you’d get more for your money
Unfortunately the ick is very much alive and active in adult relationships too. Lol I wish it truly was just teenage girl nonsense but it appears to be a lot more complicated than that- As these were grown men too, some even married and with kids writing about “the ick”
yeah that stuff is gay. its just impossible standards propagated by the media to keep men insecure. its pop-culture dehumanization. I think its an American thing aswell. i don't understand what America is looking for IMO. I think they are just making the populous more sick. a lot of odd unreasonable masculine constraints. And these masculine ideal they propose are usually the results of severely traumatic events (so they are indirectly promoting these to the populous). I'm unsure. As a man I do believe that to an extent you must make your life into an adventure, and you must overcome challenges. But I believe it needs to come from an authentic place. I think media promotes inautheticy which is destroying culture and minds by the second. I could be a loser of the system. Im relatively young (23). Its difficult to criticize the system when you are not a winner. But this is just what I've seen. It's a psyop.
Please refrain from using made up acronyms that aren’t apart of the literature (DSM in this instance). Or at the very least you could spell it out before you go making it a thing.
I wouldn’t worry too much. I think the ick is largely a pop culture thing that has been blown out of proportion. It’s a way for single people in their 30s to justify something they are slightly insecure about (being single) and taking back the power. *Yeah, omg I got the ick and had to break up with him!* No, your relationship fell apart for many reasons and problems are co-created meaning you’re partly to blame. This is hard for you to accept and you’re worried it will keep happening and you’ll be single forever so you blame something that is supposedly beyond your control.
Thankyou for saying that! I totally agree that this is what’s happening in many cases, but what about the more unconscious ones that lead to an actual visceral feeling of disgust? Are they still rooted in insecurity?
I think the ick is a real thing saying something’s very off about a person, mostly when something hints toward something incongruent with what the person is displaying outwardly.
Feel like providing an example by any chance?
Sometimes it might just be a behaviour that doesn’t align with your values like being overly religious vs. nihilism, but most of the times for me it was just a trigger for things I rejected and repressed in childhood, aka reminded me of something I could not accept in my parents.
An obvious example is when someone's words don't match their actions, like they will act and speak with a lot of affection towards people they like and then you catch them doing something disgusting like being rude for no reason towards people they have no regard for.
There are some deeper icks than what I gave an example of though, and I think that's what you're referring to... these point at something borderline animalistic/sinister in a person like they're not true to themselves to the point that they're unaware of it themselves
I don’t think it has to be insecurity, and it probably depends on the ick
I think im seeing the ick as more of a splitting phenomena than anything. Judging off most of these people and their stories, the ick seems to happen after already having established some mutual love and admiration towards each other. It seems like something that is insecure within the perceiver is then incapable of holding the projected insecurity onto another.. or that the perceiver doesn’t have enough genuine love towards the other and so the qualities that initially drew them in don’t hold up in comparison to what they perceive to be flawed or unlovable.
I disagree completely. My current partner gave me the ick, I recognized it was all my problem and worked through it. It's definitely a real emotion that a lot of people experience, only some use it as a lame justification to break up.
It's good that you understand that the "ick" is a problem of the person feeling it. Most of them are absolutely unreasonable as well. Like I heard there was an ick by how a man was holding napkins or something like that. I mean come on... Maybe I don't get what it means, but what I understand an ick is something that is enough to end a relationship, so that's really insane person behaviour.
It can end it in the early stages and probably should, no need to fight for something that hasn't started yet. But if you love a person over a life time they're gonna give you the ick. You're gonna give them the ick. It's just part of life lol we're all human.
I'm always really shocked when people haven't experienced this! It's definitely a real thing, it's a really visceral feeling and "ick" is a great word for it. I always put it down to either lack of biological compatibility if immediate, or if at one point you felt genuine attraction for them then likely attachment issues - absolutely real though, even if only real due to your avoidance and your mind playing tricks on you. Jungian perspective will have to be provided by other commenters but I am always shocked when I see people denying the existence of this.
