Are You Self-Aware or Self-Absorbed?The Truth About Why We See Ourselves the Way We Do

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Welcome to the Original Self Podcast.

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I'm Evet DeCota,

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the owner of DeCota Life Coaching and a psychology informed life coach who explores

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resilience,

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mindset,

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and the courage to become your authentic self.

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This is a space for honest conversations about growth,

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identity,

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relationships,

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and the messy moments in between that shape who we become.

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Between the salon chair and coaching sessions,

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I've watched people move through life in patterns they never notice.

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I've also, for the record, recognized some of those patterns in myself.

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In this episode,

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we're going to talk about the difference between two ways of moving through the

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world.

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One that keeps you stuck inside yourself and the one that sets you free.

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Today, we'll discuss

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Are you self-aware or self-absorbed?

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The truth about why we see ourselves the way we do.

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Today's topic gets mistaken for narcissism constantly.

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So I want to clear that up right now.

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Narcissism

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is a diagnosable personality disorder.

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It is pathological.

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The narcissist rarely changes even with medication and therapy because real change

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requires something most narcissists do not have and that is the genuine desire to

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look inward and do the hard work.

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So now that we got that clear, what's the difference between self-absorption and self-awareness?

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I'll tell you but first I want to tell you about a conversation that I eavesdropped

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on recently.

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My nephew Jackson loves to play golf and during his spring break I told him that he

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should play golf in the town that I live in and then I would rent a golf cart and

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drive him around.

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That's a win for both of us because he gets to be chauffeured for 18 holes and I

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get to spend five hours with a teenager

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That's usually too busy for his auntie.

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So as he was warming up at the, I don't know, driving range?

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I don't know the terminology, but something like that.

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He was practicing.

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There was a cart parked next to me with four guys maybe in their 40s just standing

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around talking.

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They were talking about making money and their stock market investments.

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One of the men was speaking about his brother and how he had apparently hit it big

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in the tech industry.

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Although he made millions,

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he was an addict and spent all of his money on alcohol and cocaine,

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which landed him in a rehab in Los Angeles.

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Apparently after some relapses and additional rehabs,

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this brother took his sobriety seriously and began working at the rehab.

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He then with the head counselor opened up their own wellness spa rehab for the mega

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wealthy and that made his brother millions of dollars again.

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The other men were like super impressed by this comeback story and one asked a

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pretty pertinent question about how the addicts behavior affected the rest of the

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family.

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The brother answered that it definitely did and that they all had to go to the

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rehab when he was in rehab a bunch of times and talk about how it affected them,

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their emotions around it,

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etc.

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Another man in the Forsen piped in and said he thought therapy was very good for

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women but that men didn't need it so much.

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That's when my superpower hearing became

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as amplified as Jamie Summer's bionic ear for real.

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As their conversation continued from there,

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they all admitted to having had some therapy at some point in their lives and how

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much they got out of it.

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As I saw my nephew heading back towards me, I kept thinking, were they self-absorbed?

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Were they just completely self-unaware or both?

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And then I wondered, did they even know the difference?

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So before we can answer my question of are we self-aware or self-absorbed and can

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we see ourselves as one way or the other,

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we need to know what we're talking about.

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So I'd like to define these phrases.

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Psychology defines self-absorption as an excessive preoccupation with one's own

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thoughts,

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feelings,

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and experiences.

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It's not classified as a disorder, but as a pattern.

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Often learned and often protective.

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The self-absorbed person isn't necessarily selfish.

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They're just often stuck within themselves without the tools to get out.

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It could be temporary.

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Yet stress and anxiety can also trigger self-absorption

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and even maybe so deeply ingrain that it's a way of moving through the world that

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they've adapted to.

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Self-absorption in practice is includes conversations that consistently come back to them.

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They struggle to ask you about yourself and actually mean it.

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They might present

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with difficulty sitting with your emotions or pain without bringing it back to

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their own experience of emotions and pain.

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It's a lack of impulse control or they react before they observe what's really

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going on in front of them.

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They also have a hard time laughing at themselves because there's no distance from

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the ego to laugh from.

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The opposite on the spectrum is self-awareness.

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Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection.

