The limitations of self-awareness
And why self-knowledge might be a better term
In our increasingly emotionally literate culture, self-awareness is generally seen as a good thing. A badge of honour, if you like, in the quest to becoming a mature, high-functioning and moral member of society.
But recently, I’ve been questioning whether self-awareness is, in fact, all it’s cracked up to be. And whether there might be a better way to frame our understanding of ourselves. Let’s dive in.
The merits of self-awareness
There are lots of different definitions of self-awareness. But at its most basic level, self-awareness is the ability to notice things about yourself: what you are thinking, feeling, saying, and doing. And how others might perceive what you are thinking, feeling, saying and doing.
In the field of psychology, high self-awareness is viewed as an important trait of a well-rounded human, and a key component for a satisfying life. It’s one of the four areas of Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence quadrant:
Essentially, the idea is that when we learn to pay attention to our own emotions and behaviours, we get better at managing those emotions and behaviours. This also makes us more attuned to other people’s emotions and behaviours, meaning we can better manage our relationships, or indeed them (Goleman’s method is used a lot in the context of leadership, as more emotionally intelligent people generally have more influence over other….sinister).
I am very much not an academic, so I’m not about to go overturning any psychological theories. And I do agree that self-awareness is important. However, it strikes me that, really, we learn self-awareness from a very young age. The average person probably has a pretty good baseline. So if we’re using self-awareness as tool for change or a barometer of personal “success”, how far can it take us? Perhaps, our popular understanding of self-awareness is both limited and limiting.
“I’m very self-aware”…said no self-aware person ever
It’s been my experience that the relationship between how self-aware a person says they are vs how self-aware they actually are is an inverse one.
Often, a better term to describe this particular type of person would be “self-involved”.
But I can’t necessarily blame them. As psychology advances, stigmas retreat, and we can condense the great mysteries of the human experience into an Instagram carousel, it’s no surprise that we are all more fascinated with our inner worlds (especially given that the outside world is quite a frightening one).
As a result, I think popular understanding of self-awareness has been diluted, and is often misguided.
The fine line between self-awareness and self-involvement
We’ve got more tools, resources and language than ever before that allow us to hold up a mirror to our experiences and emotions, and help us make sense of them. Of course, the danger is that, like Narcissus before us, we become too fascinated with our own reflection.
It’s all too easy to become so observant of our thoughts and feelings that we become totally wrapped up in them (and trust me, I often have to pull myself back from the brink). And now, like precocious schoolchildren wielding big words they don’t really understand, we have a whole new language to articulate them: “I’m having intrusive thoughts”, “I’ve got imposter syndrome”, “I’m a perfectionist”, “She’s not respecting my boundaries”, “He’s not meeting my needs”, “We’re codependent”, “He’s love bombing me”, “She’s a narcissist”.
This is, if you like, a kind of faux self-awareness that’s rooted in vanity. And it’s rarely very helpful. Using therapy speak to support our own narratives or further our own agendas is often a highly convenient way to outsource our problems to external culprits, rather than take responsibility for our own roles and agency.
When self-awareness tips into self-consciousness
On the other hand, we might be noticing our emotions and experiences astutely and correctly. But we’re so obsessed with analysing every fleeting thought, feeling or interaction that we give ourselves too much of a good thing, and self-awareness risks tipping into self-consciousness (here’s an interesting study on how this can play our in our interactions and relationships).
As I wrote about here, I think this self-consciousness or overthinking is a big part of the reason why so many of us don’t feel psychologically safe in the online world, and therefore limit our self-expression (i.e. self-censorship).
Reassessing what we mean by self-awareness
These two worst-case scenarios don’t discredit the importance of self-awareness. But they do highlight its limits if we only reckon with it on a surface level.
The thing is, emotional literacy is not the same as emotional intelligence. And noticing—whether it’s patterns, thoughts, feelings or shortcomings—is not the same as understanding.
That’s why I prefer to use the term self-knowledge instead.
The difference between self-awareness and self-knowledge
I’ve almost finished the process of training to be a coach and have been coached myself for several years. Until very recently, I saw self-awareness as one of the key goals of coaching.
