Introspection or Rumination: When Self-Awareness Stops Helping

Travis Heath: Hello everyone, welcome back to the Therapist Confidential Podcast. I’m your host, Travis Heath, and today we’re going solo again. Just you and me. And something that has been on my mind. Is that I wonder if unwittingly, sometimes therapy is making us more self absorbed. Like has psychotherapy in its efforts to help people understand themselves, maybe has it sometimes let’s say contributed to a culture in which people become increasingly preoccupied with themselves? Now, my goal in this conversation isn’t to argue that therapy makes people selfish.

I mean that’s that would be an overly simplistic argument. It’s to explore something that I think anyways is a more interesting possibility, and that is what if some of the practices that are intended to help us understand ourselves can, when taken too far, actually maybe narrow our relationships with other people in the world. So I hope that this conversation becomes a little more complex than just, you know, therapy makes people selfish. ’cause I don’t actually believe that. I do believe though that we live in a culture that places enormous value on understanding ourselves, especially at this particular moment in time.

especially in in more individualist societies. I mean, we all know the language, right? We we are supposed to know our triggers, identify our attachment styles, understand our trauma, recognize our toxic traits or patterns. We’re supposed to establish boundaries. And we’re supposed to have this deep awareness of our own emotions and emotional experiences. That’s just some, right? And you know, as I as I was just talking through that and listening to myself, I’m thinking. A lot of that language when I entered the field 25-ish years ago at this point, that language wasn’t even around or it certainly wasn’t used at at the level that it is today.

Now, I want to say that much of what I just went through has some value. But I wonder if there’s a question we, you know, often don’t ask enough. And that question might be at what point does all this attention to ourselves stop being helpful? So psychotherapy has helped people and often helps people find language for experiences that maybe previously felt confusing, shameful, or that they could not articulate. I actually think that’s amazing. think that’s a remarkable contribution that psychotherapy’s made.

But simultaneously, we’ve also helped create a cultural expectation that nearly every uncomfortable experience. requires introspection. We must go inside and we must figure it out. An argument is an opportunity for us to explore our triggers. A disappointment, we must process everything around it, right? a difficult relationship becomes an exercise in like identifying toxic patterns. And I wonder if we might ask whether the capacity to understand ourselves has become confused with the capacity to live well. another way of saying that is if we focus so much attention on understanding ourselves, what does that do to our ability to live long?

So I I’ll give you some examples, and of course, you know, I I see these in therapy, but I see them in life and my own life and the life of people around me. So imagine for a moment that someone has a difficult interaction with a friend, some sort of conflict, whatever. You know, rather than wondering what might be happening in the friend’s life, we often immediately begin examining our own emotional response. You know, we start asking questions like, was there a boundary that was crossed or violated?

was our attachment system activated? Did this interaction trigger an old wound? none of these questions are inherently wrong or bad. But notice what’s missing in that. What’s missing in that is curiosity about the other person. So it makes me wonder, is it possible to become so sophisticated at understanding our own experiences that we actually become less curious about experiences that go off beyond our own? I think one of the perhaps unintended consequences of how to say this, like pop culture therapy, popular therapy culture, may be that we’ve learned to interpret more and more of life through the lens of our own psychological experience.

Now, actually there’s a word that gets tossed around a lot with that, which is narcissism, which is so interesting. I could do a whole podcast on this. Like twenty-five some years ago, well, probably more like twenty years ago when I started teaching, I rarely heard a student use the word narcissism. And then as a clinician, I rarely heard someone I was in conversation with in the therapy room use the word narcissism. Now that word’s used everywhere, all the time. It’s like any breakup, well, the other person’s a narcissist, right?

Now, hey, there could be something interesting here, which is that the culture itself may be trending more towards what would be identified as narcissistic behaviors. So sure. there may be some truth to that, but what I’m really interested in is the language that’s used there, right? Like as soon as I talk about looking at things through the lens of our own psychological experience, people often say, Oh, You’re being narcissistic. And I actually think it’s more subtle than that. I might classify it as like a habitual orientation towards ourselves, which to me isn’t exactly the same thing as narcissism.

