202: The Ick, Shadow Work, And Why You're Still Single

If you keep getting the ick with every person you date, the problem might not actually be them. In this episode, Sabrina unpacks shadow work and the ick, breaking down how the parts of yourself you rejected long ago are running your dating life, your relationships, and the triggers that send you spiraling over something small. This is why you keep walking away from available, kind, emotionally present people and calling it intuition. Sabrina lays out the difference between shadow work, inner child work, attachment styles, and nervous system regulation, and why the healing work most people are doing only takes them so far. With neuroscience on projection, the amygdala, and unconscious self-perception, plus practical tools to track the charge underneath your reactions, this episode is for anyone ready to stop self-sabotaging in dating and finally build a secure, emotionally available relationship. Pre-order Sabrina's book coming out October 2026,⁠ "Why Am I Like This?"⁠ If you’re ready to slow down, trust your instincts, and break your old dating patterns, the Healthy Relationship Foundations Course walks you through it step-by-step ⁠HERE!⁠ If you’re serious about changing your dating patterns instead of repeating them, the Art of Going Slow course helps you unlearn urgency, regulate your nervous system, and build real connection without rushing, chasing, or abandoning yourself ⁠HERE!⁠ Get Ad free ⁠HERE!⁠ Want to work with Sabrina? ⁠HERE!⁠ Get merch for The Sabrina Zohar Show ⁠HERE!⁠ Don't forget to follow ⁠Sabrina⁠ and ⁠The Sabrina Zohar Show⁠ on Instagram and ⁠Sabrina ⁠on TikTok! Video now available on ⁠YOUTUBE!⁠ Please support our sponsors! This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. Get 10% off your first month of Betterhelp at betterhelp.com/sabrina Download the Poshmark app and use code sabrina when you sign up to get $10 off your first purchase, or shop now at Poshmark.com/sabrina and get $10 off your first purchase. Get 40% off select Lola Blankets products at Lolablankets.com by using code SABRINA at checkout. Experience the world’s #1 blanket with Lola Blankets ============================= Chapters: 00:00 Why You Get The Ick With Everyone 03:30 Inner Child Work vs Shadow Work 07:08 What Shadow Work Really Means 09:28 Parts You Reject In Yourself 12:29 The Ick Decoded In Dating 15:42 Masculine Feminine Polarity Myth 18:37 Triggers In Your Relationship 22:32 Projection In Love (Yale Study) 26:14 Neuroscience Of The Shadow 29:38 How To Do Shadow Work Daily Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formerly known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A. Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Sabrina Zohar?

  I want to talk to the person who gets the ick with literally everybody. Every single person you go out with, there's something wrong. They fucking chewed too loud, the shoes they wore, they laughed too loud, they dried too hard. And this person genuinely believes they just haven't found the right one yet, that their standards are just too high. And maybe that's true, but maybe, and hear me out, maybe the ick isn't protecting them from the wrong people, it's actually protecting them from being seen by the right ones. Because there are parts of yourself that you cut off a long time ago, parts you decided were too much, or too needy, or too messy, or too loud, or too whatever the fuck you think. And those parts didn't just go away, they just went underground. And now you're running your entire love life with that really underneath it all. So today, we're going to talk about shadow work, what it actually is, why it's different

• 1:44Sabrina Zohar?

  from everything else we've talked about on the show, and why it might be the reason you keep ending up right here. Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to another episode of the Sabrina Zohar Show. My name is Sabrina Zohar, and I am your host. Hello, my babies, welcome back. It's May, it's my birthday month. I mean, this is after my birthday, but it's my month. I'm so excited to be here with my friends. It's funny, somebody had asked, I want an episode on shadow work. And I was like, okay, shadow work and your child work. I'm like, how can I differentiate this? And then I was talking to somebody and I said, what is the number one thing you see in dating right now? And he said, oh, all of my girlfriends, just they, all they have is the ick. Everything is the ick. And I stopped and I was like, the ick? The ick is something deeper. And I started doing my studies and my work and going through it and realizing I was right.

• 2:28Sabrina Zohar?

  The ick really is playing with the shadow. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm so excited because again, I want to be bringing newness with you guys. Different topics, different ideas. And I hope you guys stick around. I hope you listen. I hope you come back every single week. And if you do, thank you so much. And if you don't, that's okay. Welcome to this episode if this is what you need. Guys, don't forget as always, if you need anything, you can work one on one. You can join one of the courses. We've got the Going Slow course or the Healthy Dating Foundation course. One is really great if you need to slow it the fuck down. And the other one is really great if you don't even know where to start in dating and you want to build a healthy foundation. And if you need anything, everything's at sabrina zohar.com. Please don't forget, rate or review the show, leave a comment, share it with a friend. You have no idea how much that helps and how we can build a community. And if you guys want ad free, it's an option. And if not, that's okay too.

