Bachelorette Michelle Young Says Slumber Party Group Date Made Her Feel 'Unseen' by Contestants

“I'm not looking for attention, I'm looking for a connection,” the star says in PEOPLE’s sneak peek at the Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation podcast 

Bachelorette Michelle Young is opening up about the group date featured on Monday's episode that left her feeling "unseen" by her suitors.

Contestants Will, Chris S., Casey, Chris G., Leroy, Rodney, Olumide, Brandon, Clayton, Joe, Romeo and Nayte all joined Young, 28, at the sleepover-themed date, but the lead lamented that they got too caught up in the activities rather than focusing on her.

"I was caught off-guard a little bit by the fact that I pretty much had to call the guys over," she said in an on-camera interview. Later, she explained to them that she felt hurt by their behavior and many apologized.

In PEOPLE's exclusive sneak peek at her appearance on Thursday's episode of Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation, Young teases that "nobody would have noticed" if one of the men had just taken her aside and treated the date as a one-on-one, but notes that she understands that the format can be difficult.

"I remember being on my first group day and it's so uncomfortable," she says. "You have to override this human nature of 'Okay, so we're all in the situation where we're all going for the same person,' but you see those other relationships in front of you and that's uncomfortable and that kind of makes you want to run."

Craig Sjodin via Getty Images

"But for me, I feel like I really kind of laid that out there on day one and said like 'This is going to be uncomfortable but in order for us to get anything out of this, you have to be willing to interact with each other and make that first move,' " she continues.

Young says that she really wanted the men to make more of an effort to connect with her. "I'm not looking for attention, I'm looking for a connection and I'm looking for somebody to be willing to go out of their way to make that with me as I was with them."

She admits that she may have been "too understanding" and needed to ask for more of what she was looking for.

"I truly want to understand where they're coming from and their perspective and I get that it's a difficult situation," Young says. "But I definitely wavered for sure, because there was that pain of... I knew that this journey was going to be difficult, I knew that it wasn't going to be all flowers and roses — pun intended, pun not intended — but what I really didn't expect to feel was the feeling of being unseen."

Michelle Young. ABC/Craig Sjodin

"What it came down to is that I had to show them how much it hurt and how much I really was struggling with it," she adds.

During the date itself, Young says she stepped away and broke down over those hurt feelings, but didn't want the group to see "because I didn't want to ruin the vibe." Later though, she realized she had to be honest with them.

"I had to lay it all out there, and the response that I got was this overwhelmingly supportive response," she says. "I really needed to pull it on all my walls, show all of my cards, show that I was truly hurting, and it was really telling how somebody would respond in a relationship."

"You want somebody who is going to take a step back and listen and really try to understand where you're coming from and have the empathy and that sympathy," Young concludes in the clip. "And so I feel like after that night I was able to see how these guys honestly stepped up so quickly."

The full episode of Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation featuring Michelle Young drops Thursday.