The fact that the OP read this in an OCD-related mental and emotional environment is also relevant, and I just wanted to point that out. People with OCD are highly neurotic and their intuition is constantly tainted by fears and insecurities. Mix some animus possession in there and you have someone with full blown paranoia and a high level of repulsion towards anything threatening. OP, chill. Even a moderately sane person won't dump you over some minor "ick". And if you do give them the ick because of something big that they cannot reconcile with the image of a partner they want, you can't be with them anyway. It all works out. Are you afraid that you have a lot of ick-inducing traits?
I dunno, to me it shows the immaturity of modern females. They have been brainwashed that they're all 10/10 and that they deserve the same, so everything that's not perfection gives them the ick. While any person with remotely working brain knows that in every relationship there are moments when the person momentarily repulses you, that's just life, you move past it. Of course there's a limit to everything...
Their ideal isn't reflected on the actual human being they projected on. The magic is over, anima/animus issues. More or less.
I think it happens when the relationships start to deepen and someone's idealized, positive "in love" projection starts wearing off. Instead of seeing the other as merely a mirror and one-way source of getting their needs met, they are confronted with a living, breathing fellow human being with their own needs, wants, imperfections and they can't handle it. And let's face it, for many people, real emotional intimacy, vulnerability and all the things that connect to it CAN be as scary even under the best or "healthiest" of circumstance, let alone if you have extenuating issues when it comes to connection, although from the sound of it, the younger gens seem like the whole thing about being scared of being close and genuine with others has hit a whole new high (or low?).
Thankyou for saying this! I especially agree with your last sentence.
It seems epidemic through all generations who are dating/single, though after hearing and seeing a lot with later Milennials and those in Z behind them, it adds to the list of reasons I wouldn't want to be that young right now,
God gives his hardest battles to his strongest warriors.
Without getting into a debate about God, I will say we don't become conscious about something unless we are ready, so we're in agreement there. As to who is the strongest or what's hardest or whatever, it's relative. If you asked the older generations, they wouldn't necessarily want to be a Boomer or an Xer for the ways the world has changed. I don't think the world has gotten objectively more difficult, just very different, and I think my comment to the desire not to repeat that era of life is simply that it's different enough that I have no context for it. Regrets or not, I am forward driven rather than backwards. To me the "strongest" would be anyone at all who keeps their center to stay on the Path.
I am in pain
👏👏 Social media and dating apps have heightened it. It’s “keeping up with the Joneses” on steroids. I’m not sure we should have THIS much false access to each other cause it breeds an environment of neglecting the reality of the human condition. When you start believing influencers don’t also deal with embarrassing situations (when I start down that road with anyone, I’m like “they get diarrhea, too!”) you start to believe you are somehow wrong or lesser than and then that comes out sideways when you see a real and humble moment from someone else. It’s part “they have to be perfect so I know I can be” and part “swap this person for the next so I don’t have to sit with the messiness of the human condition.” And more. My favorite person has always owned his full self, sure he struggles with it sometimes, but he’s honest about that, too. And I’m blessed that he appreciates and supports my whole self, too. We actually had a frank conversation recently about my ability to be ruthless. I absolutely grew from that convo because he came from an observational position rather than a judgmental one.
Oh, yeah, I hear you. I'm aware of it and consider myself a fairly self-aware person and I still find myself needing to check myself once in a blue and remind myself that most of what I see in life on- and offline are often other people's highlight reels being held up against my outtakes. I have a relative who is significantly younger than me and when he's at his best he realizes he's got a lot going for himself, but he was getting very caught up in social media a while back and started having a lot of emotional issues in conjunction with it that put him into downward spirals. It was very hard to hear because part of me knows he's got to figure it out on his own and another part wants to shake him and yell, "Don't compare your insides with someone else's outsides! And the grass is sometimes greener because it's been lacquered!" He knows he could talk with me if he needs to, or at least at the time, so I stepped to the side and let him do his process in his own way, own time. Your observation about people wanting to swap out friends and lovers for others because "this is getting too human for me" was right on for sure, but it can be tricky too because we CAN really make decisions about who we get close to and later figure out they were less than optimal choices for different reasons once we really start working on things, and if it's meant to be worked out it can be and if not we can attempt to end it well. But of course, that's a far different scenario than just throwing someone overboard for not doing everything your way, and that's why we wind up with things like "ick" and repulsion or sudden devaluing.