• 3:12Sabrina Zohar?

  You could fast forward, you could support the advertisers because they are the reason the show is free for you guys. And I am so fucking grateful. But thank you. Thank you as always for being here, showing up as you and allowing me to show up as me. All right, babies, without further ado, let's get right on into it, shall we? I hear the buzzword all the time, right? Shadow work, shadow work, do the shadow work, love the parts of yourself. And it's like, but I don't know anybody knows what the fuck that actually means. And I remember a couple of years ago when I started on TikTok, everything was about this like journal. I don't even remember the name of it. It was some shadow work journal. And people were like fucking coming out of their pants because of it. And it was like, when I'd read it, I'm like, this is very basic. It's very simple. Like really what we're trying to do is just like uncover the parts of ourselves that we are embarrassed and scared to show. And I have my own fair share of shadows.

• 3:57Sabrina Zohar?

  Like I find myself even sometimes if I'll get frustrated with something I see in somebody else, I'll notice like, oh, that's a frustration I have within myself. That's something I'm uncomfortable showing about me. And that's oftentimes like when we get triggered or we project, right? We have all these different variables. And so I'm excited. I'm excited to talk. About something a little different today because I think that this healing journey, I think a lot of people want it to be linear and it's just not, it's not. And it, you know, let me preface, like, things might get repetitive. I totally understand that some of you guys have been here from the beginning and it's like, wow, okay, were we still talking about some of these things? We are, because when I was in school, I needed to learn the same thing over and over again. I've been trying to learn French, it's hard. And they just keep doing the same thing over and over and for some reason I'm still not getting it because I'm a human and it takes repetition for us to create new neural pathways.

• 4:41Sabrina Zohar?

  So if you're new here, awesome, let's fucking go. And if you've been here for a minute, great, I'm really proud of you. We're gonna keep this going. And I want to make sure that this episode and moving forward, most of the episodes are good if you're dating, you're single, you're in a relationship or anywhere in between. Because we can all always improve in ourselves and keep this fucking gravy train running. Alright, so what is shadow work? Like, what does that actually fucking mean? So we've talked about inner child work a lot on the show and I love that work. Like, I genuinely wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that. And I want to be really specific about where it ends and where this begins because they can get conflated and they're not actually the same thing. So, inner child work is about the hurt parts of you, right? The little version of you that didn't get what they needed and built an entire survival strategy around that absence.

• 5:25Sabrina Zohar?

  That work is fucking beautiful and it builds so much compassion for yourself and I will always be an advocate for it. But here's where it can get a little tricky. Someone can do the inner child work for years and keep showing up the same in their relationships because they got really comfortable being the wounded one. The healing became the identity and I say that with so much love because I have been there. I have asked, one question I notice really changes the game. If you were to get rid of the narrative and story that you've created about yourself, who would you be? So if you're not always the anxious one, or the one that people leave, or the one that nobody wants, who's left under that? Then maybe you'd actually be the person that's smart, that's driven, that has a lot to offer, that is validated, that knows who they are. And that's often really, really scary because for us to step into that, we have to let go of all the core beliefs that associate with the original story.

• 6:10Sabrina Zohar?

  And we have to start actually fucking believing in ourselves, which is why it's so easy to hold on to a narrative of, I'm just fucked up and there's something wrong with me. As opposed to doing that inner work to realize there's never been anything fucking wrong with you, someone just created a narrative about you, you now get to re- To me, attachment work, it kinda gives you a map. It shows you the strategy you built to stay connected to your caregivers and how that same strategy is now running your adult relationships. And that is incredibly powerful information. But I think people wear it like a fucking nank tag. I'm anxious attachment. It becomes the explanation for everything instead of showing you where you're actually moving from and through. Knowing your style is step one, but that's not the whole fucking staircase. I want you to get really curious. Is it an explanation or an excuse? If you're saying, "Well, they're avoidant," are you excusing their behavior?

• 6:55Sabrina Zohar?

  Or are you explaining it so that you can understand it and then make a choice for yourself? If you keep fucking running around saying, "Well, it's my anxious attachment style and I'm just triggered." That's a fucking excuse. You can understand your attachment style and still fucking do something about it. I don't sit here and say, "Well, that's my anxious attachment style. That's why I screamed at you," and expect that you're gonna give me a get out of jail free card. What I do is I say, "Oh, that's what's being activated right now, which means now I get to get curious about what's underneath it so I can change my actual fucking behavior and become the secure version I have always known lives inside of me. I just haven't had the space to be able to show it in a different way." Nervous system work, it gets you into your body. I love it, right? It teaches you to notice when you're dysregulated, how to bring yourself back, and that matters. But regulation on its own doesn't tell you

• 7:37Sabrina Zohar?

  why certain people or situations send your system into chaos for the first place. The reason I always say we don't wanna focus so heavily on the why is because we don't need to understand, "Why did they do this? And why did they do that? And why don't they like me?" There is somebody out there who would be fucking lucky to be chosen by you and I need you to start fucking acting like it. The more you try to understand, "Why didn't they like me? And why don't they wanna be with me?" All you're doing is self-abandoning. You can understand why a situation ship ended, so you can grow from it. "Why did I go for somebody emotionally unavailable? That was intermittent reinforcement and felt really safe, but it wasn't actually a true connection." Great, focus on that. But if you're so focused on why this person didn't want you, you are completely missing out on the fact that just because they didn't doesn't mean that there's not fucking a thousand people lining up for the opportunity to be with someone amazing just like you.