I think a habitual orientation towards ourselves is a is a little more nuance. It’s a a little more subtlety to it. And what do I mean by that? Well We increasingly evaluate like our relationships in the world according to how they make us feel, whether they meet our needs, whether they support our growth. Now, of course, these are legitimate considerations, right? I mean, if none of those sort of major wants or needs are being met, well, sure, right? The relationship might not be worthwhile.

So they’re legitimate concerns. But here’s the thing: relationships also involve generosity, uh, sacrifice, um, inconvenience. And sometimes they require us to remain present when our own needs aren’t at the center of it. So if every relationship gets primarily uh evaluated according to its contribution to our well-being, we risk treating other people essentially as instruments for our own personal development. Now, I’m not saying people are doing this intentionally, but I am worried that this is sort of the byproduct of this. sometimes excessive focus on self.

So I’ll try to give you another example of what I mean here. So let’s say that we have a friend that’s going through a difficult period and they feel less emotionally available to us. there’s some more psychologized language for you, emotionally available for us. Now, one response might be to ask whether that friendship is still meeting our needs. Another possible response, these aren’t the only two responses, of course, but another possible response is to wonder what it would mean to show up for someone who currently has very little to give.

Now the first question isn’t necessarily inappropriate or a question we shouldn’t consider. guess what I’m saying is if it’s the only question we’re asking, perhaps something important has been lost. I wonder if one measure of let’s say psychological maturity to use more of the jargon, one measure of psychological maturity isn’t like how well we protect ourselves from discomfort, but how capable we become of remaining connected to others through that discomfort. Now, look, there are people who have spent perhaps years of their life neglecting their own needs and may genuinely benefit from learning to prioritize themselves, right?

So my concern isn’t self-attention itself. It’s more like what happens when that self-attention becomes the um like organizing principle of every relationship, So I hope. That I’m making that nuance clear. I mean, we have to tend some of that energy towards the self, right? But it if we’re the center of everything in there, that’s what I worry about. And I worry that psychotherapy may be uh unwittingly reinforcing that, putting us at the center. Now, what’s weird is You know, we’ll say things like, Oh, you’re not the center of the universe.

Or sometimes we remind ourselves that we’re not the center of the universe. But it it’s interesting because we are the center of our universes. we just are. We’re located in the center of not the universe, but of our universe. And so it’s not that self-attention is inherently bad. It’s what happens when that becomes the organizing principle of all our relationships. Within all of this, I think we often assume that more insight is better. think there’s a general sort of even if it’s unspoken, support for that idea within therapy culture.

More insight is better. I certainly some insight can be very useful. is there a point of diminishing returns? Reflection, rumination. can look remarkably similar from the outside to insight, if that makes sense. Because both involve examining, you know, thoughts, feelings, experiences, etc. But I think the difference may lie in what that examination makes possible. So as I see it, reflection can open new possibilities, It can help us recognize patterns, reconsider assumptions, and maybe respond differently. And in ways that work out better for us and for our relationships.

Whereas rumination, I think, keeps us circling in the same experiences. And it’s like we’re going in a circle searching for an explanation that will finally help us feel a bit more settled. And I wonder if as therapists, we may unintentionally reinforce the cycle where every new insight becomes like an invitation to search for another layer. Deeper. And then we just sort of keep circling and going deeper and going deeper and going deeper. Right. And then, essentially we could keep going forever, right?

I mean, it’s like slowly drilling into the ground. And every new insight is a layer deeper. And then we go deeper again. And then we go deeper again. And I wonder then, you know, is that reflection that’s opening up new possibilities? Sometimes it starts to not feel that way. It starts to feel more like rumination that helps keep people stuck sometimes. it’s like when someone spends months trying to understand why they struggle with let’s say rejection. This is like a classic thing I think that comes up in therapy.

