Mayim Bialik takes fans inside the process of Amy’s emotional moment on this week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory.

In the episode, “The Perspiration Implementation,” Amy tears up when Sheldon informs her that he has asked out other women. It’s an unusually subtle moment for The Big Bang Theory, which tends to keep even its emotional moments frank and to the point.

But for Bialik, there was no question that the scene demanded emotional honesty.

“I cried the first time we rehearsed it, and each time we showed it to our writers and producers,” she writes on her website Grok Nation. “It means something to me to portray Amy.
It matters how her feelings are presented.”

In the scene in question, Bialik breaks Amy’s thought process into three elements.

Firstly, “The shock of [Sheldon] dating other people is already hard to stomach. Gotta pretend I’m okay with that but it’s really hard to hide my shock.”Also challenging for Amy is the news that Sheldon “has asked other people about ways to move on. Other people know that he is ready to move on.”

And finally, the bald fact — “He is moving on.”

Candidly, Bialik admits that she struggles with rejection issues in her own life.

“Some people take rejection well,” she writes. “For me, it’s one of my most sensitive buttons in my real life… I’m a person with a serious issue with being left out and rejected.”

Related: On that Big Bang breakup — Why I’m happy Sheldon and Amy are over

“Amy is a part of me, and I know what it feels like to hear that someone has moved on,” the actress continues. “That they are seeing other people. That they are discussing their need to move on and leave me behind, even if I thought that’s what I wanted.”

“Amy feels those things, and that’s what I think about when I do scenes like that one on the landing.”

“All of my flaws are Amy’s and all of my strengths are hers too,” Bialik explains. “Everything about me that needs working out gets worked out at work. And when I master a part of my personality that chained me, maybe what makes me a convincing actor is my memory.”

Bialik also notes that immersing herself in Amy’s thought process is her version of an acting method, in spite of the fact that she is “not a real actor.”

“Well, actually, I guess that’s not fair,” she amends. “What I mean is, I’m not a trained actor. Many actors you love and see on TV and in movies studied acting for real. Like, some of them even have degrees in acting and stuff. I call those people “real actors.””

In spite of her years of acting experience, Bialik admits that she “still [doesn’t] feel like a “real actor,” especially when I hear about all the exercises and stuff that “real actors” do as part of their training.”

“But I keep showing up as an actor,” she says. “Every audition, every job, every day, it’s an opportunity to be alive on a stage. To make people feel something. To feel something.”

“That scene on the landing hit me hard because it’s real,” Bialik concludes. “Maybe not real acting. Just real.”

The Big Bang Theory 9×05, “The Helium Insufficiency,” airs on Oct. 26 at 8:00 p.m. on CBS.