Who are you? Do you know? Or does your past color your perception of who you are? Becoming more self-aware can aid you in learning to trust and love yourself. Sounds difficult? It is somewhat tricky, but it is necessary for living a healthy life.
Those of us living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder often find our self-trust destroyed and ourselves living in a predicament because we have little self-awareness.
This article will explore the benefits of building self-trust and how you might learn to believe and care about yourself.
What is Self-Awareness?
In short, self-awareness is when you objectively interpret your actions, thoughts, and feelings. Doctors Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund offer the following definition of self-awareness.
“Self-awareness is the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards. If you’re highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you.”
Developing self-awareness aids in building self-trust because it helps us understand who we are and what our values are so that we implement them. In recognizing our values, we are telling ourselves what we will and will not do, which helps to build self-trust.
Self-aware people can interpret their thoughts and objectives, and that is a rare skill as most of us tend to spiral into emotion-driven interpretations of what is happening to us and how we will respond.
Two types of self-awareness exist, private and public.
Private self-awareness. People with private self-awareness are meditative and approach their reactions with curiosity instead of blatant emotion. These folks are capable of noticing their physical sensations and correctly attributing them to what is happening at the moment. This type of self-awareness allows us not to panic when our emotions are aroused but instead to think or be conscious of what is happening and face it head-on. The con of private self-awareness is that it is easy to appear insincere because one can be too wrapped in oneself.
Public Self-Awareness. This type of self-awareness is consciously aware of how we look to others. With this kind of self-awareness, we are more likely to follow societal norms and behave in a socially acceptable manner. The con to public self-awareness is that people high in public self-awareness may spend excessive time worrying about what other people think about them.
Both private and public self-awareness helps build self-trust by allowing you to examine yourself bravely, know what you believe in, and provide you with a roadmap of how you wish to behave.
The Benefits of Self-Awareness and Self-Trust
Awareness of your deeply felt beliefs and attitudes makes one more capable of looking constructively at your life. When you are self-aware, you can make better choices and see the path you wish to take in your life more clearly.
There are as many, if not more, benefits to developing self-trust through self-awareness. Below is a partial list of the benefits of self-trust.
You empathize better with others. The skill of empathy enables you to have better relationships and, in the process, receive validation of your feelings. Often, you will find you need validation more than anything else.
You improve your critical thinking skills. Becoming self-aware includes the need to think and reflect honestly on yourself and all you do. It is critical to do a lot of self-analyzing to separate yourself from your emotions to see an objective picture of who you are. Practicing these things improves your critical thinking skills.
You acquire good listening skills. The skill of active listening is growing scarce in our modern times. Active listening skills make a positive impression on those around you and can lead to authentic relationships. Good listening skills are characteristic of self-awareness.
You become a better leader. As a leader of any group, with self-awareness and self-trust having given you the other three benefits, you make a great leader. People will want to work with you on any project at work or at home. People will look to you for guidance and feel glad to know you are helping them build lasting positive relationships with others.
How Does Self-Awareness Affect Self-Trust?
Once you have learned to trust yourself, you will understand better what makes you afraid and affects how you deal with CPTSD.
“Trusting yourself means being able to attempt to do all kinds of things without judging yourself too harshly.” – Charanjit Lehal.
How To Tell If You Are Self-Aware?
Self-awareness and self-trust go hand in hand. One will not exist without the other. By now, you might be wondering just how self-aware you might be. Let us examine five essential characteristics of someone who is self-aware.
Honesty. If you are self-aware, you do not need to berate yourself but are honest with yourself about your good and bad qualities, successes, and failures.
Wisdom. Wise people acknowledge that their everyday life consists of continually learning from triumphs and errors.
Self-Confidence. Self-aware folks desire honest feedback from others because it helps them change course if needed and makes them aware of how others see them.
Humility. Self-aware people know their skills and their shortcomings and are willing to change. Self-aware people do not mind sharing triumph with others, nor do they stop themselves from lifting up others.
Self-Compassion. Self-aware people aren’t hard on themselves. Instead, these folks pat themselves on the back when they do something right and hold themselves without judgment when they do something incorrectly.
There are more characteristics, and you will find them as you practice self-awareness and grow in self-trust.
Mental Health Awareness Month-The Mental Health of the BIPOC Community
BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) communities face enormous barriers to good mental health support. With that statement, it must also be said that this group constitutes over 19 million people with mental health conditions. The number is probably much more significant due to taboos in reporting mental health problems in their cultures.
The BIPOC community faces the taboos against speaking of mental health challenges and stigma from mental health professionals. BIPOC communities also face enhanced barriers to mental health services, including lack of insurance, ability to pay, transportation, and language barriers.
Discrimination felt and practiced by some mental health providers is also a massive block in the road to recovery for people who are black, indigenous, and people of color.
With all the roadblocks to care, it is unsurprising that 22% of black and Hispanic high school students seriously contemplate dying by suicide every year.
It is past time for America to stand up and face the fact that BIPOC individuals make up the majority of our nation and deserve equitable and good mental health care. As U.S. citizens, they have the right to receive the services they need to live long and healthy lives.
This is mental health awareness month. Let all of us think sincerely about how we can get involved in aiding the BIPOC community in receiving the mental health care they deserve.
Ending Our Time Together
This series on self-trust has examined many aspects of how to build self-trust. One of the most important methods is to employ a healthy dose of self-awareness. Without knowing who you are inside, gaining any kind of self-trust will be challenging.
CPTSD grows worse in an atmosphere where there is no trust in oneself, resulting in a lack of self-awareness. To change this, we must work hard to defeat the inner critic that keeps telling us we are no good and no one wants us.
I sincerely hope this series has helped you grow in the knowledge needed to begin to trust yourself. Doing so will be life-changing.
“It’s crucial to practice self-empathy, for trust can’t be willed into existence. That didn’t work when our caregivers tried to impose their will on us, and it won’t work internally, either. Only when we can tap into a place of self-trust, with a reliable process of reparation for inevitable mistakes, can we build trust with another person.” – Alexandra Katehakis
My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.
I love how the article emphasizes that self-awareness is not about perfection but progress. It’s about embracing our flaws and imperfections as part of what makes us beautifully human. This vulnerability is where our strength lies.