Being able to engage in the act of mindfully focusing on your own space is a skill to be mastered for a number of reasons. By intentionally focusing in on your own processes at times, you can learn what you need to thrive in all situations, as well as learn a thing or two about interacting better with others. Learning to pause, breathe, and feel your five senses- validating each and every one that you are experiencing, and recognizing how you are feeling are all outcomes of practicing this type of introspection. Fortunately, it does not take long to learn. It is actually quite simple to learn and implement into practice by setting reminders in your surroundings to check in with yourself and practice the introspection, or mindfulness through out the day. Over time, you will build greater self-awareness and also learn to tune in to conflict with others more rationally and with less distress.

Having increased self-awareness is not a license to do what you want or whatever makes you feel good. It is not about instant gratification, selfishness, or even pleasure. Rather, it is about learning to sit with your feelings and physical sensations in any moment that you find yourself. It is a way to learn to be comfortable in your own skin while sitting with uncomfortable emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Focusing with intention on emotions and sensations, validating them, giving yourself what you need in any given moment appropriately, and learning to isolate them, will lead to increased emotional intelligence, and the ability to lower the intensity of the emotions over time. Once you can isolate an emotion, it becomes possible to focus on it to both magnify its intensity, as well as decrease its intensity. Our own focus and awareness can hold space for us to heal, as we process as needed, and without self-judgment.

Some practical ways to practice increasing self-awareness through mindfulness requires a look back at the segment on Mindfulness Skills for Self-Compassion, which focused on ways to increase self-compassion and empathy for others through practicing basic mindfulness skills of observation and description of events and situations using factual language and detaching emotions. This use of logic to override emotion works because the left brain controls logic, and the right brain controls emotion, so when you switch between them intentionally, it will bring you to a wise mind space, or more neutral stance. Logic will actually slow your emotional roll if you use it intentionally to do so.

Once you learn how to come into your body through breathing, it is important to practice a body scan. To complete a body scan, it is only necessary to breathe and focus on different parts of your body at a time. As you are bringing awareness to your posture, head, shoulders, neck, torso, hips, legs, feet, hands, and any other parts of your body you wish, you will be able to notice tension and breathe it out to release it. This helps with chronic and acute pain, as well as reducing anxiety, while building increased self-awareness. Once you are self-aware, it is important to focus on any needs that you have. Do you feel hungry? Are you thirsty? Is it necessary to stretch out some tension in your body? By giving yourself what you need, you will be more able to serve others and turn your subconscious focus elsewhere. This will deepen your sense of connection to others, as well as increase your overall satisfaction with life.

This is one of the many reasons understanding the connection to our thoughts and feelings is so important for mental wellness. We may learn many coping skills to get by without practicing self-awareness skills that may be quite effective. Over time, it is absolutely possible to heal from trauma and challenges without ever actually addressing them. For some, it is far too painful to address them and perhaps, better to move forward with a focus solely on behavior and routine management. To be able to face traumas and challenges, recognize the physical and emotional impact on our body’s sensations, and learn ways to reduce the intensity, we can release the brain and body from the imprint of trauma over time. This is perhaps, the most effective way to heal from trauma, though certainly not the only method.

© 2021