So they spend months or even years with us. They explore like childhood relationships, attachment patterns, familial relationships and expectations, all these kinds of formative experiences. And what’s interesting is they often develop increasingly sophisticated explanations for these. And they could spend months or years doing this and when an opportunity arises to pursue, let’s what appears to be a potentially meaningful relationship, they still remain hesitant. They’re still like trying to understand themselves, g digging deeper, digging deeper. it’s like, well, when I’m ready, then I’ll pursue it.

And at what point is insight insufficient? I mean, I wonder if maybe sometimes in those situations a more useful therapeutic invitation might be to stop searching for another explanation or more sophisticated jargon and actually begin participating in the life that we’ve been analyzing. I’m not saying that the origins, like understanding the origins of suffering, can’t be deeply meaningful. It can be. Sometimes it can be really helpful. But I do think that understanding something and actually doing something aren’t the same thing.

Those of you that have studied to become therapists, I sense many of you listening to this podcast are therapists or studying to be therapists. You know this through your experience because Like, for example, you can study all the theoretical orientation stuff. Like I I remember doing this in graduate school, master’s, PhD, the whole thing. And I would ace the, you know, the theory tests. And I actually like theory and philosophy, so it was a lot of fun. And then you put me in a room with a client, and I was like, oh gosh, what the hell do I do?

I understood it philosophically and intellectually, but the practice of it was something totally different, And so we can have this insight and we can keep drilling deeper and deeper and deeper and have all this insight. But actually doing something with that, in our lives is totally different. And I wonder then sometimes, could our enthusiasm for insight actually sometimes keep people in therapy longer or too long? I mean, the what’s too long? I mean it’s different for everyone. But it perhaps it’s keeping them in therapy longer.

And it’s not because they aren’t quote unquote progressing, but I wonder sometimes how we’re defining progress, And if progress is like we just keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper, and we keep coming up with more sophisticated psychologized explanations, I wonder how that’s actually serving people in their life. Now I’ve talked about on some previous podcasts, you know, this idea of like self-optimization. And think it’s pretty hard to deny in the current state of the world that psychotherapy is existing within a larger culture that’s pretty obsessed with growth and personal development.

Right? I mean, we’re encouraged to optimize everything sleep, productivity, health, emotional regulation, relationships, mental health, all the things. I mean, hell, even rest can become something we’re supposed to do correctly, right? So then therapy can like inadvertently become another uh arena where people feel obligated to work on themselves. I mean, it’s a lot of times they’re like paying money. This is where I’m supposed to be working on myself. And this language of personal growth can then suggest that there’s always another part of ourself that needs attention.

We begin to approach our lives as like an ongoing improvement project rather than like. actual experiences to participate in or l live through. And then even emotional struggles become evidence that, you know, we haven’t yet done enough work on ourselves. Like if we’re struggling emotionally, it’s like, gosh, what work do I need to do with this? As opposed to like maybe I’m a person who’s struggling emotionally right now, or maybe the context of my life is such that I’m struggling and probably most people would be struggling.

So you know Put this into some context, it’s like somebody experiences, let’s say, an ordinary period of sadness after whatever’s going on in their life. A relationship ends, or they lose a job, or you know, whatever it is. there’s a death of a person or a life cycle, etc. then rather than allowing sadness to be a part of loving and losing someone, what happens? People begin wondering. What they need to heal, what attachment wounds are activated, what this experience is revealing about their unfinished personal growth.

And I’m not saying that none of those questions are are valuable, it’s just it’s a human being being a person, right? That’s going through a certain feeling state. I mean, perhaps if someone’s sad over, like, let’s say a relationship ends, perhaps they’re just heartbroken. And I say just not to minimize it, but I’m just saying maybe it doesn’t require intense retrospection. Maybe it’s just a a normal human experience. Does sadness always have to become a project? And it doesn’t just have to be sadness.

