When Do You See Disgust?
1 Feb 2026 · 1 min

0:56
Vanessa Van Edwards explains how disgust shows up when people lie or feel inauthentic, and how it signals confusion or low self-esteem. These cues can help you spot who needs support.

Vanessa Van Edwards explains how disgust shows up when people lie or feel inauthentic, and how it signals confusion or low self-esteem. These cues can help you spot who needs support.
When do you see disgust around deception and self deception? Lying makes us feel dirty. So you'll often see people when they have to lie, I don't want to lie, I don't want to feel it, I don't want to smell it. But I'm just going to get through it, I'm going to say it. They lie like this. This also happens with self deception. Lying to themselves about something that also makes them feel a little bit inauthentic, a little bit dirty. When we dislike something, when we're confused by something, we dislike our own confusion. And so we'll show dislike around that. And of course, things that are bad smelling, bad tasting or bad looking, you go, mmm, I don't think so. That's not for me. Another weird way that I've seen disgust is with self disg. If you're in a position where you're dealing with high levels of threat or you're dealing with people who have very low self esteem, or dealing with people who have done violent things or bad things in the past, they sometimes have a lot of self disgust and they will show disgust when they talk about their own actions or their own thoughts or their own beliefs. You'll see that someone's ashamed of what they're talking about. So if you see self disgust, they're the people that you want to help build up, if you can. They're the people who you want to help repair or assess that threat level.