From Overwhelm to Self-Compassion: The Science of Self-Awareness.
Have you ever found yourself deep in a spiral of thoughts or emotions before even realising what pulled you in? One moment you’re fine, and the next you’re tangled in self-doubt, irritation, or overwhelm, and it all feels strangely automatic. For many of us, inner experience unfolds just below the surface. Thoughts race ahead, emotions swell, the body tightens — and we’re carried along without quite knowing how we got there.
Self-awareness invites something different. It gives us a way to pause, to notice what’s happening as it’s happening. Through this kind of gentle observation, we begin to see our internal world more clearly: the stories we tell ourselves, the moods that colour our day, the subtle cues from our body that often go unnoticed.
Here’s what the research says about how self-awareness works, why it matters, and how it can open the door to a kinder way of being with ourselves.
What Is Self-Awareness, Really?
Self-awareness isn't just knowing your personality traits or preferences. At its core, it's the ability to observe your own internal states - bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts - as they arise in real time. This capacity creates what neuroscientists call "the observing self," a perspective that allows us to witness our experience rather than being completely identified with it.
When we are overidentified with our thoughts or feelings, it can feel like they colour our whole experience. For example, if we tell ourselves “I am a failure,” everything we think, feel and do can be coloured by the lens of being a failure.
However, if we are able to step back and notice “I’m having thoughts about being a failure,” it can help us see them for what they are - just thoughts. Not incontrovertible facts, but thoughts. Much like having the thought “I’m a frog” doesn’t make me a frog, having the thought “I’m a failure” doesn’t make me a failure.
When we are able to relate to thoughts, feelings, and sensations as aspects of our experience - rather than aspects of our self per se - we have a lot more flexibility. We can notice other experiences too - and we can let our experiences come and go, rather than push them away, or get consumed by them. We are not longer at the mercy of our experience.
Three Doorways to Ourselves
Self-awareness isn’t a single skill - it unfolds through several distinct but related processes. One of these is cognitive awareness: our ability to notice our thoughts without being swept away by them. Another is emotional awareness, which allows us to recognize and name our feelings. The third is interoceptive awareness, which involves sensing what’s happening in the body: breath, heartbeat, muscle tension, and other signals from within.
These aren't separate skills so much as different rooms in the same house. Your prefrontal cortex helps you observe your thoughts. Your emotional brain, including areas like the anterior cingulate cortex, helps you recognize feelings. And a region called the insula acts like an internal radar, picking up signals from inside your body.
Together, they create a map of your moment-to-moment experience. The clearer this map, the more choices you have about where to go next.
Name it to tame it
Remember when you were little and something scary happened? Often, having someone name what was happening ("That was just thunder") made it less frightening. Our brains work this way well into adulthood: there’s something deeply regulating about naming what we feel.
Putting words to our emotions isn’t just expressive - it also changes what’s happening in the brain. In one study, participants who labeled their emotions while viewing disturbing images showed decreased activity in the amygdala and increased activation in areas associated with cognitive control (Lieberman et al., 2007). Naming a feeling like “anger” or “fear” helped the brain shift from a reactive state to one that was more reflective.
This process, often called affect labeling, can also be applied to thoughts. Instead of being pulled into a thought like “I’m a failure,” we can begin to notice it as just that - a thought. Research on cognitive defusion, a core process in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, shows that creating this kind of psychological distance reduces rumination and increases flexibility (Hayes et al., 2006).
These practices are not about detaching from life or distancing ourselves from what matters. They’re about seeing clearly. This shift not only makes the emotion feel more manageable, it also creates room to notice what else is present - perhaps a sense of calm, a flicker of curiosity, or even a gentle kindness toward ourselves.
Your Body Knows Before You Do
We often think of emotions as happening in our heads, but they live in our bodies too. From the flutter in your chest before a presentation, to the warmth in your cheeks when you're embarrassed, to the heaviness in your limbs when you're sad - these sensations are the physical signatures of your feelings.
People who are more attuned to their internal states tend to show better emotion regulation and greater clarity about what they’re feeling (Critchley & Garfinkel, 2017). But there's a catch: it's not just about noticing more sensations. It's about how you meet what you find.
If you treat every twinge of discomfort as a five-alarm fire, awareness can actually increase your stress. When we think, “I am in pain,” the sensation can take over, tightening the body and narrowing our focus until it feels like pain is all there is. Mindful awareness invites a subtle but powerful shift: “There’s a sensation of pressure in my chest. I wonder what this is about?” By approaching your body with curiousity, you create space for understanding rather than reaction. It’s this understanding that opens the door for self-compassion.
The Courage to Look Inward
There's a certain bravery in turning toward our experience rather than away from it. It's not always comfortable to see what's really happening inside us. We might notice fears we'd rather not acknowledge, needs we've been ignoring, and parts of ourselves we've been trying to outrun.
But there's also immense freedom in this seeing. When we learn to be with ourselves in a clear and kind way, we're no longer at the mercy of our unexamined habits and reactions. We create a space between stimulus and response, between what happens and what we do next. And we can’t offer ourselves compassion for pain we haven't acknowledged. That's why awareness comes first - it shows us where kindness is needed.
This inner relationship - this way of seeing ourselves with clarity and meeting what we find with compassion - changes everything else. It's the foundation from which we relate to others, make choices, and move through the world.
It starts with a simple willingness to look inward and the courage to stay with what we find. And in that seeing, we discover the possibility of a gentler way to be with ourselves - and with everyone else. As Pema Chödrön teaches us: “Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on."
References
Craig, A. D. (2009). How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 59–70.
Lieberman, M. D., et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.
Hayes, S. C., et al. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1–25.
Critchley, H. D., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2017). Interoception and emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17, 7–14.
