165. Self Conscious? Try Self CONSCIOUSNESS Instead

Why does being self-conscious often leave us feeling anxious, while self-consciousness can become one of our greatest strengths?

In this episode, Dr. Amy Bakos explores the profound difference between these two experiences. Self-consciousness often begins in adolescence, when we become acutely aware of how others see us. While this developmental stage helps us learn social norms and belonging, many women become stuck in coping strategies shaped by criticism, bullying, trauma, sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism, and other forms of marginalization.

What if there were another way?

Drawing from psychology, philosophy, developmental science, and art therapy, Dr. Amy introduces self-consciousness as a deeper form of self-awareness—one that helps us reconnect with our values, respond rather than react, and create lives rooted in authenticity rather than fear.

You'll also learn a simple art-viewing practice that strengthens self-reflection, emotional awareness, and peace of mind. Whether you visit a museum, journal about a favorite artwork, or simply pause to notice your own thoughts, this episode offers practical ways to cultivate a richer relationship with yourself.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The difference between being self-conscious and developing self-consciousness
• Why adolescence is such a vulnerable period for identity development
• How trauma and social pressures can leave us emotionally "stuck"
• What philosophy and psychology teach us about the nature of the self
• How self-awareness increases emotional flexibility and resilience
• Why imagination and empathy deepen self-consciousness
• An art-based exercise for strengthening reflection and self-understanding
• How greater self-consciousness can lead to more creativity, patience, and peace of mind

Reflection Practice

The next time you encounter a work of art, pause and ask yourself:

• What do I notice objectively?
• What thoughts or feelings arise in me?
• What is it like to be the person observing this artwork right now?
• What does my response reveal about my values, experiences, or current state of mind?

Journal your reflections, then read them aloud. Hearing your own words creates another layer of self-awareness and can deepen your insight.

If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Connect with me on Instagram and let me know what you discover as you practice becoming more consciously aware of yourself.

Thank you for listening to the Modern Creative Woman Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and consider supporting the show to help keep it ad-free.

Transcript

What's the difference between self-conscious and self-consciousness? Well, one can make us feel like we're back in seventh grade, having to do a big presentation in front of a class full of bullies. But self-consciousness, on the other hand, gives us a sense of self-awareness. It helps us tap into our self as the context of our lives. And the difference is completely opposite. When you are engaged in self-consciousness. You can find yourself living your life to the fullest in your most creative way. So let's get into this. Let's get this started. 

