Thinking About Thinking: On Self-Awareness and the Cost of Coherence

I’ve spent some time staring at a blank Word document, trying to think of where to start. This hesitation is the whole point – symptomatic of the broader condition of self-awareness. It’s like my brain won’t let me be earnest without footnoting myself. It hits me in the most arbitrary moments. In the midst of friendly conversation, I find myself dissecting the most intrinsic aspects of myself: my logic, my cadence and inflections, the way my eyebrows arch and furrow as part of my countenance. This kind of self-surveillance is undoubtedly more common in environments and dynamics which prioritise articulation over authenticity. Observing oneself whilst being can be dissociative, but I question why this occurs and how it influences our interactions with others and ourselves.

Most people see self-awareness as a beneficial skill. However, I have continually disabused myself of that assumption and instead consider too much of it to be detrimental. The consensus is that it allows you to develop discernment and heightened emotional intelligence for your own sake. I see it as something that people either lack or have too much of; the sweet spot feels elusive and is perhaps a rarity. Nonetheless, I still have the impulse to observe myself and to interrogate each thought pattern performed and physical gesture simultaneously with its occurrence, as I’m sure others do too. From that perspective, we are both the performer and the critic, a split consciousness in which participation and evaluation run parallel. 

I would consider myself to have too much self-awareness. Understandably, one’s first thought might be to assume this as a compliment to myself, but I think the opposite. Why? It’s labyrinthine. Perhaps the situations I’ve found myself in in the last few years have led me to curate a dissection method of those around me, and myself, as a form of coping or as a protective measure against an abstract force. In a world where, as I mentioned, most environments and dynamics favour articulation, authenticity can slip through our fingers. It’s awareness versus action. Consequently, awareness does not sharpen interactions but fragments them. 

But what causes this incessant desire to be seen as emotionally intelligent and aware? Is it competition to be seen as superior? Undoubtedly, self-awareness has been burdened with an increasing cultural ‘weight’ – it is no longer an arbitrary internal process but has shifted into something that can be articulated. This articulation signals emotional dexterity, intelligence, maturity, and reflexivity, all of which are subconsciously performed to be socially rewarded across academic, professional, and interpersonal spaces. What I find ironic is that we run the risk of reducing our understanding of ourselves in pursuit of emotional discernment. When emotional intelligence is treated as evidence (knowing your emotions and why they are occurring; being able to sit with discomfort, etc.) rather than a process, it encourages self-monitoring: thoughts are analysed as they form - why, how, and where certain thoughts and patterns emerge. Unfortunately, it’s this real-time analysis that creates distance from experience itself and can often lead to an existential loop, where action is delayed and presence is diluted. 

An impulse towards self-awareness has increased from what I’ve seen online. The evaluation is intensified by a culture that rewards individuality, specificity, and perceived depth – to be self-aware is to curate a version of ourselves that appears considered and distinct. Cultural value and capital are attached to said specificity and depth: knowing the right references, holding the correct ambivalence, performing irony at ease. In this context, introspection becomes aestheticised. The self is not only examined but stylised, rendered legible in ways that signal cultural fluency and emotional sophistication. 

I think that our tendency to examine our surroundings and the things we see online has conditioned us to do the same to others and ourselves. I’ll re-read messages before sending or question why I reacted in a certain way, becoming aware in moments that don't require it, so much so that it becomes automatic. Sometimes it feels like I’m more committed to being coherent and understood than to actually feeling anything all the way through – coherence does not equate to honesty. Maybe I’ve mistaken fluency for truth, with the middle ground always slightly out of my reach.

If self-awareness is anything, it’s a learned reflex – a consciousness conditioned by constant observation. It emerges not from vanity but from environments that demand us to be intelligible and observant all of the time – a Foucauldian perspective, but true, nonetheless. Over time, this demand teaches us to treat experiences as something to be analysed rather than lived first and understood later. I think what resists the reflex is comfort in incoherence and delayed meaning. Choosing to exist without self-translation is somewhat radical today. It suggests that understanding is not always a consequence of analysis, and that sometimes the most honest way to be is to let experiences remain unfinished. 

Words by Jaiden Carbon, he/him