But the truth is, most of the clients who come to me are already very self-aware and reflective. While we can always continue to grow our self-awareness as we ourselves grow, they’re already pretty good at noticing what is going on in their lives. What they need to figure out is the why beneath it.
The Oxford Dictionary definition of “self-awareness” is “conscious knowledge of one’s character, feelings, motives and desires”. Perhaps the problem with common interpretations of self-awareness is that they get stuck at that conscious level, without unpacking the knowledge bit.
What happens when you get stuck in self-awareness
An example that comes to mind from my own life is learning about attachment styles. Thanks to some podcasts and a strong Instagram algorithm, a few years ago I discovered what I thought was the root of all my romantic woes: I had an anxious attachment style.
To some extent, this was a useful realisation. It helped me identify some of the patterns that were holding me back from finding a healthy, committed relationship (which, by the way, I also think comes down to pure luck). I could see that while I longed for intimacy and connection, I struggled with trust, vulnerability and self-worth. And I had a habit of attracting (or subconsciously pursuing) emotionally unavailable men.
You’d think that identifying this trait would stop me entertaining partners who had it. It didn’t. In fact, all it really did was make me even more mistrusting and resentful towards the men that came into my life and promptly left again. I developed a real victim mentality that just kept me stuck in that place of low self-worth, picking the wrong partners again and again. Then blaming it on my anxious attachment style, as if I was powerless to change it.
I knew what was going wrong. But I didn’t understand why—or how to fix it.
I think that’s what’s going on for a lot of people on a wider level. Emotional literacy means we can name our experiences. We’re good at identifying the problems (sometimes too good, hence our cultural obsession with labelling people as narcissists or toxic the minute they don’t comply with our wants and needs).
But despite the booming self-help industry and its focus on change, lots of us struggle to get there. To find the solutions. To actually do something about the pesky lovers we keep “attracting”.
What happens when you start the process of self-knowledge
So many of us go through life feeling this sense of “stuckness”. Feeling like something is missing or wrong. Feeling like there must be more to life.
Self-awareness can help us verbalise this—perhaps we’re aware that we’re repeating the same relationship patterns or we aren’t fulfilled by our jobs. We take note of our frustration, self-pity, stress, dissatisfaction, or even sadness.
But self-awareness is just the first step. It’s self-knowledge that can help us actually do something about it.
In my search for love, I trawled Reddit forums, listened to podcasts and saved all those Instagram carousels to find the solutions to my problems. But in the end, the real change didn’t come from filling my brain with therapy speak (and brandishing this to baffled partners).
It came from unpicking (and often unlearning) my beliefs, values, thoughts, and habits. And exploring all the different parts of myself that were driving my behaviour.
We could call this deepening self-awareness. But for me, that very depth makes it something different. We’re not just searching for signals and clues on the surface; we’re searching for truths at the very core of our being. It’s a process of excavation and reverse engineering that requires us to carefully peel back the layers of ourselves, and get curious about what lies beneath.
Crucially, it’s a process. I’ve been coached through Internal Family Systems therapy, which has helped me explore the different “parts” of myself that feel anxiety in relationships. This is an ongoing practice—because even now, in a secure relationship, those anxious parts still show up. I have to sit with them, really be in relationship with them, and really know them to make sure they don’t run the show.
How well do you know yourself?
The thing is, life makes it hard to really know ourselves.
In childhood, our parents can’t help but project their own stuff onto us (Larkin was right). And very early on, we start the process of moulding ourselves to fit other people’s expectations. In school, we learn largely useless things like algebra and the French for “I play football on the weekends” (something I personally never have and never will do).
As we grow into adults, society continues telling us what we should be: taller, thinner, stronger, curvier, cleverer, richer, purer, sexier, quieter, louder, calmer, cleaner, healthier, more, less, better.
Some of this has good intentions. A lot of it is BS. Either way, it doesn’t tend to leave us in a good position to find ways of being, acting and living that are truly aligned with who we really are—or who we want to be.