• 8:19Sabrina Zohar?

  To me, I think shadow work fills the gap of all of these aspects and what they leave open. Shadow work isn't about the parts of you that got hurt. It's about the parts of you that you rejected. The parts you decided were unacceptable and just amputated from who you were. And here's the thing that fucks people up in the best way possible. The shadow doesn't just hold your darkness. It also holds your power, your anger, your desire, your selfishness, your ambition. Things that might actually serve you really well. But somewhere along the way, you got the message that these things were not okay. So you buried them and now you're leaking out in ways you don't even fucking recognize. For a long time, the one question my therapist asked that changed my fucking life was, "What parts of yourself do you not think are lovable?" Because that was the shadow part. The part of me that's anxious, right? That's the part that my dad hated.

• 9:02Sabrina Zohar?

  So why would I ever think anybody would love me for those, having those parts? Well, if I don't love myself for having those parts, how can anybody else externally? And so instead of trying to get rid of them, I gotta learn how to live with them. Because it's a part of me like anything else. Are you trying to amputate your arm because sometimes it hurts? No. You learn to live with the pain and you deal with it like everything else. Because you can't just remove aspects of yourself and then still expect that the same version of you is going to be there. All of those parts made you who you are. And I think that they're amazing and beautiful. And if you can maybe show yourself some love and compassion instead of fucking talking shit to yourself like everybody did when you were a kid, you'll get a lot further. Because those parts protected you. And instead of fucking hating for them, maybe you can say thank you and show appreciation for the fact that they did keep you safe. They're just no longer keeping you safe.

• 9:46Sabrina Zohar?

  The one question that my therapist asked that literally changed my life was, "What parts of yourself do you not think are lovable?" And for a long time, I was like, "Why would I want to love those parts? Why would I love the anxious parts of me? All they've ever done is caused me issues." Until I realized, oh, the more I resist it, the more it's going to persist. Instead of hating those parts of myself, maybe I could show gratitude and say thank you to them. They kept me safe. The reality is though, I'm not dealing with my mom or dad anymore. They're fucking maladaptive. But if you actually want to grow, heal and evolve, you gotta learn to love those parts of yourself instead of fucking hate them. Because baby, the more you try to fight against them, the more they're gonna try to get your goddamn attention. And I always, I was, I was told I was too much. And here's the thing. Sometimes it was in words. Sometimes it was people saying, "Hey, you're too much. You need to stop." Like my sister.

• 10:28Sabrina Zohar?

  I have my sister's voice all the time of like, "You're this. You're taking up too much space." "Oh my god, you make everything about you." Sabrina, you always have to make it about you. And then I had to realize, oh, that was her insecurity because all of our lives, I was the one getting more of the attention. And she was trying to fight for that. And that's okay. That makes her human and that makes me human. But you know what I also had to do? Say, "Well, that part obviously needs something." If there's a part of me that feels like they want someone to hear them, then I'm gonna fucking pay attention to that. And maybe, maybe, it actually has nothing to do with you being too much. Maybe your behavior was too much, and that's okay. We can hold space for that. But if somebody tells you, "You're this, you're this, and you're this," you have to, one, see the lens that they're giving that to you from. And two, you gotta see how much you believe it. Because if you start to believe it, okay, great, then that's what it's coming from. It's a core belief.

• 11:12Sabrina Zohar?

  But if somebody came to me right now and was like, "You're way too this." And it's like, "I... Sorry, I don't see what you're saying." And if they don't have anything to quantify it with, it's like, "Oh, okay, that sounds like a projection, or that it's a part of yourself that you don't like, that maybe you're now making my problem." And the reality is, too, it wasn't always in words. A lot of people showed me I was too much by their action. By trying to distance themselves, by ignoring my phone calls, by trying to silence me, by talking over me, by telling me that I need to be smaller, or that nobody's gonna like me for these aspects. And that right there could do more damage. It's like death by a thousand paper cuts. When my dad used to walk out of the room, when my dad used to turn his head while I'd be crying, of course I thought I was too much. How could I not? The person that's supposed to keep me safe, that's supposed to protect me,

• 11:58Sabrina Zohar?

  is doing something that shows me that the emotions I have are not safe here. That this isn't a place I could be authentically myself. And sometimes that hurts so much more than somebody telling you, because your nervous system is going to remember that action. It's gonna remember feeling small and little, and watching somebody walk out the door. And that right there could say so much more than anybody's words could ever fucking say. I think you guys understand the distinction. Let me show you how these play out in real life, because once you see this, you're gonna recognize it fucking everywhere. Let's talk about the ick. The ick is a big one, and you know what? I get it. The ick is a word that people throw around, and I genuinely don't think most people understand what actually happens when they feel it. So, let's say on the surface level, someone does something small and your whole body rejects them. It's very visceral.