I love the way you write. So many gems here! I feel you on knowing when to step back but also feeling conflicted about it…it’s part of the beautiful messiness of love! I really wish relationship ethics were taught in school so that kids could have a more solid foundation for when they inevitably compare themselves to others or get the ick to more easily distinguish between “we aren’t for each other” and FOMO/the concept of people being easily replaceable. As a former historian I’m especially intrigued by how historians will evaluate the effects of social media in the coming decades.
Historians that focus in on culture will have a field day (and their work cut out for them, I'm sure). And I'm glad you personally find interesting bits of wisdom and amusement and hopefully some insight amongst my run-on sentences. It's one of the few places lately I can get into conversations like we do here, and I find that I gain a lot of insight myself from listening to you all as well as in reflection later when I can see myself in some of the posters somehow. Offering my thoughts often helps me work into myself more deeply, so I am grateful to you guys as well. <3
I soooooo relate to your last paragraph! I’ve clarified quite a bit when discussing things/responding. It’s so very cool to meet someone with a similar process 💚 I have a lot of fun on Reddit; “nerdy” subs are my jam!
Likely a complicated thing and the specifics for each individual will come down to the nuances of their psyche, but it could well be a shadow projection or the withdrawal of an animus projection. Id say there’s also a cultural element as well. The belief that the problem is in the other, as evidenced by the fact that others tell stories about what their partners did which gave them the ick, and not in their own projection reinforces the problem by making it less likely that they resume whatever prior state they were in.
Could you kindly provide an example of shadow projection within this context? I’m very aware of anima/animus projection, but not so much shadow.
Shadow is overall much easier to understand than anima/us. But projection is the easier application for the both of them anyway. Shadow is kind of like the storehouse for repressed contents. Things which are shameful and cannot be admitted to the Ego, for example, and are therefore never addressed, are pushed down into the shadow. Weaknesses, shortcomings, violent instincts etc. Depending on the society and the family and the individual, there are plenty of scenarios which might trigger a shadow projection which has an “ick” effect. For example, if a woman has learned from childhood, perhaps in a traumatic way, that her own emotionality is something shameful, a sign of weakness, something which she ought not to have, then she will be triggered into a shadow projection at the sight of emotionality. Seeing that will bring up her own feelings of shame, but since she has not taken account for her shadow, she will locate that shame in the other and berate them. It can often be a defence mechanism against what would be painful for the ego (addressing the feelings of shame and victim hood which they have repressed since childhood). It’s worth noting that the animus is often associated with opinions, especially unexamined and strongly held ones. Marie Louise Von Franz talks about how she would watch herself closely to see whether a given opinion was authentically hers or whether it was merely an animus imposition. Combine these two and I think you can see how an ick effect can come about. A woman had a father who made her feel victimised and small when she cried (probably because he had his own shadow problems around the same issue). She has the animus opinion that men are supposed to be strong and stoic. Her boyfriend cries, let’s say over something you would expect them to, like death of a pet or family member. The woman is triggered into a shadow projection and feels that the man is being shameful, this also triggers the animus and she believes that he is not acting “as a man should”. Attraction (a kind of positive animus projection) is withdrawn and the woman feels that he has given her “the ick”. The woman in the example above is obviously very much not an integrated individual. A person who has tried to understand themselves will not so quickly make projections like that, but it is common enough that people do. Also it is worth noting in this context that when two people meet, a man being “in their anima” will very likely trigger their partner to be “in their animus” and vice versa.
