Having rejection sensitive dyphoria as a result to ADHD made me hypersensitive to what people thought of me throughout my entire childhood, so I became hyperself aware at like 7 years old as with my behaviour being policed I had to constantly think about what I was doing wrong

Being so self-aware that you can't enjoy the moment, that you can't even enjoy the conversation or interact properly speaks volumes!!! Never alone! cheers

This is a fascinating topic, thankyou Dana! Being "Too self aware" definitely sums up my anxiety pretty well. I'm constantly preoccupied with "How do I come across to other people" to such an extreme that I'm overthinking every single little last thing I do and say. I find myself so cringe and deal with self hatred too. I've had my walk commented on by 3 separate people in my life too (as I never forget an insult/negative observation). I do find it so hard to stop myself once I start on the topic of a special interest! I've gotta remember to actually take a breath, listen to the other person, reply specifically to what they said and not just say the next thing in my head that's dying to get out (which is getting in the way of me listening to the other person 🤦🏻‍♀️) and not monopolise a conversation. I do manage to control myself lmao, but I think that's possibly down to this hyper self awareness.

When I was young I had very little self-awareness. This meant I sometimes did very stupid or potentially embarrassing things but due to my lack of self-awareness I generally didn't feel embarrassed. While lack of self-awareness is damaging in such ways it also meant I was much more confident and had higher self-esteem. My self-awareness has developed as an adult and made me less prone to some of the mistakes of the past but at the cost of a crippling lack of confidence and poor self-esteem. I think we can swing from almost total lack of self-awareness to almost total self-consciousness and both are unhealthy in different ways but hyper-self-awareness is probably worst for mental well-being..

My own experience is that, far from lacking self-awareness, I am constantly, consciously self-aware. It is an essential part of successfully passing or masking: the constant, conscious monitoring of one's whole presentation, and how it is going over. My performance may not always be perfect, but it is not for want of self-awareness. Indeed I spend much of my time either preparing for my performance: planning and rehearsing conversations in my head, perhaps "gaming" a few different approaches, thinking about delivery, facial expression, gestures etc., or replaying interactions afterward: how did that go, what clues do I have from the other participants, areas for improvement, mistakes. And, in the moment itself, I am actively monitoring myself, acutely conscious of facial expression, eye contact, gesture, tone etc, and searching the other person for cues. I am not always hitting the mark, and it is sometimes hard to keep it going and to keep up in real time, but it is not for want of self-awareness. I usually am painfully aware for example of when I've missed the mark - it just might not be immediately.

Omg this is so true, I tried researching this specific subject bc of its impact on my mental health but there was just nothing out there. Only papers on us having "no self awareness" and I was so dumbfounded🫠

I'll restrain myself from a wall of text. It really took me decades (literally) to catch on that the way people reacted to me, was me. I've grown so sensitized (or self aware) that I avoid human contact. If it's someone I like or is friendly, I forget myself and start talking. I don't realize I've crossed the line until they're scurrying away from me. Then I back up mentally and cringe. Did it again. Aaaaagh. Oh!, I walk like a marionette, so I've been told. Thanks Dana. Edit: specifically, I was told like I walked like someone from "Fireball XL5" a show from the early '60's. It's on KZfaq if you're curious.

Great video again Dana. Such an interesting topic. self perception, self esteem and self awareness indeed are loaded and could be talked about for years. lol. often they are more complicated than we'd like and they overlap in weird ways. Indeed, therapists do seem to respect folks for self awareness, but when is hyper self awareness problematic? how does self esteem interact with self perception. Does our self perception become skewed from an age we were too young to do anything about it?! oof. lots to think about here. thanks for another great discussion starter!

Thank you so much for saying this. I've been struggling with being way too self-aware for a long time now, but every time I tried looking into it every single aritcle and specialist said autistic people lack self-awareness. And it kinda freaked me out because I haven’t gotten a diagnosis yet and I stated wondering if all of it was in my head. When I first brought it up to my therapist, the very first thing she told me was that I was "too self-aware for it to be autism" before she even listened to everything I had to say. But by the end of the session she was setting me up for a screening lol

My self awareness has always been excruciatingly high too

I was just asking myself. self am i too self aware of my autism and behavior. well that led me to you. Its good to know I'm not alone. I now believe that being 53 that ADHD has snuck up on me to. I never knew what i had growing up Autism wasn't anything i heard of. I t wasn't until my son got diagnosed with Autism that realized what i have. I really do love and have excepted that part of me its just the cogitation and poor memory And A.D.D that i hate. I always wondered why i was always so supper self aware now i know. You are first person I've ever heard that describe how i am. Thanks for the video.

You might like the work of Damien Milton who has a theory about a double empathy problem I forget the exact name but as I understand his theory is that neurotypical people can’t empathise with us and we struggle to empathise with them but we are perfectly capable of empathising with other autistic people and Nt’s are empathising with each other but there’s a barrier we don’t cross easily. I am aware that this is not directly related to the self awareness issue but it’s perhaps why you hated all the papers that you read probably by NT researchers. Dr. Milton is however one of the increasing number of autistic researchers who are trying to treat autistic people like humans not lab rats. Thank you for the video, I’m sorry you had to do it twice.

I think it'd be more accurate to say you have blind spots in your self awareness and you become overly aware to compensate. It's like being blind, you never know when you're about to hit a wall so you're always trying to assess so you can catch yourself before slamming your face into something for the thousandth time

I think a lot of autistic people are overly self-aware because they receive a lot of criticism, and then try to "act normal." I gave up on acting normal when I was about 13 and I'm now 75. I make a lot of mistakes, lose friends, lose work, but I'm basically a confident, non-neurotic person. In high school, I had contempt for "conformism," which I saw in the desperate attempts of almost everybody to copy everybody else. I was undiagnosed, but being able to blame everyone else rather than myself was actually pretty healthy. So I leaned into my weirdness, became a class clown, and just didn't worry about it all that much. Anything and everything was better than the total isolation of my younger years. I do realize when I am oversharing and boring people, but it's like a car with poor brakes going downhill. Sometimes I can stop it, sometimes I can't. But if they think I'm weird and talk too much, SO WHAT? There are repercussions, but in the big picture it's not that important.

I think it's a bit too black and white to make the argument that those with higher support needs lack self awareness. I know plenty who have a high level of self awareness. It can actually be incredibly damaging when you are self aware, but also powerless to do anything to be able to advocate for yourself or change your situation. We need to presume understanding and competence in all of us, regardless of how well we're able to manage on our own.

self awareness probably means to know why you messed a conversation up too. not only your knowledge you did it.

my self awareness is a grey area but I feel now I have enough experience to notice more but with it going off experience it doesn't necessarily play out the same way?