No One Knew How Bad It Was — Sage Ahrens-Nichols Opens Up About Feeling Gaslit and Isolated During the Survivor 49 After-Show

“It’s hard to separate emotion from game, but it kills me to think I might have hurt people.”

That was Sage Ahrens-Nichols during the after-show portion of the Survivor 49 finale. But it killed viewers even more to see the fan favorite say she felt that she didn’t even deserve the sympathy others were giving her, especially after she did not appear to do anything wrong other than play Survivor.

Sage competed with her heart on her sleeve all season long, but she also played a cutthroat game when necessary, no more so than when she took out her ally Steven Ramm after concluding she could not beat him at the end. Sage thought her emotional connections and friendships on the jury, coupled with her gameplay, would win her votes and respect from her peers. But the jury was simply not picking up what the former military veteran was putting down.

We spoke to Sage to get her perspective on everything that went down on finale night, and how she is doing now after going through the Survivor gauntlet. You can watch or read the entire interview below.

SAGE AHRENS-NICHOLS: Too many. Too many. I would consider myself a professional at this point.

I think for people that watched the finale, and maybe more specifically the after-show, the question they would have for you now is: Are you okay? Because you looked like you were going through it during the after-show, which is entirely understandable because having to go to a champagne party after a really tough final Tribal Council is a huge ask and you are far from the first person to have difficulty making that jarring transition.

Yeah, dude, it’s so complicated and I wish we had five hours to talk about it because there’s so much nuance. I’m not here to necessarily throw anyone under the bus, but the way Tribal was edited, it left out a lot, which is okay. It was Savannah’s season and I’m super happy for her. The edit makes sense for her.

Tribal was brutal, dude. Like, people did not like me. And so at the end, when I was saying, “I am afraid that I hurt people” and “I don’t feel like I deserve comfort right now” — I actually just watched that for the first time last night and it brought back so much. And then there’s the painful awareness of cameras on you. I’m like: Oh, this is going to be misinterpreted as I’m bummed that I lost the game. I don’t give a crap about the game, but the energy… there were constant eye rolls. Every answer I gave, there was an argument.

Even the question where I said, “Alex, you said when you walked out that that’s what you get for playing both sides,” he came back at me and was like, “No, you were fed wrong information.” He was saying that was a wrong perception. And I just felt so confused. And in that moment, when I said, “I don’t feel like I deserve comfort,” because you could feel the disdain towards me from them — and then the answer was like, “Oh, no Sage, it’s just a game.” It felt like I was being gaslit.

I’m like: Wait, you guys hate me or not? Because that didn’t feel like the game, that felt like way bigger than the game. And I don’t understand it in this moment. And I’m overwhelmed. I’ve just been starved and sleep deprived on an island for 26 days. So it was a lot — overstimulated, overwhelmed, all the things.

It’s always the hardest thing. And the people that often get to the end that have made connections with people get a harder time than those that haven’t. Meaning because you have a connection, when you vote them out, they take it more personally from you than someone whom they didn’t have a connection with. Is that kind of what you felt was going on there at final Tribal?

Yeah, I think so. And I get it. All the whatever emotions were behind the reactions or the questions or whatever — I’m not judging them and I’m not saying that they can’t have those. But I think the problem is that they were passing them to me for me to hold. And I’m a recovering people pleaser, so it’s not my default to get defensive. It’s always my default of: I want to understand because if you’re saying that I’ve done something wrong, I want to understand, and I’m happy to own anything that I did intentionally.

But it felt like there was a lot of, like, Nate led this charge of telling me I cannibalized the seven person alliance. I was like, “What was the name of this alliance? And they’re like, “It doesn’t have to have a name.” But then the five person Sandwich Club alliance is not a real alliance? I don’t know. But like I said in my pre-game interview, I will have real connections with people out there, but they’re not going to factor into my gameplay.