Welcome into the Modern Creative Woman podcast. I'm Dr. Amy Backos. I am a licensed psychologist, registered and board certified art therapist, and have been doing this for over three decades and bringing you the art and the science of creativity. Today, we are having an in-depth conversation about the difference between that thing we all hate being self-conscious and moving into a state of self-consciousness, where we are aware of ourselves in a holistic sense, and we're able to tap into our values, what's most important in that moment. And it truly comes from making contact with the present moment and enhancing our self-consciousness. Let's start with self-consciousness. And it begins usually in adolescence. There are plenty of examples that I have of my own embarrassment before I was a teenager. However, the developmental stage of adolescence is like one big embarrassing moment for most people, and there's nothing terribly wrong with this in that developmentally, we're primed to compare ourselves to others so that we can start to fit in to the wider world, not just fit into our family. And that kind of consciousness is useful. It lets us start to understand the norms of the world, not just that of our immediate family. It also gives us a sense of safety. Right. We can fit in. To a certain extent and not be rejected or shunned. If we're conscious about what we're doing now, it certainly doesn't work. But developmentally, that's why that phase exists. It's the feeling of being on stage. And if you've spent time with any teenagers lately, you can notice when they're feeling on stage they might feel awkward or concerned with their appearance or what they've said. They might freeze up. They might talk too much. All of these things are teenagers just trying to cope. When you think about self-consciousness and its kind of evil. Twin sister self-conscious. We can start to feel developmentally stuck. Now, many of us get so much embarrassment during adolescence that we end up getting a fixation there. That's the Freudian term for like a developmental stuckness, where we experience something so difficult that it makes it hard to move on. And we still continue to grow and evolve and develop new skills, but we can get stuck in a certain area. And I think many people find themselves stuck in that adolescent era. And for a lot of women, the the research is abundantly clear why we might get stuck, that we are being judged in an extremely critical way during adolescence. And for many people, the the way they get stuck. Happens because of external events harassment, assault, being shamed. Being told we're not good enough or being deliberately targeted by bullies. And so these are not internal experiences. These are external experiences that we're monitoring, shifting regarding, trying to navigate and then add in sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism, sizes, um, all of these things from society. Again, it's not an internal experience. We are being told from the outside that we are insufficient, not enough, and simply cannot measure up. Coping to these is really an overdetermined process. And by overdetermined I mean there are many possible ways to respond to this singular experience of existing in a society that judges you. So the stuck part can look like coping in the beginning, but then we don't evolve past our initial coping strategies. For many women who experience trauma, it turns into I'll do it myself. I can only rely on me. For some people, it is shutting down anything related to their body and that can result in eating problems, weight fluctuations it can resolve in. Not taking care of your body. In other ways, it could be hiding who you are, not dressing the way you want to dress for safety reasons. For other people, it involves getting more aggressive and more assertive. It can be all kinds of reactions in between these two extremes, from shutting down to getting angry and speaking up. The research shows that for girls moving into adolescence, they take a step back or even crawl into a shell. Girls that were once vibrant and engaged at school with curiosity and questions and a zest for learning or working on group projects or being social, are shutting down around adolescence. This, coupled with the pressures of the external world, creates a storm of struggle for many, most all of us during that age. And what often happens is I see people using their coping strategies to just survive junior high and high school, to continue out into the world with these same coping strategies. And women really need an update when we find that these skills aren't serving us anymore. So as we change and age, as our circumstances change, it's necessary for us to have new ways of understanding ourselves and having self-consciousness shifting from that awkward, embarrassed, scared adolescent into the self-conscious woman with full realm of self-consciousness at her fingertips requires first understanding what I mean by self-consciousness, and then realizing why it's so incredibly important. And the philosophy of the self is a lot of like, conceptual layers. There's so many different ideas about what constitutes the self, and it ranges in philosophy, religion, psychology, and there's a variety of different theories about it. So in philosophy, the self really is your own being. It's your knowledge and your values. And then it's an interplay between these attributes. So your own being, your knowledge and your values. And you might think of I am that sentence of I am and you can fill in the blanks, I am. What is it, do you say, a role that you play a mother, a parent, a um daughter, a worker, a neighbor, or do you say a feeling? I am sad, I am angry, I am frustrated, I am joyful, I am all the possibilities. Do you, conversely, shift into the opportunity for self-consciousness, as in I am period, I am present. I am self-aware. I am moving towards my values. I am the person who has survived all of her days. So you can see the difference there. When you consider I am as a role or a feeling, or what you're doing versus the I am, that is your consciousness. You can think of consciousness in a couple of different ways. One is just having sentience. So being a sentient creature means, as humans were capable of sensing and responding to our own world. And being conscious in this way can have a whole bunch of layers to it. It doesn't mean that we're full with self-consciousness. It just means we understand that we are here and present. You can go a little deeper and think about being in a state of wakefulness. And in biology it's. Being aware, but it's exercising the capacity, not just having the ability to do so, to think or be conscious, but to take action on it. From there, it moves into something much more like the self-consciousness that we talk into psychology. And it's really defining consciousness as those who are not just aware, but aware that they are aware. Sounds a little bit like a play within a play, but if you think of self-consciousness, you're a thinking being. You're sentient, you have wakefulness in that. You see, you can do something, and self-consciousness means that you're aware of these things. You're aware that you're aware, and it's explicit. Conceptual self-awareness requires a bit of thinking, and it requires us to explore and understand ourselves naturally. Making art is an incredible way to do this. Silence. Journaling. Walking. Being able to be aware that you are aware. There's also subjective states of consciousness, and that's really the notion of consciousness in different conscious states. So you might be sleeping. You might be sleeping while dreaming. You might be conscious, but just moving automatically. You might be conscious in a state of flow. You might be conscious in a state of heightened emotional activity or heightened thinking activity, or you might have the kind of experience that comes from wonder and or or religious experience where that consciousness feels transcendent. It bypasses your normal, ordinary human experience into these higher levels of consciousness. There is a philosophical kind of question that I'll present to you here, and it comes from Nagel in 1974. And the question is, what is it like? So the what is it like criterion is really trying to capture this more subjective notion of