• 12:43Sabrina Zohar?

  It feels like certain. And the way we talk about it, it's like some divine download, like your intuition just told you to run. And sometimes, yes, absolutely trust it, right? If someone is rude about a boundary or if they're disrespectful, they speak down to you, they're not showing up consistently. If something happens that actually conflicts with your values, that's not just the ick, baby. That's your body giving you data that you should listen to. But, let's say someone is vulnerable in front of you and your first reaction is to recoil. That's different. If someone is clearly trying and that effort makes you cringe, right? That's different. If someone communicates a need directly and your skin crawls, that's not your intuition. That's actually your shadow. Because what you're really reacting to isn't them. It's a quality you made wrong in yourself a long fucking time ago.

• 13:26Sabrina Zohar?

  You rejected your own neediness so violently that when another human being shows you theirs, your body treats it like a threat. And I know it. I used to have stupid icks. I've told you guys about this. When I first met Ryan, I was like, um, his clothes are really tight on him. And like, I fucking hate his car color. And like, he lives with a roommate. I was making shit up, right? And I remember my mom going, Kate, all of that changes. Do you still not like this person? And I had to stop. And I was like, that's true. He can get different sized clothing, which he has. He could get a different car color, which he hasn't yet, but we will. And he can move out. And he did. And now his new roommate is me. And in that moment, I was like, cool. That's when the ick doesn't really make any fucking sense. Or, in that same token, when somebody's open and honest and vulnerable with you

• 14:10Sabrina Zohar?

  and you say, ew, oh my god, that's lame. Or, ugh, what a little bitch. I can't believe somebody would do that. I don't like this therapy talk. That's you actually rejecting parts of yourself and then projecting it onto the other person. There is nothing fucking wrong with someone showing you interest. There is nothing wrong with someone being vulnerable and open. And if you get the fucking ick because somebody is trying to do that, then bitch, this is on you and not about them. Because there are a thousand fucking people waiting for somebody that is emotionally available, intelligent, and trying to connect on a deeper level. And if you want to make this something it's fucking not, then that's why you're gonna be single, because you have real unrealistic expectations that don't fucking exist. We need to have a real fucking honest conversation, because when you get the ick with every single person who's actually available and present and kind, that is not high standards. That is shadow work, working overtime to make sure nobody gets close enough to see the

• 14:54Sabrina Zohar?

  parts of you that you've decided are unacceptable. And being seen means showing those parts, which is terrifying. So the shadow goes, "Nope, gross, next." And you call it the ick, and you move on, and the cycle keeps fucking going. And this isn't just about dating, baby. If you're already with someone, and you're suddenly getting the ick about your person, the one you chose, sit with that for a second. Did they actually change? Or did they just show themselves, and a part of themselves that you've disowned in yourself? Maybe they got softer. Maybe they asked for something, and instead of meeting that, something in you shut down and reframed their vulnerability as repulsive, or gross, or, "I'm just not feeling it." And usually, when I see that, that really shows me, this person doesn't have the emotional bandwidth for a healthy and secure relationship. I see this all the time.

• 15:36Sabrina Zohar?

  We have fetishized this masculine/feminine polarity. I saw something the other day, and the person said, "If a man is vulnerable and honest with you, he's in his feminine, and that's a turn-off." And then on top, what we're doing by saying that is, we're saying, "Emotions are feminine, not masculine. Men don't feel that." And we're putting ourselves right back into the 19 fucking 40s. We're doing exactly what we used to do, shaming people for having emotions and feelings, shaming people. And then you fucking come to me and say, "But why can't I find anybody that's emotionally available and has depth?" Because you don't fucking have any, and you're projecting that onto every single fucking person that you meet. So the next time you want to fucking talk shit about somebody who is being open and honest and vulnerable with you, and that turns you off, then baby, I need you to sit

• 16:19Sabrina Zohar?

  with the fact that you might not be ready for what it is that you think you're ready, because healthy and secure relationships are one giant conversation where you are vulnerable and open with each other. And if you can't receive that, it's gonna be real fucking hard for you to also give it as well. So, let's talk about the difference. Here's how you know the difference between your intuition and the shadow ick. We have an episode, by the way, I can't remember the exact name, of, "Is it your intuition or your anxiety?" So if you guys want to go back, you can find that, literally. By the way, if you go to Spotify or Apple, you just type in the word, and it'll bring up any episode with it. But truth be told, a lot of the episodes that we have cover a lot of different things. So I always suggest, like, listen to every week, you never know what you're gonna pick up from it, just because the title doesn't necessarily resonate. But that's me and my soapbox. Intuition is quiet. It shows up almost as a knowing, right?