And I think what happened is my strategy worked as coming in as myself. I am an emotional person. I knew that would be mistaken as an emotional player, but there is a very distinct difference. But if you’re perceived as an emotional player, people think: I already know Sage’s game. I don’t really have to spend much time on her. And that’s perfect for me. When people would come to me and have human moments, I’m wondering if maybe that was them being strategic, but for me in those moments, I’m just being a human with you, but it’s not going to give you an advantage or a disadvantage.

The only person that was able to bypass that was Jawan. But everybody else, I’m like, this is compartmentalized. In my everyday work, I have to compartmentalize. It’s a very important skill in social work and individual therapy. So that was really easy for me to do. But I think it was very unexpected and maybe caused people to think like: Oh, she just used me. But I think really the feeling is: Crap, Sage played me and I did not account for it. And maybe I feel embarrassed or ashamed.

In the past, I’ve spoken to people in your position. They got to the end and they thought it was going to go one way at Tribal and then they get to final Tribal and they realize: Oh, it’s not going that way. And that can be a shaking moment as well. Before Tribal, what votes did you think you had when you were doing the jury math back at camp?

There was so many different things that I was factoring in after the Jawan blindside. In my head. I was like: This is Savannah’s game. She’s going to win. So at this point, I just want to get to the end out of spite. And so I was doing the math. There’s so much of Steven’s game that wasn’t shown. He was in on the Alex vote. I told him, “Dude, we have to flip on Alex. We have to pivot when Savannah knows that she’s a target, she’s volatile and she always gets saves her butt, which is brilliant, but when she’s comfortable, she’s more vulnerable.”

So I had to take my foot off the gas and pivot, but I was like [to Steven], “I think that you should vote Blue Sophi, because it gives the illusion that you are not as big of a threat, that you’re on the outs, and it keeps access to Kristina’s idol.” But going back to part of your original question of who did I think I had in the bag, the only two people that knew my strategic game were Jawan and Steven. And I was hoping having them on the jury would give me an in for like: All right, I’m going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting at Tribal to show people I was playing the whole time. I know it doesn’t look like it.

That was a part of my strategy. But I didn’t factor in that Steven would be as hurt as he was. And Kristina, on her way out, she hugged me and she said, “If you make it to the end, you have my vote.” And so I was like: Okay, I think I have Jawan, Kristina, I think maybe Steven. But after Steven got voted out, he gave me this look like he wanted to kill me. And I was like: Oh crap, I miscalculated.

Kristina tells you, “You’ve got my vote.” Not a lot happened between then and final Tribal. Why do you think she changed it? Do you think it was talking to other jurors?

Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. And I don’t hold it against her. You’re allowed to change your mind. For me, I’m just very intentional about words. So I try really hard to say what I mean and mean what I say. And so I am very selective in the words that I use with people. I think words are really important. But we live in a society where there’s a lot of surface level talk and implied messages that I don’t pick up on. So I don’t know if I missed something there, but it’s all good.

What happened after the after-show? How was the rest of the night for you and the rest of your time in Fiji while dealing with a lot of swirling emotions?

It was rough. I felt very alone because I genuinely thought we were all playing a game. And so… [starts to tear up]

It’s all right. Take your time.

Yeah, it’s hard to talk about. There’s so much there that I don’t think I’m necessarily allowed to talk about. And even if I was, I don’t know if that I’m ready to talk about it. But it was a very familiar loneliness, like feeling just wildly misunderstood. But more than that, confusion. I have a really hard time tolerating confusion. It makes me overwhelmed, and so I was just confused. And I just was in my room processing and finally getting to….

I know I was referred to as emotional. I don’t take that as an insult. I also don’t think people are actually talking about emotional when they say that term. But I am an emotional person. I’m really proud of that. It’s something that I’ve grown to really love about myself and I just need a time with myself to finally be able to feel the full extent of my feelings and process them in a way without worry of how they’re perceived, how my emotions are perceived or interpreted.