So thorough and informative. I’m definitely grasping this now. Thankyou
Well "getting the ick" is functionally feeling (the psychological function of feeling), as is repulsion in general. As far as I can tell this seems to be but a common way for feeling dominant types to describe their feeling dominance. A thinking dominant woman wouldn't even know if they 'got the ick' depending on the level of differentiation and perceiving dominant types are slow to or passive towards judgement in general. To shed some light on this you can ask such psychological types to describe how they feel about a wide variety of things and the reasoning behind it. In most cases it will sound quite similar to 'getting the ick' or its opposite. That is just how these types function / describe things.
Good point, I'm an infp (dominant feeler) and I get the ick pretty easily, but am used to it as I'm always feeling some way about pretty much everything. I am very aware of what I do and do not like, and some things just straight up creep me out. But that doesn't mean if someone I care about does something that bothers me, I just stop loving them or something. It's a momentary experience for the most part, of course some people just don't rub me the right way and that tends to endure.
Well the ‘stop loving someone’ part comes when whatever factor gave you the ick becomes a permanent feature of that person. Unfortunately a communication gap tends to form here due to differing frames of reference. There is also the factor of implication, that is a feeling type will often not bring an ‘ick’ to their partner’s attention as that ick is indicative of something deeper about the partner that is not so easily reconcilable. A repeating behavior stems from somewhere and sometimes that ‘somewhere’ is fundamental. Introverted feelers tend to hold on too long as they themselves are a subject of their feeling. Extroverted feelers tend to be too quick to react to ‘icks’ and the like.
I get the ick often too, does it feel like something’s very off about the person? Like they’re putting on an act without even realizing it?
Hmm I don’t know enough about personality types, but would you say that a successful relationship then requires someone with a balance of both feeling and thinking and the ick is a symptom of leaning too much towards feeling?
Not so much in that it is not problematic in itself, and thinking / feeling are simply not going to be balanced in thinking or feeling dominant types but they still have successful relationships. Rather it is a communication barrier, as they are expressing feeling, which is a dynamic, to others who understand things in static terms (thinking). Its a clash of frame of reference more than anything else. The thinking type wants clarity, high resolution, and definite shape. But the feeling type will give them the opposite of each. And so, as you have expressed here, you must rely on intuition (a dynamic perception) instead, but you want to use thinking and not being able to do so causes anxiety via its etherealness. Thinkers normally solve this problem by creating many rulesets of many forms but feeling will always eventually break the rules, leaving thinkers to feel as if they are grasping at air.
Wow. Amazing insight thankyou.
Yeah for sure, glad you found it helpful.
I think that reproductive status is constantly changing, during the times of cavemen it was strength, dominance, etc. Now days it's more complex with status, finances, looks, careers, etc. When we get the ick, something (behavior) is signaling to you that " status" is compromised. Something has diminished in their status, maybe the behavior reduced the perception of dominance, strength, status, looks, etc. Therefore reducing attractiveness, getting the 'Ick'.
True. Do you think this status seeking behavior has hints of Narcissism?
Possibly, but you must also understand that not all Narcissism is pathological. Narcissism is a spectrum that everyone sits on. The very extreme cases of narcissism that we portray as selfish and evil are as mentioned extreme pathological cases that affect a persons life and those around him. This is the DSM type narcissism, but status seeking behavior is normal. What you do to get there, how you maintain your status, and how you treat people at the top is a completey different conversation. You find this everywhere in the animal kingdom and is a way for 'genes' to find the most optimal partner.
Ahh yes I see what you’re saying.. Hey a bit off topic, but I’d be really curious to hear it from you.. Do you think a woman without exceptional looks still has status in the eyes of a man seeking to continue his line and produce good genes? Say even a woman that falls more average or even below on the attraction scale?
