Awareness is a powerful tool and can be crucial to our health, happiness, sense of self worth, our emotions and our behaviour. Much of our behaviour stems from unconscious beliefs or patterns. As long as our behaviours remain unconscious, we feel we don’t have a choice.
Self-awareness helps us cut through our patterns of behaviour leading to a better understanding which is the first step in acceptance and choice to make changes.
Awareness comes in many forms and levels it is a gradual process that continues to develop.
Counselling can offer a safe space to explore your thoughts, feelings and behaviours that may create confusion for you and
through this exploration your self-awareness can build authenticity within you.
Through a practice of cultivating awareness an ongoing experiential process develops and qualities such as compassion and openness are cultivated.
These experiences lead to being aware in the present moment and consequently to deepen your connection to yourself and the therapeutic relationship.
Developing a non judgmental bare attention, in terms of not labelling good and bad, appropriate or not, and the ability to sustain this develops.
The constant judging of the self wears off and the more it wears off the more open one becomes to include whatever presents itself in the moment.
In my experience self awareness leads to self confidence by building on knowledge of who you are, a sense of feeling more integrated and comfortable in your own skin.
Through developing awareness we can ease our suffering and increase human connection.
Tania Turner Integrative Counsellor MBACP 