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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~ Carl Jung
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I was once sitting with a friend, someone I had just recently met, and we were discussing what we do for work.
That’s when she asked me, “Doesn’t it get difficult for you to manage your relationships because you’re a therapist?”
At first, I didn’t understand the question. But a few seconds later, I realised what she was really asking. After careful thought, I said yes and no.
Yes, it does get difficult because I am highly self-aware and emotionally intelligent, something that is needed and constantly honed in my work. While this awareness helps me greatly in what I do, it also has a downside. I see things I would rather not see. I understand patterns and behaviours. I pick up things that aren’t said. I sense shifts in emotions and nervous systems even before people realise the shift within themselves.
I am highly perceptive, patient, empathetic, understanding, and all of this is great…till it’s not.
As Spider-Man’s uncle once said, with great power comes great responsibility. And in the case of highly self-aware, emotionally intelligent people, with great self-awareness also comes great responsibility—the responsibility of knowledge—and if you don’t learn how to carefully use that awareness, it can send you down a rabbit hole.
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.” ~ Lao Tzu
You’re not deliberately sitting and analysing people. It’s just happening. Your mind is working at twice the speed of the room. You can see your own patterns and those of others too. And sometimes you’d honestly rather stay wrapped in your comfort blanket and not confront reality, because with understanding comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes choice. And sometimes you have to make choices you don’t want to but have to.
A lot of people behave like pigeons, closing their eyes hoping the world will disappear. But self-aware people are pigeons on high alert. They can’t fully close their eyes. They do see the world. Sure, they may look away once in a while, dose off briefly, but blindness cannot become a regular affair anymore, and that’s where the struggle begins.
To begin with, here are some signs that tell you that you are highly self-aware and emotionally perceptive:
1. You notice emotional shifts in people instantly and pick up body language cues.
2. You sense tension even when nothing is spoken.
3. You reflect deeply after conversations or conflicts and sometimes argue from both sides!
4. You take accountability quickly. Well, sometimes too quickly and then wonder why isn’t your understanding and accountability being reciprocated.
5. You understand why people behave the way they do and sometime justify their behaviour even if it’s costing you.
6. You can hold multiple perspectives at once, and that can create so much confusion within you because you don’t know which ones to drop and which ones to keep!
7. You feel responsible for maintaining emotional harmony because you are the only one who can see things others can’t, so you have this natural urge to sort everything out even when it’s not your job.
8. You pick up inconsistencies between words and behaviour and that makes it so much harder to unsee things.
9. You struggle to ignore red flags once you notice them even of they are in people you love and adore, and that runs the risk of changing your equations.
10. You often become the listener, mediator, or emotional anchor, and let’s not even talk about how utterly exhausting this gets!
On paper, these sound like strengths. And they are. But strengths, when left unchecked or overused, slowly become burdens.
Highly self-aware and emotionally intelligent people often struggle with things others don’t even notice. For instance they:
1. Overthink interactions long after they end (self-awareness and high eq should come with a switch off option!).
2. See relationship dynamics others remain blind to, and the frustration that comes with it is another level.
3. Struggle with surface-level conversations.
4. Carry emotional labour without realising it.
5. Understand others even when they don’t try to understand themselves and then wondering what’s happening!
6. Feel exhausted by emotional inconsistency.
7. Anticipate conflict before it happens, which is great because they can prepare, but this where they also struggle with hyper-vigilance and anxiety.
8. Stay longer because they understand why someone behaves the way they do even if it’s costing them in the hope that their knowledge, awareness, and effort will prevent bad outcomes from happening. And they realise too late that nothing is in their control, really.
9. Excuse behaviour because they see the wound behind it and really struggle to draw boundaries.
10. Find it hard to switch their mind off.
Perhaps the hardest part of being highly self and emotionally aware is that you cannot unknow what you know. You can’t pretend not to see what is clearly unfolding.
When you are highly self-aware, reality confronts you constantly. You can see when effort isn’t mutual. You see emotional unavailability, avoidance, defensiveness, immaturity. And once you see it, you must decide: do I stay, do I address it, or do I walk away? Because this awareness is not limited to the present moment alone. You can map out how the future is also going to be. This awareness forces choice, and choice, no matter how empowering, is exhausting because sometimes love exists, but alignment doesn’t. Sometimes understanding someone makes leaving harder, not easier.
But here are some things that every highly self and emotionally aware person needs to understand:
1. Every battle is not yours to fight.
2. Every emotion in the room is not yours to regulate.
3. Every wounded person is not yours to heal.
4. People are responsible for themselves.
5. You cannot change, control, or fix anyone, no matter how clearly you understand them.
6. Understanding someone does not obligate you to tolerate behaviour that hurts you.
7. Awareness will often bring tough choices, but you are not responsible for cleaning up other people’s emotional messes simply because you can see them.
8. You are allowed to step back, to not analyse everything, to lose patience once in a while and not respond perfectly.
Most importantly, you are allowed to be human. Really, give yourself a break.
Emotional intelligence is not about endlessly understanding others. It is about knowing when to include yourself in that compassion. It’s recognising that empathy without boundaries becomes self-abandonment. You need to learn that awareness is a tool, not a life sentence.
The goal was never to become hyper-aware and emotionally responsible for everyone around you. The goal is balance (i.e. to see clearly without carrying everything). It is to understand without absorbing everything and to care without losing yourself.
Yes, being highly self-aware can feel lonely at times. Not because something is wrong with you, but because growth often separates you from unconscious ways of relating before it connects you to healthier ones.
So if awareness feels heavy sometimes, remember this: you were never meant to carry the world just because you can understand it, and sometimes the most emotionally intelligent thing you can do is rest your mind, soften your vigilance, and simply exist without analysing, fixing, or holding everything together.
You don’t always have to be the aware one.
You just have to be yourself.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~ Rumi
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