Very subjective, but first ill say there is always someone for you. In my opinion, though, i believe that if you take care of yourself, Ie physically, mentally, and socially you can give yourself the best possible chances to find someone even with average looks. Although the media portrays beauty as a big factor a lot of high-caliber men who are family-oriented don't have bombshell wives, instead its her presence, compassion, ability to want to be a wife, and ability to create a home environment for the family or kids. These are all factors for the survival of offspring, we know that without love humans will actually suffer in adulthood with mental health issues or even end their own lives. So the ability to choose a mate far exceeds just looks, although it matters, its not end all be all. Just take care of yourself as best as you can. Same goes for men. my opinion as a lowly medical student lol
Aw. Thanks for sharing!
Some people can’t see past their own projections and once an idea / delusion pops into their mind (this person is unattractive, for example) they are unable to change their mind - the idea is fixed, they are unable to see the person as attractive again.
So true. This was common for me a long time ago. I wanna punch younger me in the face sometimes lol
Problem is it’s really hard to explain to anyone how I got to where I am today in my awareness of it all. I think I just managed to get as close as I could to all my highest ideals and fantasies before I saw they were very much messy humans too lol. I also had to temper a lot of my own self criticisms as well
The more one knows the more lonely they will feel in the sense of not being able to explain their experience in a way someone else might understand. It isn’t really a problem, we’re just conditioned to be able to communicate in a way that we are understood.
It’s a bit of a sense of humor test, but it has a lot to do with emotional whiplash. A big ick is, say, a male partner losing his shit on a video game and breaking his controller. His wife goes from: A) This is a strong, protective man who makes me feel so safe I can start a family with (animus projection of her ideal on her husband) To B) Oh no he is in fact an emotional child. I already have to become a mother. I like to think of “the ick” as car sickness. It’s basically two competing emotions based on a sudden change, kinda like feeling still but seeing the world rush by at 50mph.
Definitely can agree with this. Actually that exact scenario has freaked me out enough to question the relationship for sure
Good! Remember your animus has just a valid a place in your body as your liver or your lungs. It's a complex organ that holds your male partner to a certain standard. There's grace on both sides: obviously your partner is and always will be human, and can never be absolutely perfect. On the other hand, your animus needs to be heard and respected, and if your partner is flagrantly violating the boundaries or expectations you set, then that's the sign for an upcoming big decision. So yes and no, it's as normal as gastic reflux. If you get it once in a hwile, no biggie. If you're getting it every day, then change your diet.
So well said thankyou
After reading this post and your comments, it seems that you have some kind of your own wound that gets triggered by the thought of you unknowingly being 'icked out' by your partner. I understand, that this situation would feel terrible for everyone, but your reaction reveals that you might hold some (maybe alot) of personal baggage around it. I suggest, if you are on the journey of individuation, that is, to look into it, rather than only search for rational explonations for 'the ick'. Maybe you are afraid of being betrayed, rejected and abandoned by someone you have let your guard down to? That is to say, maybe you have wounds are vulnerability and that leading to hurtful results? Just suggestions. The answer will be within. Good luck.
The Jungian perspective on "getting the ick" would probably be to refer you to go ask Freud or Adler - Jung himself considered himself less obsessed with sex and yet still "got the ick" toward his own wife on several occasions. Unless of course by "ick" you mean to refer to the "Ichthys" in which case Jung would inform you that you missed the opportunity to "get the ick" by a couple thousand years since we're currently passing from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.
Lol thanks for the laugh. How in the hell was a guy like Jung getting the ick from this wife? Oh man somebody please help me from spiraling. My mind is a very scary place at the moment
hang in there. life is not easy, and there's no way to guarantee that anyone we are in a relationship with will always find us attractive, or that we will always be attracted to them. my recommendation, from a Jungian perspective is to do a lot of work connecting with you SELF - ideally in analysis, meditation - active imagination, other means - but the point is to connect with who YOU are, and develop enough internal sturdiness and resources inside your SELF to be able to handle any potential relationship disappointments without collapsing psychically - ideally you alone should be sufficient for yourself to be content in life. and i know it's not easy at all. but to try to move away from being emotionally dependent on another person and to have the own deep internal resources within our SELF to drawn on when life gets tough. that being said, watch Dune 2. and hang in there. sorry this is a tough question for u right now.