• 17:02Sabrina Zohar?

  You feel it, and it doesn't need to explain itself. If I were to say... Do you like cupcakes? I don't know who would say no. That's wild to me. But if your reaction was, "No, it's not my thing." Okay, cool. Do you notice how calm and quick that was? "No, I just don't like it." Versus, the shadow ick is loud. It's reactive. There's this jolt of disgust. And then your brain immediately starts building a case for why you're right. That frenetic energy, that scramble to justify the feeling? That's the tell. That's the shadow work trying to keep you from seeing yourself. So, I want to talk about something that we see in this pattern, right? The ick is how the shadow shows up in dating. The trigger is how it shows up in the relationship you're already in. So it's the same thing, it's just further down the road. If you're in a relationship, you're dating somebody, and you keep having the same fights over and over and over again,

• 17:47Sabrina Zohar?

  the one you have a thousand fucking times? The fight is not about what you think it is. It's not about the trash. It's not about not opening the fucking door for you. There's a root under it. It could be about feeling dismissed. It could feel about not feeling like a priority, feeling like this person doesn't actually have the bandwidth for you. Instead of focusing so heavily on all the external, small, little bullshit, start to get serious and curious with yourself about what's underneath it. If you really want to make progress, and you really want to have rupture, regulation, and repair, I need you to regulate. I need you to understand what's coming up, and I need you to start using I statements. It's not, "You never do this. I feel this, and here's what I need from you." That is how you'll actually have a healthy and secure relationship with somebody and move the fuck on from all these stupid little things you keep fighting about. And you have to remember that the content changes every time,

• 18:31Sabrina Zohar?

  but the charge still stays exactly the same. That charge is the shadow. Right? When you're partnered to something small and you have a massive reaction, that, I always say, "Does the pinch match the ouch?" The gap is the exact size of the shadow material under it. So instead of going, "You never listen," or "They don't care," the question that actually moves the needle is, "What quality is this person reflecting back at me right now that I've decided I can't be?" And maybe that's, "I don't feel prioritized." Okay, cool. Am I prioritizing myself? Maybe I am, and that's me having the conversation. And that's the beautiful thing about doing shadow work is you start to understand what's underneath it. Maybe it is an inner child, maybe it's a teen, maybe it's whatever it is, maybe it's a part of you. Right? If we had, remember the Dick Shortz episode?

• 19:15Sabrina Zohar?

  If you guys want to go back and listen to it, it was from summertime. About IFS and there's the firefighters and the protector parts and everything and to me, the shadows? Those are the exile parts. Think of the shadow as the beautiful child that went to their parents to get love and maybe their parents put them down for crying. And so that part of you gets exiled. Oh my God, I cried in front of them. They got upset. That makes me weak. That means I can't ever show this part again. So then I'm gonna get rid of it. That's the shadow part. So then when someone cries in front of you and you're like, oh pussy, fucking, I can't believe, man up. That's because there's that little part of you that you're like, hey, I can't accept this, so I can't accept this in anybody else. And if you blow up when your partner is selfish, I want you to look at where you've rejected your own selfishness. And I don't mean toxic selfishness. I mean the healthy kind, right?

• 19:59Sabrina Zohar?

  The kind where you put yourself first and the world doesn't end. If you can't stand that your partner doesn't care enough and has to read your mind and just know everything, I want you to look at where you learned that caring more than everyone else was the only way to be lovable. And I get it. I was taught that, that everybody comes first before me. I am the last thought. Sabrina, you are taking up too much space. If you make it about you, you're selfish. Until I realized like, I was taught that because guess why? The people that push up against your boundaries and don't respect them are the exact people that benefited from the fact that you didn't have any.

• 20:28Sabrina Zohar?

  And I need you to start to get curious. What makes you feel guilty for setting a boundary or saying no? Because that's the exact part that was taught, that that makes you too much, that that makes you selfish, that you're a bad person for having them. That's the work to be done. It's not that you then never say no to anybody and you just people please your way through life because baby, you're going to self abandon all fucking day hoping that somebody else comes and saves you. When at the end of the day, baby, that is your job. Ain't nobody gonna stand up for you in the same way you'll stand up for you. And this goes way beyond the person you're dating or the person that you're with. This is at Thanksgiving dinner when someone says something that teleports you right back to being fucking 14 years old. This is your best friend who triggers a jealousy you can't explain and don't want to admit. This is the coworker who makes you unreasonably angry. Your shadow work does not care the context. It does not check in with who it's dealing with.