Which brings us onto my final point about self-knowledge…
Stop trying to change yourself. Start getting to know yourself.
For me, the end goal of self-knowledge, and what makes it so important, is self-acceptance—something I don’t think self-awareness alone can give us.
Let’s say you notice that a cruel, critical inner voice is always present whenever you try to negotiate a pay rise.
It tells you that you’re being greedy, you’re expecting too much, you don’t really deserve a pay rise, and that your boss is thinking all of those things too.
While it’s important to register that voice, if that’s all you do, noticing it can just make you feel worse. After all, you are supposed to be a strong, independent boss bitch. You stuck the post-it affirmations on your laptop screen. You struck a power pose before the meeting. You took a deep breath before hitting “join meeting”. So why can’t you just be more confident and “know your worth”? There’s a big gap between who you think you should be, and who you actually are.
But something different happens when we get to know that voice. When we have the space and time (for example, through coaching or therapy, or even just journaling), we sit back and let that voice speak. We really listen to it—without judgment, fear, shame or contempt—and let it know it’s been heard. We get genuinely curious about the voice: who does it sound like? When did it start? How might it be trying, not to ruin us, but to protect us?
Often, we find that there is a positive intent and rational explanation behind that voice. Once we get to know it, we can have a conversation with it. Perhaps ask it to sit down for now, and we’ll listen to it later. Or calmly challenge its outlandish claims with some factual evidence from the real world.
I referenced Gestalt’s Paradoxical Theory of Change in this post: the idea that the more pressure we put on ourself to change and be something we are not, the more stuck we get. But when we start that journey of self-knowledge, venturing beneath the surface to understand who we fundamentally are, change doesn’t feel like such a slog. It unfolds more organically and, gradually, the things we want in life fall into place.
What do you reckon?
What do you think about self-awareness vs. self-knowledge? Does this distinction resonate with you? And where are you on your own self-knowledge journey? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
And as a little bonus…
Try this to deepen your self-knowledge
I don’t usually go in for takeaways and tidbits in this newsletter, as I’m wary of anything that feels too prescriptive, oversimplified or hack-y (and we’re all about the messy work here).
But one self-knowledge tool that I love to use, both myself and with coaching clients, is values.
Values are your core beliefs and ideals in life, and identifying them can help you in lots of different situations. Like:
Working out why something/someone pisses you off so much—there might be a BIG conflict with one of your core values
Finding a romantic partner—I learned the hard way that when it comes to values, “opposites attract” is not a helpful strategy
Making a big decision e.g. accepting a job offer
Understanding what energises you or drains you—it might be because it’s aligned/misaligned with your values
As one of my coaching clients recently put it (after identifying his values and looking at his decades-long career in a whole new light), it’s the kind of stuff they should teach you in schools (not “je joue au foot”).
How to identify your values
To work out your values, I recommend you start with a big list, like this one. Have your pen and paper at the ready.
Jot down 10 values that you immediately feel drawn to. I think it’s fun to do this quite quickly, without thinking too hard about it.
Now define each of the values in your own words. Try to explain why you were drawn to it and what it means to you. There’s no “correct” definition here, rather it’s about what it represents in your life.
Whittle this list down to just five values that are most important in your life right now. Explain why that is.
What happens if you have to choose just three? Why did you pick them?
What happens if you have to choose just one? Why did you pick that one?
Close your notepad and go about your life again. Then revisit the list in a few days’ time. Do these values still speak to you? Is anything missing from the list? Would you expand on their definitions some more?
Firm up your list of the values that are most important to you. I’d recommend choosing 3-5 to make it easy to remember them, but it’s totally up to you. Think about how you are honouring or not honouring these values in your life right now. What else could you do to honour them? Is there anything that feels particularly aligned or misaligned?
Keep coming back to your values whenever you’re struggling with something. You’d be surprised by how much they play into our challenges in life, without us realising.
Remember, your values can change at different stages of your life. Perhaps they rotate in importance, or they change in significance. Some might become redundant while new ones appear. It’s fine to update your values as you go.
How did you get on?
If you give the values work a try, lemme know.
Thanks so much for reading!