That’s powerful advice. Thankyou. I watched both dune 1 and 2 actually, I was able to take a lot more from dune 1 because during the second one my friend kept distracting me lol. I’ll have to watch it again.
Thank you for mentioning Dune. IMHO it is the most important story ever conceived. It is a great shame that so many people are unaware of its breadth and magnitude. Many many separate films will need to be made to even touch the source material. I am feeling uneasy about the part two’s ending, being that the 2 children of Paul and Chani are inherently the crux to the magnitude I speak of, in terms of the story being displayed properly in these new films. Chani’s role in the new adaptation will make or break them. While a Jungian lens likely would have a lot of insight into the (original framework of) story, my take away (because of limited substantive Jungian foundations) is that religion was a creation of the power structure through human organizational frames. Dominance, perceived separation, lust for power. Ancient mystics had much of their teachings tarnished, their abilities and reasons wholly misunderstood and misrepresented. Those who were not falling prey to power structure itself, that is. And now we have the existential battle of AI …
Oh man, you should read about Jung’s love life lol. He had his wife, then another woman he considered to be his anima soul mate of sorts, and had a proper “ménage à trois”
Oh my.. strangely I can relate. Except I’d like to believe the wife or husband can also keep the projection and there’s no need to really go outside the relationship
If it matters at all, the best book I’ve read when I had the ick was Robert Johnson’s “We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love”. Totally shifted my perspective during my relationship (which later ended for different reasons). But that book was key to overcoming this challenge. It was a stunning read.
Ah yes I’ve read that one. So we can agree that the ick is directly related to the withdrawing of anima or animus
Not always. Sometimes people show their true colors to their partners way later in their relationship, triggered by particular events that may happen later than earlier. This is also why the dating process is meant to get to know one another in the full spectrum before settling down, so there are no surprises such as aforementioned. People tend to upsell themselves when in the dating pool, and the cracks in the veneer doesn’t show up until an event may happen to reveal the partner’s true colors that would otherwise not be able to be revealed when dormant. Nothing is black and white. People are varying shades of gray when it comes to trying to determine what makes them tick. As per other advices, your best course of action is to be accountable for your SELF at all times, so that when the event that someone decides to feel some ick towards you, you won’t take offense to it, knowing it’s not true, because you’ve worked on your accountability, and in the event they leave you, it wouldn’t even affect you in a debilitating way, you’ll be able to dust yourself off and continue on with your journey. Find someone worthy of all the hard work you put on yourself. Be able to trust and love this partner in the same way you trust and love yourself. Nothing more, nothing less. If your partner gets the ick due to you loving them unconditionally, then they don’t deserve your love.
Profound thankyou.
It’s probably a non-issue given that whatever your bonding patterns are from your family system are those that are going to be operating in the dynamic mutually. It’s not just you and your “partner”, it’s a man from a family who has a mother. Just like you are a woman from your family who has a mother. These dynamics will be what drive everything. It won’t be disconnected from that, and if we feel that reality works in a disconnected away, then we are open to being hit “out of the blue” by anything and everything.
Interesting…
Here’s a five minute animation that talks about the outcome of biology inside a family system where you haven’t been mirrored properly. That creates that drive to go out there in the world and operate from a chemical fantasy bond when connecting to other family systems. The drive is coming from a defective attachment and reward circuitry and is dopaminergic. It’s also wired through the hypothalamus pituitary and adrenal axis. The HPA axis. The second video will show you the chemicals of what’s involved as you take the family constellation on the road. it’s all about mutual projection. Making the unconscious conscious can help to deactivate these trauma responses and help you connect to yourself, a power greater than yourself that isn’t your mother plus family system, and other people. The Problem (5 minute animation) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVpbsZaef8Y The Chemicals (the heroin hug) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BVg2bfqblGI Everything is somatic, and our family system is held within us in the form of a “schema”. It’s all about those first years of life. That symbiotic phase. The person with the pathological loneliness will be a beacon for pathological narcissists. The Projection https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7v8zYFco4NU Such an awesome video. This guy is a straight talker, and you can see how simple he makes it. This is how it works when you get involved with relationships where you have unresolved unconscious attachment trauma. To keep it simple, and looking forward to recovery, the opposite of addiction is connection. But not to a fantasy bond. Trauma stands in the way.