being conscious that we can imagine other people, other animals have a consciousness as well, and we can imagine what it is like for them. So it goes beyond just being conscious and awake. It goes beyond being aware that you're conscious. And this moves into consciousness that I think is about empathy. It's about imagination. It's about not getting stuck in all thoughts and creating options for yourself. As you imagine, another person's perspective doesn't mean you have to adopt it, but you can imagine what their experience is like. Nagel had an idea around, um, what is something like? And he gave an example of a bat. And so bats are conscious because there's something that is like consciousness for a bat to experience the world. So echolocation, they experience the world in a certain way. And even though we don't have that capacity that a bat does to navigate the world using that set of. Skills and that kind of information to move around. We don't have to empathetically understand that mode of consciousness, because we are unable to really get inside a bat's head and understand it. However, we can imagine something from the bat's point of view because we've learned about echolocation in science class, or we've read a book about bats. The idea that we can have an imagination into another person's subjective experience, or in other animals, subjective experience, is a huge step forward in our self-consciousness. It allows us not to project things onto other people. It's not a defense mechanism. It is, however, a way of creating understanding through what is it like? So if you come across someone who is espousing hateful rhetoric, you can start to imagine what is it like for them? What values are they coming from? What is it like? How is it similar to something that I could understand? And it gives you peace of mind. It gives you a sense of understanding the world. And we have to use caution, like I said, that we're not projecting onto them, but it allows us to no longer dismiss what we don't understand. It challenges us. It increases our empathy, and it gives us so much peace of mind when we can start to imagine other people are coming from their own perspective. And perhaps an insult is nothing to do with us. Or perhaps what they're saying has nothing to do with us, because we can imagine it just makes our life easier when we're able to use that kind of creativity. I'd like to share a little bit more about self-consciousness, and this is a quote from SCP, self-consciousness. And it's asking you some of these questions like the eye, the me, the my human beings are conscious not only of the world around them, but also of themselves, their activities, their bodies, and their mental lives. So it's really talking about this self-consciousness or being self-aware, and it's being aware of yourself. But a self-conscious person is not just aware of something that happens to themselves. It might be like if you look at a photo of yourself and you don't recognize it as yourself, that doesn't happen to us. We look at a photo of ourselves and we realize it's us. We're consciously aware of the self. So a self conscious person is aware of themselves as themselves. And we're also aware of others. So how can art help with understanding yourself as a conscious, self-reflective, aware human being who's able to use your sentient or thinking abilities to be awake? That you can do things with your mind, and to also have this self-awareness that you understand is different from other people's, and to be self-reflexive, to have a look at yourself. In cultural humility, we are describing it as a self-reflective critique. And critique does not mean you're criticizing and insulting. What it means is you're taking an honest step back. You step back and you have a look. The critique is setting things out and examining them. So it's different than critical. It in like casual sense. So there's all kinds of critical theories which are how we understand areas in science a critical theory about how something develops. So you can start to create your own critical theory of your consciousness. If all this sounds a little obtuse or esoteric, maybe it is. So let's break it down into something very tangible. Having a look at art gives you the opportunity to observe the art and then have a self-reflective critique of the self viewing the art. So the first part would be to closely examine the picture in front of you. You can find one on the internet. You can find a piece of art in a museum, which I think is a better experience, where you have more space to look at it. And it's not digital. It's seeing what the art is. Oh, there's a picture of a street and some buildings and some trees and some street lights. There's steps. Then noticing that you are the conscious person observing a piece of artwork and that would look like, oh, I'm here now observing this artwork. What do I notice about my reaction? What thoughts are coming to mind? What feelings are coming to mind? What is it like for me as the observer? I'm the concluding piece in this art experience. The painter painted it. The museum purchased it. Someone hung it on the wall. When art is done, then someone sees it. So it's the concluding. Piece of the lifespan of art that someone sees it. Here I am at the end of this process. Someone created this art and I'm at the end of the process observing it. What does that mean to me? What information can I glean about myself by looking at the artwork? I would love if you head off to an art museum and there's no wrong way to do this. You do not need to print out my list of questions. It is simply going and experiencing a piece of art or the object itself, the content, the brushstroke, the sculpture, the shape, the technique, the genre, whatever it is, that's the objective, diffused piece of information. And then what is it like for you as a person to be observing it? All you have to do is say, I am here now observing a piece of artwork and see what shows up for you. The idea of self-consciousness requires attention. If you journal about your experience looking at the art and then read it to yourself out loud, you'll have a full, well-rounded, self-reflective experience of looking at artwork. Yesterday I did some writing, and then I read it out loud to myself, and it was just personal writing, journaling for my own insight, and it was so incredibly helpful. It really enhanced the self-reflective piece to hear it, to say it the words out of my mouth and to hear it with my own ears. So if you journal about a piece of art when you get home or take your journal to the museum, you'll have the opportunity to write your mental thoughts, your sentient experience, down, and then later read it out loud to yourself, and you'll have another layer of the self-consciousness that will be an investment in your future self. So the rationale for all of this is so you have more peace of mind, the idea that your critical, self-reflective thought can give you peace of mind. It can give you patience when you're dealing with your kids or traffic. It can give you understanding of what triggers you and recognize in many circumstances that you're the cause of your feelings. Not many circumstances that we cause our feelings by the thoughts we think, what we attend to, how we interpret things. And being self-conscious gives you so much more control over your emotions and the urge to act upon them. So let me know what you think about self-consciousness as it goes into these deeper and deeper layers of understanding yourself, using the art process to build yourself up from a perspective of wellness, mental health, emotional health, problem solving, and peace of mind. We all need more self-consciousness. 

Drop me a message in the show notes, or come find me over on Instagram @DrAmyBackos and I would be delighted to hear from you. Remember to subscribe on Apple and Spotify or over at YouTube so that you never miss an episode of the Modern Creative Woman podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much to the woman who are sponsoring the show. 3 or $5 a month helps offset the cost, and it's a huge help to keep us ad free. So now that you know all of this about self-consciousness, self-reflective critical analysis, what will you create? Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode.