Can A Negative Self-Image Reduce Awareness?

After The Three Levels of Leadership came out in 2011, readers followed up with questions on leadership, leadership psychology and self-mastery – all of them interesting.  So interesting, in fact, that I’m releasing my answers here as they supplement the “Three Levels” material and others may find them useful.  Here’s the sixth in the series.   I’ll post the others over the coming months…

Q6. If you have a negative self-image arising from limiting beliefs and negative feelings about yourself stemming from the beliefs, can that reduce your self-awareness?

“In one sense yes, but in another sense, no…

Numbing Yourself Against Feelings

I say ‘yes’ because if you decide to defend yourself against the limiting beliefs that make up your negative self-image and their painful feelings (above all, shame) by numbing yourself against them, you can indeed reduce what you are consciously aware of.  Ironically, such decisions are usually unconscious.

Note what I just said: ‘you can reduce what you are consciously aware of.’  In other words, you stop feeling your feelings – or, at least, you stop feeling them as much as you did – in what I call your conscious mind.  This is the field of conscious awareness.

Using the model of the psyche I outlined in The Three Levels of Leadership, the conscious mind resides in the lowest of the four levels of your mind: physical mind.  This field of conscious awareness holds whatever you’re consciously aware of right now – the sounds around you, the meaning of the words you’re reading here, any sensations in your body and so on.

By numbing yourself, you either don’t notice your negative feelings or you make them bearable.  It’s not something everyone does, but it is a coping mechanism I’ve seen in some leaders, business owners and senior executives.

The Side Effects

Unfortunately there’s often a side effect: you not only lose contact with your negative feelings, you can also lose contact with your values and what’s happening emotionally inside you and indeed around you.

Why does that matter?

Well, your values are the ideas that motivate you, so you can lose energy and momentum.  And your emotions are a source of information about what’s happening to you and other people.  So you’ll find it harder to feel empathy with others, thus it will be more difficult to connect with them and influence them.  And if you lose contact with your values and emotions, your emotional intelligence reduces.  Remember, conscious self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence.

All this explains why I said ‘yes’ in answering your question, but it’s equally correct to say ‘no’.

Awareness & Self

That’s because your power of awareness is something you can’t turn off.  Why do I say that?  Because as a Self you don’t just have the power of awareness; you are a centre of pure awareness (plus of course pure imagination and pure will).

So even if you push your painful feelings out of the conscious field of awareness into the unconscious zone of your mind, they will still be there and – here’s the crucial bit – they’ll still exert an effect.

For example, they may cause you to become irritable or angry.  Or they may cause you to avoid certain behaviours, like assertiveness – behaviours that as a leader you can’t avoid for long.  Or they may cause a build-up of unhelpful chemicals in your body, like cortisol, leading to disease or illness.  But because it’s all happening unconsciously you won’t know (in your conscious mind) what’s taking place and why.  That’s when you become a victim of your own defence mechanism.

It’s Not Straightforward

So the answer to your question isn’t straightforward.

A negative self-image can reduce what you are consciously aware of if you happen to be using a psychological defence of numbing yourself against your feelings.

But you can never switch off your most basic human faculty: the power of pure awareness.  All that happens is that the feelings go underground into the unconscious part of your mind.  But you, the Self, respond to the feelings at a deeper level (meaning that unconsciously you are still aware of them). Thus, they continue exerting an effect on your mental state and behaviour… until you expose and dissolve the limiting beliefs behind the feelings.”

 

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.