Self-consciousness

[Eternal Growth]

Does anybody have any experience with, thoughts on or advice regarding productive ways to deal with self-consciousness?

 

In general being self-aware is a great thing, the more self-aware one is, and its is what makes intimacy possible. To have no capacity for self-critique is to be a psychopath. However, what I am talking about here is a particular manifestation of self-awareness that takes the form of obsessively and involuntarily thinking about previous social interactions and every way in which I might have said the wrong thing, presented myself or been perceived in an undesirable way, or been awkward. It’s a form of self-attack that goes beyond productive self-reflection and concern for how one affects others and can paralyse further attempts at self-expression in social situations. It's also destructive to real intimacy, as doesn't involve and actually stands in the way of finding out what the other person's actual experience was.

 

I’ve realised that I’ve been far more sensitive to this throughout my life than I thought and that it has been a significant influence on my social behaviour since very young. It seems that self-consciousness can affect a person’s behaviour in one of two ways (if it is accepted and acted upon, which when emotionally overwhelming and seemingly unstoppable can be difficult not to): either they self-erase through agreeability and people pleasing, sacrificing any individual identity they might have so they can glide through social situations without their self being at risk, or they withdraw and participate less in social interactions than they might otherwise have, which at least preserves the self, if only in hiding.

 

The above dichotomy is a matter of choosing whether to forgo including yourself in other peoples’ lives or to forgo including other people in yours. Ideally, one would be able to have both yourself and other people: the most functional state would seem to be one where one could interact freely and confidently with others without feeling any need to hide or obscure oneself, one’s thoughts, feelings and identity in the process.

 

Early childhood experiences of being attacked for self-expression would definitely seem to be related. 

 

What would be the kind of self-work that a person could do to develop a more functional self-awareness that is suited to the voluntaristic adult world? 

[Kurtis]

 

 

Early childhood experiences of being attacked for self-expression would definitely seem to be related. 

 

What would be the kind of self-work that a person could do to develop a more functional self-awareness that is suited to the voluntaristic adult world? 

 

Self-knowledge work would include understanding when and why you are self-attacking (hyper critical).  If you have a high sense of self-worth, then you would be more compassionate and forgiving with yourself.  

 

I think the last two sentences I've quoted of yours shows how you have answered your own question (answer, then question).

 

To reiterate, have you done the self work that focuses on your early childhood experiences?  Have you removed the triggers of your self-attack by processing your traumas/experiences of your childhood? Have you figured out the causes of these patterns and addressed them?

 

If you like, I can share my journey through this similar situation if you think it might be helpful.

[dsayers]

Early childhood experiences of being attacked for self-expression would definitely seem to be related. 

This was the only thing you said that even considers an external source. Elsewhere, you said "self-attack" and "self-erase." Even here, it seems only chance and insignificant. For a member of a social species to experience anxiety around other people is gene death. I wouldn't regard this insignificant or unimportant.

 

What would be the kind of self-work that a person could do to develop a more functional self-awareness that is suited to the voluntaristic adult world? 

Self-knowledge. Which begins with being honest about your feelings, where they originate, and why. So who erased you and why? How do you feel when you realize the truth? What you describe as self-erasure is just you recreating past trauma. Which is normalizing and/or internalizing that trauma instead of processing it.

 

the most functional state would seem to be one where one could interact freely and confidently with others without feeling any need to hide or obscure oneself, one’s thoughts, feelings and identity in the process.

I think this is another missed opportunity to be honest as well as trying to fix a misunderstood problem with problematic behavior. Allow me to clarify. I think your conclusion that you need to be all you all the time isn't realistic. There are other people, so you want to do things like keep your voice down in public places for example. Also, because there's other people, you don't walk around with your home address and credit card numbers in plain view because of the ways some people might misuse that to harm you. In the same way, discretion is not a vice.

 

By taking this all or nothing approach, you're allowing your abusers to re-victimize you. You're essentially saying to yourself that your abusers wanted to erase you, so you'll just go around totally uninhibited. Even though that approach would be in defiance of your abusers, it's a decision directly for the sake of your abusers. As opposed to thinking about various scenarios and choosing what to release and what to hold onto based on your feelings and desires in the moment.

 

a particular manifestation of self-awareness that takes the form of obsessively and involuntarily thinking about previous social interactions and every way in which I might have said the wrong thing, presented myself or been perceived in an undesirable way, or been awkward.

Do you accept your own capacity for error as a human being? I found that once I did, this was a huge burden lifted from my shoulders. It's good to be mindful of how you land for others and review your own behaviors to look for ways you can improve. However, there is such a thing as too much, which is usually what happens when it hasn't been modeled for somebody that failure is natural, acceptable, and in fact how we're able to improve in the first place. Again, this comes from without, so you need to be honest about who did this to you and go from there.

[Eternal Growth]

Wow, thank you. In this particular area I hadn’t made that connection: when I am self-attacking about a social situation, it’s still fundamentally my FOO who are doing that attacking. I am just doing it on their behalf. Now that I’ve made that connection whenever I am being attacked it’s going to be far easier to feel healthy anger and put a quick end to it.

 

Do you accept your own capacity for error as a human being? I found that once I did, this was a huge burden lifted from my shoulders. It's good to be mindful of how you land for others and review your own behaviors to look for ways you can improve. However, there is such a thing as too much, which is usually what happens when it hasn't been modeled for somebody that failure is natural, acceptable, and in fact how we're able to improve in the first place. Again, this comes from without, so you need to be honest about who did this to you and go from there.

 

I think something else is going on here also. What my FOO modelled was having no standards about their behaviour at all. Perfectionism and very high standards is something I developed as a response in order to be nothing like them (which in many ways has been valuable, but is still the "defiance of abuses but still directly for the sake of abusers" dysfunctional dynamic). In that sense, I was experiencing myself as being responsible for the perfectionism… But really I see now that it is something caused by them and their failure to have and model reasonable, reality-oriented standards, which is what I really need now and needed as a child also.