• 21:12Sabrina Zohar?

  It runs the same program with your partner, your parent, your best friend, your boss. Baby, it's the same mechanism, but it's a different face sitting across from you. So as always, of course I have a study, duh. So there was a study about your unconscious self is the one showing up in the room. Okay, so, there was a study done in 2015, available through PMC. And so the study looked at how people perceive themselves versus how their partners actually experience them. So the unconscious self-perceptions, the ones you don't have access to, those were the ones that predicted how romantic partners actually rated the quality of the relationship and how the person was observing behavior. The conscious self-perceptions, they only predicted what people said about themselves on a questionnaire.

• 21:53Sabrina Zohar?

  So the version of you that you think is showing up, that's just your, I always say to my clients, I'm like, "That's your PR team." That's the one that you think you need to do. The shadow is the one that's actually in the room. The shadow part is the one that is actually begging to be seen, not the one that we have to put on a mask for, right? We have, oh, Thais' episode is coming out. Thais Gibson always talks about how the conscious is about 3 to 5%, the subconscious is 95 to 97% of how we interact with people. So we might think we're showing up one way, but we're actually not. And I think it's really, really important for us to be able to do the, to tell the difference. We have to remember, you project yourself onto your partner, and then you'll call it perception. So Lemay, Clark, and Feeney out of Yale studied married and dating couples and found the

• 22:37Sabrina Zohar?

  way people perceive their partner's responsiveness was largely a projection of their own. I've said this all day, most people will react to you in a way that is a projection of their own bullshit. Most people are projecting their way through life, myself included, because that's how a lot of us were taught. People who were caring assumed their partners were caring. People who were less invested assumed their partners felt the same. And this wasn't just like a personality overlap, it was its own distinct mechanism. You are literally constructing your experience of your partner out of your own unexamined material, which is why I always say like, "Oh, well, if somebody doesn't text you back for a few hours and you jump to, 'They don't like me,' baby, that is your shadow work at fucking play."

• 23:19Sabrina Zohar?

  That is that core belief, projecting what you believe onto the other person. You have no fucking facts that this person hates you, you have no fucking facts that this person doesn't like you, and all you're doing is you're taking the past experiences and projecting onto every person. And then you cannot be shocked when at the end of it, you keep saying, "I knew I was right." No baby, it's because then you're behaving in ways that could actually push someone away. Like texting 100 times, like getting mad that they didn't answer you. And instead of doing all that, I need you to learn to sit in the fucking discomfort and start to understand what's really underneath it. Is it about a fucking text, or is it about you feeling abandoned because you're waiting for somebody else to validate you? This episode is sponsored by Lola Blankets. You guys know that Kobe is obsessed with his Lola bed. I'm obsessed with my Lola blankets. But now, we have gotten my mama a Mother's Day gift. We bought her a Lola blanket.

• 24:05Sabrina Zohar?

  And I have seen her wrapped around it in this house for the last two weeks. And have now officially known that Lola is not just the best gift, it's also the best Mother's Day gift. The quality is truly game-changing. They are known for their life-changing softness. So Lola is the world's number-one blanket, crafted with ultra-soft faux fur and a signature therapeutic four-way stretch. Baby, it is insane, and it is machine-washable. It's double-hemmed and built to last for years. It really is a truly meaningful, long-term gift for someone super-special. And I know you might be saying, "Ugh, a blanket, do I need another?" Yes, because until you have a Lola blanket, you don't know what comfort actually means. I have the Large, it's perfect for cozying up, and then we have the Extra Large. And that is for me and Tech Guide to get all cozy with Kobe.

• 24:48Sabrina Zohar?

  And baby, for a limited time, our listeners get 40% off select Lola blankets with code "Sabrina" at checkout. Just head to LolaBlankets.com and use code "Sabrina." After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. This Mother's Day, wrap mom in the everyday luxury of Lola blankets. Of course, I want to start to understand the neuroscience about all of this. And I know some of you need the brain science, so let's get into it. Your emotional brain is faster than your thinking brain. That's why they say for your amygdala to get fired, it can happen within like .0002 milliseconds. Whereas your prefrontal cortex actually takes about 10 to 15 times longer to activate. Which is why those core beliefs and those negative thoughts are quicker than us having

• 25:33Sabrina Zohar?

  proof to show otherwise. So neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux found that there are two pathways to the amygdala, the part of your brain that processes threat. One of them is called the low road. It goes straight from your senses to your emotional brain, completely bypasses the cortex, your thinking brain that is not involved. The pathway fires in about 12 milliseconds. The other route, the high road, actually goes through your thinking brain, but it arrives way later, which is why we're trying to explain, right? And this is also supported by another study that was done. And truly, what this means for everything we just talked about, every ick, every trigger, every moment you react to someone, then five minutes later, you're like, what was that? Your shadow fired through the low road before your conscious mind even showed up. And then your thinking brain arrived late and started building a story.

