What is self awareness?
In positive psychology and the mental health world, there are lots of terms that are a tad overused, or at least misunderstood, and it’s not always clear what they actually mean. For me, self awareness is one of the most important of these.
Put simply self awareness means being aware of ourselves. Sounds easy right?! But is it?
We’re quite complex beings, we have lots of layers and different parts of ourselves. So I think self awareness at it’s core is about being able to identify when our different ‘parts’ are activated.
We have all of our necessary parts, and it’s appropriate to show these in different places. We have our work selves and our family selves, we might show our most vulnerable parts to our most trusted family members or friends. We have to show our responsible sides to our kids. Having lots roles to play is totally normal.
But when we look at this from a deeper, therapy lens, some find it helpful to think in terms of adult and child parts. When in adult mode, we can think rationally and clearly, acting like a grown up. When in child mode, we’re more likely to be triggered into old defence mechanisms and feelings of hurt from our childhood.
Certain people, places, or situations will trigger these child parts to come alive. In order to be truly self aware, we need to get to know these parts, what activates them, and how to soothe them. Because although we can have compassion for these parts, we don’t want our child parts driving the car of our lives, they need to be sitting in the back seat!
Sitting in our adult selves and being self aware is having the ability to reflect on conflict or arguments and taking responsibility for our part in them. Taking responsibility is the key term here, because self awareness doesn’t mean that we’re going to be perfect all the time, that’s not realistic, but it’s about being able to hold ourselves responsible when we do make a mistake, finding a resolution, and moving on. It’s about understanding our triggers and why and when our child parts might be activated.
It’s about understanding our goals, drives & hopes for the future. Ideally living from a place of authenticity and putting our needs first instead of other people’s, even if it feels uncomfortable.
IN A NUTSHELL self awareness is understanding why we do the things we do, and feeling worthy and deserving of love and our place in this world.
I think this can be almost impossible to do, until we fully look back and understand how our unique stories have impacted our lives and how our child parts might still be unconsciously playing out in our behaviours, actions and relationships.
