The Importance of Knowing Yourself

“The effort to pursue the truth of one’s experience has intrinsic healing value.” –Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., Psychologist and Professor at Rutgers Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology 

Most people come to therapy hoping to change something in their lives—jobs that are unfulfilling, relationships that are unsatisfying, thoughts and feelings that gnaw and refuse to go away. Oftentimes, people have already tried a number of things that haven’t quite worked. Something needs changing, but where to go from here?

Stuck on repeat.

The truth is, many of us tend to repeat unhelpful patterns in our relationships and lives without necessarily knowing why; we just continue to find ourselves in eerily similar situations. Coming up against the same roadblocks at work or at school, having the same fights with the same sorts of partners, playing the same painful tapes in our minds about ourselves and our lives. In therapy, we start to slow down the process and start to look at the underlying behaviors, thought processes, emotions, and bodily sensations driving those patterns. We also explore how these now unhelpful patterns initially served an adaptive purpose at some point to help you survive. And in this way, you begin to have compassion for the ways in which you have been driven to repeat these patterns.

For some, it is huge work to tune in and identify the sensations and emotions that have been avoided or numbed from trauma or years of trying to cope with contexts that harmed or worked against their growth. This is why the process of looking at these patterns in therapy looks different for each person and must respect each individual’s needs and starting point.

But what happens with this increased self-knowledge is that you can then start to make conscious choices for yourself rather than continuing to repeat what isn’t working. And you may still (you will) repeat those unhelpful behaviors sometimes, because you’re human and learning new ways of being in the world. But it’s a qualitatively different process when you’re consciously choosing to act rather than acting for reasons outside of your awareness. For instance, there’s a difference between automatically looking at your phone to avoid feelings of discomfort, and becoming aware that you’re experiencing an emotion that’s uncomfortable to sit with, and choosing to not go into it further at this moment by looking at your phone. You may still face the same consequences (e.g., procrastination, upset and disconnection from those around you, not responding to important internal cues, etc.), and so the behavior will likely still need to be looked at and worked on. But there is greater awareness of this process, and you are more in control of your behaviors and your life, when you know yourself.

Knowledge is power.

This leads to my next point, which is that there is great power in knowing yourself. When we are disconnected from ourselves—from our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors—we are strangers in our own bodies. Easily and understandably confused, frightened or overwhelmed by any passing sensation. When we tune back into our bodies and minds—at a pace that respects our own timing and needs for safety—the awareness that follows allows us to respond to ourselves, meet our needs, and move through areas in which we have been stuck. We feel the rumbling of our stomachs and eat, we reach out because we’re lonely, we act on thoughts of intention and purpose.

Acceptance is key.  

Hand in hand with knowing yourself is something equally paramount to change—accepting yourself. Through the process of knowing yourself, you will come face-to-face with parts of yourself that are, well, hard to face. We all have parts of ourselves that we’ve been told somewhere along the way—by culture, media, religion, family, etc.—that they aren’t OK and need to be changed or hidden away. Maybe it’s certain traits we don’t like about ourselves, or habits we’re not proud of, or uncomfortable emotions we’re “not supposed to feel.” But what happens when we hide away these parts of ourselves is that we are separated from important information about ourselves and from our humanity. And because we don’t know how these parts work, their influence on our lives goes unchecked and, very often, grows and morphs into other unhelpful behaviors (e.g., denial, compulsions, addictions, etc.).

On the flip side, what happens when we start to accept these parts—rather than our fears of automatically excusing them or becoming self-indulgent—is that we stop fighting against ourselves. And we find a level of peace that comes from simply allowing what is already there, to just be there. We can then attend to these hidden parts of ourselves, listen to them, begin to recognize their effect on our lives, have compassion for them and create space for them to grow. We may even come to reclaim them and love these parts of ourselves. Or we may simply accept that they are a part of us and our journey in this life. Or we may decide that the most caring decision is to work on changing them. We can then be aware of when these parts are active within us, and choose to act in a direction more in line with our values, using the energy that comes from them in ways that best serve us. This includes appreciating the strength and courage it takes to look at ourselves honestly.

As an added bonus, self-acceptance also allows for the development of what I believe to be true confidence, that is, being simultaneously aware of and at peace with your human flaws, as well as your strengths.

Thus, what you stand to gain in the process of knowing yourself is nothing short of increased awareness, compassion, power, acceptance, peace, courage, and even confidence. And when this process takes place within a therapeutic relationship, you have someone who can model for you what it is like to know and accept you as you are; your whole, human self.

Written by: Dr. Lindsay Elizondo a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (PSY31249). Let us know if you want to learn more about working with one of our therapists or how we work.