• 26:17Sabrina Zohar?

  They were being dismissive, then they're too needy, something just feels off. That story feels completely true because the feeling happened first. But the feeling came from the shadow, not from what was actually in front of you. And you've got to remember, baby, your brain buries what you won't look at. So there was a study done that did an fMRI study published in PLOS 1. They put people who genuinely described themselves as low anxiety, right? I'm fine, the I'm fine crowd, I'm fine, into brain scanners. When these people looked at angry or threatening faces, their brain showed enhanced activations and emotion processing regions. Their nervous system was absolutely registering the threat. They just never let themselves consciously know about it. And here's the part that got me.

• 26:59Sabrina Zohar?

  Their memory for that threatening information actually dropped off within five days. The brain saw it, processed it, and then completely fucking buried it. And so there is nothing wrong with you. So for anyone out there who genuinely believes that they've dealt with all their stuff, your brain might be telling a very different story. And that's not me trying to be an asshole. That's actually the whole point. The shadow isn't something you can think your way through. It's measurable, it's in your brain, and it's running whether you acknowledge it or not. And that's why I will say this all fucking day. You could do all the healing in the world. You can listen to all the books. You could do, listen to all the podcasts. You could be in coaching for your whole fucking life. But until you understand the unconscious, then your conscious brain is not going to be catching up. Right? Not everything is, "I understand it. I understand it. I know why."

• 27:43Sabrina Zohar?

  Sometimes it's a felt experience. Sometimes it's feeling it in your body and saying, "This is really uncomfortable, but I'm gonna sit through it. This feels really weird." Right? When I met Ryan, I could have very easily let the ick be like, "Fuck it, I'm not gonna see this guy again." But instead, I was like, "No, he didn't do anything to deserve that. I can get over a lot of these things." My mom always says, "Can it be changed?" You're not gonna change their morals, ethos, and ethics. Next time you get the ick, here's what I want you to ask. Can this behavior change? Can you change that they have a Velcro wallet? Yeah, grow the fuck up. Can you change the color of their car? You sure can. But can you change how they interact with people? Their morals, ethos, and ethics? If they're respectful? If they're reciprocal? If they're kind? No, you're not gonna fucking change that. So instead of looking at low-effort shit, bypass the ick. Because oftentimes, the ick is just a way to try to protect you

• 28:28Sabrina Zohar?

  from actually being seen and say for who you actually are with somebody that would accept it. So, as always, baby, we got our tool of the week. Right? What do you do with all of this? It's really important. Because like I was saying earlier, you can let the ick and all of your shadow parts take over. But instead, I want us to start to get curious about what's coming up for me. And the reason that I started with the ick in shadow work is because I think it's the quickest and easiest thing for us to recognize. Right? It's a lot harder when you're in your day-to-day to start to notice all the shadow parts that are coming up, even myself. I might, this might sound wild, but I was in the shower the other day. Time to get vulnerable. And we are making our first hire in my company. Like, this is huge for me. Like, first full-time employee outside of me and Ryan. That's, that's really scaring me.

• 29:12Sabrina Zohar?

  And I literally, I was taking a shower, and I could hear my little, like, "We're gonna lose everything. You're stupid. You don't know how to make those right choices. I don't know if we're gonna do anything right. I don't think anybody's gonna be able to do this. You can't do this." And I literally had to stop, and I put my hand on my heart, and I said, "Girl, I hear you. And I get it, right? You're really scared. Because in the past, when you've made decisions for yourself, there have been other people to let you know that it wasn't right." I've been making, I've been trying to make choices my entire life and having people tell me that's stupid and no one's gonna like it and not believe me. And then here I am, years later, to show them that they were fucking wrong. But that little part of me didn't go away. And so that part of me was trying to protect me, right? "Don't do any of this, then you won't have to deal with getting hurt." And instead, I sat there and I talked to her. I literally talked to myself and was like, "Baby, I get it. You're right, this is really scary, but can I show you all the precautions I've taken?

• 29:57Sabrina Zohar?

  We have this much money in the bank because this is actually going to protect us. If, God forbid, this doesn't work, that's okay. We've put this in the contract to make sure that if this doesn't work, that's okay, we have this clause." And I literally had to just sit there and then I felt it. And I just let myself, for a minute, cry and be scared and allowed myself. Because what that showed me was that my nervous system felt safe enough to allow me to access crying. Like, what do children do when they get scared? They cry, they shake? That's their nervous system trying to regulate. So it's okay. You genuinely want to start making changes? Start to look at the way you fucking talk to yourself. Do you talk to yourself like an asshole? Do you talk to yourself like the people when you were younger talked to you? And then you wonder why you're not making any changes? So if you really want to allow those shadow parts to come out, then you've got to validate them. Right? Yeah, okay, there's a part of me that is really needy.