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It involves knowing your own values or emotions,

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your strengths,

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weaknesses and how all of those drive your behavior.

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Psychologists split self-awareness into two types, internal

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which is knowing yourself from the inside and external self-awareness which is how

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others experience you self-awareness in practice looks like catching yourself in a

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pattern before it takes completely over or admitting when you're wrong and not

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falling apart when the error is pointed out to you it looks like

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Taking responsibility without self punishment or really long bouts of rumination.

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I could have done it this way.

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Why did I say that?

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They must think this or that of me.

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It is awareness of your effect on the room or the ability to laugh at yourself

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because if you have that,

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that means it requires distance from the ego.

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In the short conversation that I heard

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from the golf guys.

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I noticed especially when they said that therapy was better for women and not men

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and then proceeded to talk about their own time spent in therapy and how it helped.

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I definitely noticed that maybe they didn't practice self-awareness.

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The paradox between the two is very interesting.

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Self-absorbed people are constantly looking inward but never actually seeing themselves.

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they're drowning in self however the self-aware person does observe the self they

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are stepping outside themselves enough to watch what's happening so looking inward

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then isn't the same thing as self-awareness if you think about it one acts submerge

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the other acts as a witness

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I don't know,

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maybe that's why self-absorbed people are simultaneously hyper-focused on

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themselves and unaware of their effects on others.

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There's no distance or observer position so they can't see themselves in the room.

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That observation drives me down multiple question street.

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Are self-awareness and self-absorption

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Is it caused by nature versus nurture?

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I think that nature includes narcissistic tendencies or other personality disorders

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that are present from the beginning of people's lives.

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But nurture is maybe where behavior at the opposite ends of the spectrum such as

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neglect and overindulgence can produce the same results.

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Like the kid that's ignored versus the kid given a trophy for showing up.

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Both can end up self-absorbed just for different reasons.

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One operates from I deserve this and the other one from I'm terrified there won't

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be enough for me.

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I can often hear someone's origin story and how they speak to me.

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The ignored often have to prove how great they are

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At the expense of monopolizing a conversation never pausing long enough to allow a

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back and forth question and answer session or giving off vibes of anxiety and

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restlessness.

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I've seen this many times where the overindulged are only waiting for you to finish

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a sentence so they can launch into everything about them.

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They might not even comment on anything you say or just completely ignore your

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contribution to the conversation Maybe it's a superiority or inferiority complex

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That's a piece of self-absorption The psychologist Alfred Adler introduced these

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complexes and he described them as extreme and distorted ways of seeing oneself

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It's often developed to a response to childhood experiences or social anxiety or

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even a deep fear of failure.

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Both are actually the same defense mechanism just pointed in opposite directions.

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The person who thinks they're better than everyone and the person who thinks

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they're less than are both obsessed with comparison.

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Yet neither see others clearly.

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In an article published in Psychology Today,

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the UK-based contemplative psychologist Dr.

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William Van Gordon discussed ontological addiction theory developed with Edo

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Shonin.

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This theory argues that even people with inferiority complexes

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can be as self-absorbed as someone with a superiority complex.

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The addiction is to your own sense of importance,

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to the belief that you exist at the center of the world separate from everyone

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else.

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The separation is where there's the problem.

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That's where the problem lives because nothing exists in isolation, right?

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There is an interconnection between

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And everything and everyone around us.

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But the more we lose sight of that, the more distorted and smaller our world becomes.

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So basically, self-absorption is just ego with nowhere to go but inward.

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Before we go further, I want to leave you with something to sit with.

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I ask you,

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Are you the person who walks away from a conversation thinking about what the other

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person said?

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Or are you the person who walks away thinking about what you said?

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During one of my conversations with my friend Angie,

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we talked about can you change what you can't see?

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And for me the question I keep coming back to is can a self-absorbed person

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actually become self-aware?

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I believe they can but with one important exception and that's the narcissist.

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The narcissist cannot do that.

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Remember that's a disorder and a different conversation but for everyone else I

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think change is possible.

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Here's what I've observed both in coaching and in life.

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The self-absorbed person usually doesn't change gradually.

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I think it's something that breaks them open.

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A relationship ends or they lose something or someone significant.

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It's a crisis of some kind that forces a crack in the wall.

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But here's what's interesting.

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Two people can experience

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The exact same crisis and go in completely opposite directions.

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One could wake up, the other one doubles down and goes further into themselves.

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But what makes the difference?

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Narcissism, depression, unbroken behavior patterns, those will keep the walls up.

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These are the things that keep self-absorbed people

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Continually searching for outward excuses rather than inward inside themselves for answers.

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In a previous episode, I introduced locus of control.

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It's developed by an American psychologist in the 50s named Julian Rotter.

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Simply put, do you believe you're in control of your own life?

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Or do you believe

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Life Happens To You.

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There are two types of locus of control, internal and external.

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An internal locus of control means you take responsibility for your outcome.

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You believe your actions matter and you work toward change when something doesn't work for you.

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An external locus of control means you attribute

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Outcomes to luck or circumstances or other people.

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Therefore, you're less likely to change.

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So here's where it connects to our conversation.

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Self-awareness almost always lives on the internal side.

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The self-aware person believes they have agency.

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They can look at their own patterns to take responsibility without falling apart.

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And

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Then make different choices.

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That's internal locus of control in action.

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Self absorption tends to live on the external side.

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Not always, but often.

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Because if everything that happens to you is someone else's fault,

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or just bad luck,

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there's no reason to look inward.

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There's nothing to examine.

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And you stay stuck in the same pattern because you don't believe you have the power

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to change it anyway,

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right?

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Interestingly,

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one of the clearest outward signs when someone falls on that continuum is impulse

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control.

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The self-absorbed person who reacts without thinking isn't necessarily doing it consciously.

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They may genuinely not believe they could have done otherwise.

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They say things like, that's just how I am or you made me do that.

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I couldn't help it.

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That's the external locus of control speaking.

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Because impulse control, it requires a pause.

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That pause is only possible if you believe your response is a choice.

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The self aware person isn't necessarily more disciplined by nature.

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They've just internalized one belief that changes everything.

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The space between feeling triggered and their response is their own.

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That's the space where self awareness lives.

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There's something Rotter himself noted about gender which I find very interesting

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Some studies suggest men tend toward an internal locus of control and women toward

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an external one which makes sense because given the conditioning of women to put

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everyone else first when you spend your whole life considering or responding to

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what other people's needs are

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You can lose the belief that your choices drive your life.

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I witness this many times with clients telling me stories of feeling stuck and

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unable to leave bad situations or relationships.

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They name the circumstances that keep them stationary and fail to realize that no

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matter how difficult the situation is,

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they are actually the change agent.

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So with all that said,

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locus of control might actually be the mechanism underneath all of it,

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the thing that determines whether self-awareness is even possible.

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If that's true,

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then the first step towards self-awareness isn't insight,

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it's actually ownership.

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Two researchers named Ferdi Botha and Sarah Dahman conducted

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A large-scale Australian study where they found that people with an internal locus

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of control consistently reported greater self-control better physical and mental

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health and a higher life satisfaction they also found that an internal locus of

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control doesn't just correlate with better outcomes it amplifies them

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In other words,

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believing you have agency over your life makes the work you do on yourself more

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effective.

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The belief and the behavior reinforce each other,

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which means developing self-awareness isn't just a mental exercise.

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It has a real measurable consequences for your life and

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It's attainable if the desire to change is truly genuine.

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Before we move on, here's another question worth thinking about.

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When something in your life isn't working, where does your mind go first?

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Is it to what you could do differently or to everything and everyone outside of you

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that's to blame?

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One of the places self-awareness is often tested is how we respond to other people

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specifically whether we can tell the difference between something that's genuinely

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about us and something that we're just making about us.

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I think taking things personally is actually its own form of self-absorption.

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There's research to back it up

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People with low self-esteem are considerably more likely to take things personally,

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interpreting neutral or even constructive feedback as a personal attack.

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So the person who takes everything personally isn't necessarily thin-skinned,

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they're just operating from a wound that they haven't yet examined.

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Behavioral health therapist Ken Alexander

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says that the minute you begin to personalize these types of behaviors, you're in trouble.

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He says it sets you up to be manipulated in some way, shape or form.

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He says that self-absorption disguises itself as sensitivity.

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That's interesting.

