Mental Health Care: When You’re Learning to Be Okay With Yourself - 10 Signs You Lack Self Awareness

Self awareness, also known as metacognition is a measure of higher intelligence. What makes human different from other animals is that we have the ability to think about how we think. This means the ability to plan, set goals, and analyze. A lack of self awareness causes us to become self-destructive and to put ourselves in toxic or unhealthy situations. You do not want to be on auto-pilot or a robot do you? What makes us unique and grow is our ability to be self aware. And that's why psych2go's videos aim to help us learn more about ourselves. Are you looking for tips on how to be more self aware? The first step towards being self aware is to learn more about it and recognize the signs we might be lacking self awareness. Did you know that self-love requires self awareness? If you relate to this video and want to understand more about self love and whether you might be lacking that too, we also made a video on this: https://youtu.be/I75jn1lM-zM Writer: Carley Swanson-Garro Script Editor: Isadora Ho Script Manager: Kelly Soong VO: Amanda Silvera Animator: Faye Miravalles YouTube Manager: Cindy Cheong References: Adam, K.C.S., Vogel, E.K. (2017). Confident failures: Lapses of working memory reveal a metacognitive blind spot. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 79, 1506–1523 www.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-017-1331-8. American Psychological Association (n.d.). Emotional intelligence. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved 4 June from www.dictionary.apa.org/emotional-intelligence. Dishon, N., Oldmeadow, J. A., Critchley, C., & Kaufman, J. (2017). The effect of trait self-awareness, self-reflection, and perceptions of choice meaningfulness on indicators of social identity within a decision-making context. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 2034. www.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02034. O’Donoghue, T. & Rabin, M. (2003). 7: Self-awareness and self-control. In Time and Decision: Economic and Psychological Perspectives of Intertemporal Choice. Loewenstein G., Read D., & Baumeister R. (Eds.), 217-244. Russell Sage Foundation. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/9781610443661. Duval, T. S., & Silvia, P. J. (2002). Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the self-serving bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 49–61. www.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.49. Gill, L. J., Ramsey, P. L., & Leberman, S. I. (2015). A systems approach to developing emotional intelligence using the self-awareness engine of growth model. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 28(6), 575–594. DOI: 10.1007/s11213-015-9345-4. Heyes, C., Bang, D., Shea, N. Frith, C.D., & Fleming, S.M (2020 May). Knowing ourselves together: The cultural origins of metacognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(5), 349-362, www.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.02.007. Kreibich, A., Hennecke, M., Brandstätter, V. (2020 January). The effect of self‐awareness on the identification of goal‐related obstacles. European Journal of Personality. 34(2), 215-233. www.doi.org/10.1002/per.2234. Patel, J. & Patel, P. (2019). Consequences of repression of emotion: Physical health, mental health and general well being. International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, 1(3),16-21. DOI: 10.14302/issn.2574-612X.ijpr-18-2564. MacDonald, H.Z., Price, J.L. (2017). Emotional understanding: Examining alexithymia as a mediator of the relationship between mindfulness and empathy. Mindfulness 8, 1644–1652. www.doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0739-5. Rollwage, M., Raymond, J.D. & Fleming, S.M. (2018 December). Metacognitive failure as a feature of those holding radical beliefs. Current Biology, 28(24), 4014-4021. www.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.053. White, K., Stackhouse, M., & Argo, J. J. (2018). When social identity threat leads to the selection of identity-reinforcing options: The role of public self-awareness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 144, 60–73.www.doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2017.09.007. If you have any stories or questions you want to ask, email us at [email protected]