Why Self-Awareness Does Not Automatically Lead To Change

One of the assumptions sitting quietly underneath much of modern psychotherapy is the belief that if people can somehow develop enough awareness about themselves, change will eventually follow.It is a seductive idea and, on the face of it, seems perfectly reasonable. If I understand why I keep repeating destructive patterns in relationships, if I can recognise the childhood experiences which shaped my insecurities or if I finally become conscious of the unconscious motivations driving much of my behaviour, then surely I am now in a position to do things differently. Except life rarely works that way.

To be fair, psychotherapy did not invent this idea accidentally. Freud built much of his entire model around the assumption that unconscious material loses some of its power once dragged into conscious awareness. Jung went down a similar road. Psychodynamic approaches have always placed enormous emphasis on insight and self-understanding, while person-centred therapy, which continues to dominate many therapy training programmes, quietly rests on a similar belief that if people are given the right conditions for honest self-exploration they will naturally begin moving towards healthier ways of being.

The problem, at least as I see it, is that this entire assumption has probably been granted far too much importance and despite the emergence of behavioural approaches over the years (most notably Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) the ´awareness equals change´ idea remains strong.

In my view awareness, valuable as it undoubtedly is, does not automatically produce behavioural change. I´ve known many people over the years who understand themselves perfectly well and yet continue making poor life choices or continue to engage in self-destructive behaviours - see below examples.

The woman who understands that her emotionally distant father is the reason she chooses emotionally unavailable men but somehow finds herself repeating exactly the same pattern yet again.The active alcoholic who understands in painful detail the roots of his addiction and can probably explain his childhood trauma better than his therapist.

The chronically anxious person who fully understands the origins of their fear and yet continues organising their entire life around avoidance. Insight, by itself, has changed absolutely nothing.

In fact, I actually think awareness can sometimes become something of a poisoned chalice. Because before awareness breaks through, people still have access to denial, rationalisation, and self-deception. Human beings are extraordinarily talented at constructing narratives that protect us from uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We minimise, justify, blame circumstances, blame other people and convince ourselves that patterns we have been repeating for years are somehow happening to us rather than being quietly sustained by us. The classic example of this is the person who cries out to their therapist -´Why do I keep attracting the wrong kind of people´ - as if it is just bad luck or entirely circumstantial and nothing to do with them. But once awareness arrives, that luxury begins to disappear and this can make people even more miserable. Now they can see exactly what thy are doing, they know why they keep returning to destructive relationships or engaging in self-destructive behaviours

Real change can only come about when the awareness developed in therapy is eventually translated into action. Meaningful change requires people to begin doing things differently and this is rarely straightforward because growth often demands behaviour which feels deeply unnatural at first. It may involve acting counter-intuitively, tolerating discomfort instead of immediately escaping from it and gradually learning to challenge attitudes, beliefs and patterns of behaviour which may have served some purpose years ago but are no longer serving us well. This is where therapy can be enormously valuable, not simply as a place for reflection and insight, but as a relationship in which people feel sufficiently supported to take risks, experiment with new ways of behaving and confront parts of themselves they may have spent years avoiding.