How To Know When You Aren't Willing To Look At Yourself.

Refusing to examine your own behaviours, thoughts and beliefs is part of the human condition. It often appears as a deflective default reflex to avoid blame, making every problem about the other person. This piece is here to help you recognise that pattern, explain why it matters and offer practical steps towards honest self-reflection without shame, or referring to the process of doing so as, “bullshit or rubbish'.

We are designed to shield ourselves from perceived and potential threats, so avoiding personal reflection becomes a way of protecting the fragility of one’s self image and life narrative by redirecting focus outward instead of asking what you contributed to a situation. Over time this becomes an automatic autonomic nervous system response. Each time you receive feedback you may perceive it as an attack, which becomes a reason to be unwilling to participate in resolving the roots of recurring conflicts. You dismiss them with rash explanations rather than asking why you said or did what you did, and you keep the focus on how others handled, expressed or behaved. This keeps others always being the 'wrongous' and lets you remain in the 'righteous.'

There are clear signs you might be avoiding self-reflection:

• Closed boundaries: You are very closed down and overly authoritative with boundaries that do not allow for dialogue, awareness, insights, learning or listening around difficult matters or conflict.

  
  

• Default to blame: You are highly reactive and default to blaming others, offering someone else’s flaw as the first explanation for conflict rather than considering your role.

  
  

• Defensiveness to feedback: Neutral or gentle feedback, even authenticity, can feel like an assault and trigger defensiveness, anger or withdrawal.

  
  

• Rationalising behaviour: You rationalise your behaviour instead of exploring it, using pre-empted made explanations that stop you from asking why you acted as you did.

  
  

• One way dialogue: You only offer a one-way dialogue where only your views have space to be aired, not others’.

  
  

• Recurring problems: You experience the same relationship problems repeatedly because underlying beliefs and actions are not examined; you may perform moral superiority by analysing everyone else’s motives while avoiding scrutiny of your own.

Avoiding self-reflection can come with a personal payoff because you never have to examine anything with the energy or focus that matters. It keeps you where you have been all this time, in the same life position and with all that comes with it. It creates blind spots in relationships and reduces the overall quality of your life.

When you refuse to look at your part you miss opportunities to change habits that cause pain and you hand control of your wellbeing to other people and circumstances. Genuine change comes from being willing to see how you contribute to outcomes and to hold that knowledge with compassion and self-acceptance for what has been. It is not easy, of course, however being open and willing to self-reflect is a way of opening yourself up more to what life has to offer.

Without an internal counterbalance, the capacity to hold an alternative view alongside your own, your psyche treats your perspective as absolute and excludes other possibilities. Counterbalance allows you to hold two views at once, your current interpretation and a possible alternative. That simultaneous holding is what allows you to resolve how you understand yourself and other people.

Looking inward is not about taking all the blame and seeing everything as broken and faulty, it is about bringing the observing witness, yourself, to the table and reclaiming your choice to allow other views. Bring counterbalance and use small exercises such as pausing, noticing and seeking counter evidence to shift from certainty to curiosity.

No one can make you look at yourself and you may see it as a waste of time to navel gaze over your life, however over time those small shifts add up to clearer relationships, less reactivity and better quality of life.

Aliki Nektaria

The Path Clearer