• 30:41Sabrina Zohar?

  It doesn't mean that the other person is responsible for this. It just means that that part had a lot of needs and for years, I've been ignoring it. And I am so fucking sorry. But I am here for you and I'm so excited to show you all of these things that we get to do now together. That's how you are there for yourself. So, I'm gonna give you some steps. The first thing I want you to do with this is track the charge, not the content. So next time you feel a reaction that's way bigger than the moment, whether that's the ick on a date, a trigger with your partner, or something that your parents said that sent you in a fucking spiral, pause on the intensity itself. Not the story you're telling about it, the charge. Because if the reaction is disproportionate to what happened, that's shadow material. "I've shared the story about Ryan. When I asked him to do something, he said, 'No, I started getting really dysregulated.'" "The pinch didn't match the ouch. I was having this huge reaction."

• 31:26Sabrina Zohar?

  It's the same fucking thing with the texting. Again, somebody doesn't text you and that's it, you're crying hysterically and it's like, "That has nothing to do with this then." The question that actually opens something up is, what quality is this person showing me that I made wrong in myself? That I'm not a priority, am I prioritizing myself? That I feel abandoned, am I abandoning myself right now? Right? On a date, that might look like I got the ick because they're really open about liking me. Where did I decide that being open about wanting something and someone is pathetic? In a relationship, right? That could look like I just completely lost my shit over something small. The rage I felt was not about the thing. What was this actually about? What did it remind me of? That's the first thing. Name it. Where is it in your body? Okay, sit with it. Then name the quality, not the behavior.

• 32:08Sabrina Zohar?

  Shift from "they triggered me" to "I'm watching someone be needy right now and it's activating something in me because at some point I decided that being needy was the worst thing I could be." The behavior on the surface isn't just the surface. The quality underneath it is the shadow. And this works across the board. Whether your partner, "I'm furious they're not prioritizing me and I need to look at where I stopped prioritizing myself." With family, "this controlling behavior is setting me off because I've disowned my own needs for control." That's okay. With friends, "I'm jealous and that jealousy is pointing directly at something I want for myself but won't give myself permission to actually have, or I don't believe that I can actually have it." And then say it out loud. Both of those studies that I shared on projection show this process runs completely outside your awareness. And the only way to interrupt something unconscious is to drag it into the conscious.

• 32:53Sabrina Zohar?

  So say it out loud. To your partner, to your friend, to your fucking self, your therapist, whoever. "I think I just made that about something it wasn't." Or "I think the reason that bothers me so much has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me." One sentence like that can completely change the trajectory of a conversation because you just took your shadow out of the driver's seat. This isn't about shame and blame, baby. The shadow isn't the enemy. It's just every part of you that's been waiting for you to come back for it. And everything we talked about today, why the ick might be lying to you, why your partner triggers you in ways that don't make logical sense, why you keep showing up as someone you don't fully recognize, that's one piece of something so much bigger. Guys, my book comes out in October. It's called "Why Am I Like This?" And yeah, it goes into all of this significantly more, not just in your love life, in every

• 33:36Sabrina Zohar?

  relationship, whether it be your family, your friendships, the one you have with yourself. Today was one door. The book, to me, is the whole house. You guys could preorder it right now on Amazon. And I'm so grateful and excited. We also have the courses if you guys need, if you want to understand deeper and understanding your levels, right? The reason that I created the course is it gives you a blueprint, an actual rubric of like week one, week two, week three, here are the steps, not just a podcast episode that for an hour you feel really great and then you go back and do the same shit. So whatever you guys need, please know it's there. And send this to someone who needs it. Send it to your friend that always gets the fucking ick, that needs to hear, bitch. It's not about them. And if you're always finding a problem with people, then we gotta look at the internal state. Because it's not, doesn't mean every single person has an issue, but you don't have any? So everybody else has to be perfect, but not you?

• 34:21Sabrina Zohar?

  Baby, that's not how that works. And that's why I think this episode will be super beneficial. Because I think a lot of us have, when we meet the nice person, we're like, mm, nope, not as interesting. Hi, it's me, I used to do that. And I think your shadow, the shadow parts of you need you. The parts of yourself that you are so embarrassed to show, that you believe are the problem, are usually gonna be what we find in other people. So if you wanna start accepting other people, I need you to start accepting yourself, my angel. I'm so proud of you. Thank you for being here. Thanks for letting me talk to you for 30 minutes. And I love you guys. Don't forget to write and review the show, share it with a friend. Market is finished, in case you don't listen to all of them, that helps me out. And thank you for being here and being part of this family and this community. And I am so fucking grateful to have every single one of you in here. Until next time, my angels.

• 35:14Speaker 00

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• 35:45Speaker 03

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