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Also worth noting,

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research on self-absorption highlighted in Psychology Today magazine by

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psychologist Leon Seltzer

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found that self-absorption undermines our capacity for empathy and a true

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understanding of others.

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It's extremely difficult to appreciate the world outside ourselves when we direct

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most of our focus inward.

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We have to ask ourselves, is this about me or is it about them?

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And then patiently, key word,

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Wait for the answer.

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Every morning my friend Angie and I have what we call our daily therapy sessions.

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Though it costs a lot less and the laughs are way better than a true therapy session.

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It usually starts with a well-placed meme or reel that captures our exact views on

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various subjects.

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And then we get on the phone before work

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And unpack whatever's on our mind.

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We each swap stories or offer a reframe to the mindset we are currently holding.

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Whatever's bothering us,

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whatever happened,

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whatever we're carrying,

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we name it,

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we examine it,

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and then we figure out what's ours to own and what isn't.

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And then we laugh.

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We laugh not because everything's funny because we know that ruminating over our

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problem unnecessarily is destructive to our well-being.

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When we bring levity to something that's bothering one of us,

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it creates or feels like there's more room to breathe.

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There's room to have maybe a different perspective.

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Like I said, that reframe.

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Laughter creates distance from the ego.

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And distance is exactly what self-awareness requires.

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Seltzer also talks about how all rumination is not the same.

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The two kinds of rumination are productive,

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which is where you actually work through a problem and fix it.

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And there's also maladaptive rumination,

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Where you just continually cycle through the same thoughts with no resolution.

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That second kind is where self-absorption lives and also where depression and anxiety grows.

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Think about this.

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The depressed person ruminates about the past.

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Where the anxious person ruminates about the future.

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The both of them are stuck in the same loop.

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They compare themselves unfavorably to others,

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catastrophize,

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avoid anything that feels risky,

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and make their problems feel bigger and less solvable than they actually are.

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I read research from psychologist Edward Watkins at a university in England,

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and he points to two ways out of this loop.

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He suggests that first you get concrete and specific about what's bothering you

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because if it's abstract,

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evaluative thinking keeps you stuck in that loop.

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Second,

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develop self-compassion because the relentless self-criticism underneath the

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rumination is what keeps it going.

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So let's take our daily laugh therapy sessions.

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My friend Angie and I, having those sessions helps us process and move on.

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It offers concrete, compassionate alternatives to rumination.

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And that at its core is what self-awareness looks like in practice.

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So let's bring this home.

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If you recognize yourself anywhere in what we talked about today,

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Whether you're the person who's been moving through life unaware of your patterns,

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or the person who has been quietly absorbing the weight of someone else's,

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just hear this,

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awareness is not a verdict.

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It's a starting point.

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The thing is, is that self-absorption is not a character flaw you're born with.

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It's a pattern that you develop for a reason.

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And patterns, unlike personality disorders,

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They can change, but only if you can see them.

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Only if you believe you have the power to do something more about them.

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That's the work, not the grand gesture, not the dramatic breakthrough.

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It's the daily practice of asking yourself honest questions and being willing to

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sit with the answers.

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It's the pause before the reaction.

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The Laugh Instead Of The Spiral The Morning Phone Call That Costs Nothing But Has

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The Ability To Change Everything I Think Self Awareness Is Not A Destination It's A

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Discipline And The Good News Is You Don't Have To Do It Perfectly You Just Have To

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Keep Doing It I'll Leave You With One Final Thought To Take Into Your Week

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I want you to notice one moment where you feel yourself react to criticism,

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a comment or to disruptive behavior that gets under your skin or to a situation

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that stings.

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Before you respond, ask yourself these questions.

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Is this actually about me?

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What am I assuming about this situation?

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That May Not Be True Am I Making This About Me?

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Just Notice You Don't Have To Fix Anything Just Notice If You Want To Explore What

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Patterns Have Been Quietly Running In The Background Of Your Life And What Might Be

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Possible On The Other Side Of Them I Would Love To Talk You Can Find Me At

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(00:29:38):

And I genuinely love this work Thank you for being with me today This one took some

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(00:29:51):

little more curious about yourself And maybe a little less hard on yourself for

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what you find Have a great day