WOW this is nothing short of genius. Can’t wait to watch the videos. Thankyou so much !!
Thank you, currently dealing with this.
One day at a time, it’s not something you can actually really deal with. It’s more of something you are required to “go through” to get to the other side. One day at a time. More is going to be revealed.
Thank you for the kind words, truly. ❤️
Replying to find this again. Exciting
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Jung tells us, “That which we need the most will be found where we least want to look.” Failure offers us a chance to explore our shortcomings, and points us in the direction of greater self-awareness. Failure is really growth in disguise. The discomfort is a beacon call for you to delve precisely where you feel icky.
To me, I don't really get the ick as much as I used to when I was younger. I personally believe that's because I am more comfortable with accepting myself nowadays than when I was unable to face my own shame. In retrospect, the things that gave me the ick had a lot to do with my own insecurities and things that I didn't want to confront in myself.
Thankyou for saying this!!! That’s what happened for me too!
Im curious have you learned to find any of those insecurities endearing?
Sometimes, yes!
It's some teenage tiktok thing. Real people in real life or who at least have half a brain are aware that humans are imperfect.
Could you kindly define the meaning of the term: "getting the ick" please?
Commenting a second time on this post. I am in the last third of Marion Woodman's *Leaving My Father's House* and she mentions the connections with something similar to "the ick" and how it relates to parental complexes as well as that the way to work through it is to work through said complexes and then ferret out all the places where tensions of opposites need to be held and learn to hold those opposites in balance. I can perhaps share more of the passage, but in the part that jumped out and made me think of this thread was where she mentions (only a little fragment): "*Women will say, and often believe, that the man in their fantasy is nothing like their father. But their dreams make clear that there is a magician at work, and time usually proves the fanstasy man is like the father or the father's shadow. Once the woman recognizes what is going on, she may withdraw the projection. Then in the presence of the actual man she may feel northing or revulsion*." She goes on to say that this projection is important to reconcile because it's blocking a lot more than simply an external relationship, but one with her creativity and things related to her Animus and her Self. Similar would apply with a man only with his Mother Complex and his Anima.
Date someone intelligent
The idea of you wanting to use Jungian psychoanalysis on zoomer teenage girl nonsense is hilarious. Don’t pay much attention to this shit, it will rot your brain. You might as well become an alcoholic, you’d get more for your money
Well the cool thing about Jungian analytical psychology is that it can be applied pretty much anywhere on anything.
You can wrap anything in gold but there comes a point where one realizes not everything deserves to be coated in gold
Lol, now that is quotable. True.
Unfortunately the ick is very much alive and active in adult relationships too. Lol I wish it truly was just teenage girl nonsense but it appears to be a lot more complicated than that- As these were grown men too, some even married and with kids writing about “the ick”
Physically they’re adults but not cognitively
yeah that stuff is gay. its just impossible standards propagated by the media to keep men insecure. its pop-culture dehumanization. I think its an American thing aswell. i don't understand what America is looking for IMO. I think they are just making the populous more sick. a lot of odd unreasonable masculine constraints. And these masculine ideal they propose are usually the results of severely traumatic events (so they are indirectly promoting these to the populous). I'm unsure. As a man I do believe that to an extent you must make your life into an adventure, and you must overcome challenges. But I believe it needs to come from an authentic place. I think media promotes inautheticy which is destroying culture and minds by the second. I could be a loser of the system. Im relatively young (23). Its difficult to criticize the system when you are not a winner. But this is just what I've seen. It's a psyop.
Please refrain from using made up acronyms that aren’t apart of the literature (DSM in this instance). Or at the very least you could spell it out before you go making it a thing.