I’m just playing with sadness here. Does anger or anything else, does it always have to become some sort of project? And, you know, as therapists, it makes me wonder have we sometimes contributed to this idea that a psychologically healthy person is someone who is constantly working on themselves? I mean, maybe that’s good for business for us, right? but I wonder about some of the other side effects. And what happens when the work of becoming like a better person becomes so consuming that it actually crowds out the experience of actually being a person.

Now I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I I wanna highlight it a bit more. This psychological lan I mean, uh those of you who know me or even know me through the podcast know that I’m really interested in language. And this kind of psychologized language that I’ve been discussing here, I worry that it gives us sense of certainty about who we are. it’s a sense of certainty, but I don’t think it’s an actual certainty. And sometimes then the stories we develop about ourselves, I worry, become more restrictive than they do liberating.

we all develop explanations or stories for our behavior, right? I think that’s part of being human. We make sense of things through stories and explanations, right? But psychology contributes to that and this sort of pop psychology. You people say I’m avoidantly attached, I’m a people pleaser, I have difficulty trusting people, I I don’t do well with vulnerability, right? These kinds of explanations. Now, look, sometimes these explanations may describe genuine patterns, but where I worry is that they gradually become statements of identity, Because We’re not saying like, hey, sometimes in and Z contexts, I feel like withdrawing, Or sometimes when X, Y, and Z is happening, I feel like I want to please the people around me, Or sometimes in X, Y, and Z contexts, I notice myself feeling a little less trusting.

That’s very different than saying, I’m avoidantly attached, I’m a people pleaser, right? so one is noting like a sense of one’s experience in the world, and the other becomes an identity statement. And then to me, the danger in that is we stop treating these descriptions as like partial understandings, and we begin treating them as definitive truths. and that’s where I think we can really start treading into some perilous waters. So someone begins identifying as a person with an anxious attachment style.

Okay. Initially, maybe this language helps them recognize certain relational patterns. I mean, I still have my quibbles with how attachment styles get categorized, et cetera. But hey, maybe this language can help them recognize certain relational patterns and perhaps that’s useful. But eventually if every single interaction is interpreted through that and it becomes an identity, boy. Then you know, think about the consequences of that. maybe someone doesn’t send a return text right away. And that becomes evidence of attachment anxiety. maybe uh someone feels insecure in a disagreement.

Well, now now this is part of anxious attachment style. So like a moment of uncertainty can become confirmation of a kind of person then that this person has been taught to believe they are. So then a description maybe that initially expanded understanding over time can narrow possibility. So what happens when the language we use to understand ourselves becomes the language that limits uh who we can become? I I hear this sort of language all the time. People will say things like, that’s just my trauma response.

Now, on one hand, that can be an important recognition, right? like having that kind of awareness of, hey, when I’m in the world and certain things happen, I’m noticing a certain set of responses in myself. I don’t know that I I think trauma response is super psychologized language, but okay. There can be some recognition in there that’s important. But it can also in certain circumstances become the end of uh an inquiry rather than the beginning of one, right? That’s just it.

that’s my trauma response. And that’s it, period. As opposed to like, actually trying to understand through someone’s own language or experience about what’s happening for them. Now, I I will say that I think one of therapy’s important contributions has been helping people recognize that they don’t have to tolerate mistreatment, inequity, exploitation, relationships that let’s say undermine their well being on a consistent basis. Like that can be an important outcome of therapy. But I I do think there may be a difference between helping people establish, you know, let let’s say, Healthy boundaries and encouraging them, to organize their relationships primarily around, avoiding things that are uncomfortable.

And I think that distinction is important because meaningful relationships, they inevitably involve frustration, they involve misunderstanding, they involve uh disappointment, they involve conflicting needs at various times. So if we begin to treat discomfort as evidence that something is unhealthy, then you know, we may become less willing to navigate the ordinary difficulties of being close to people. And while I struggle with the word boundaries, I get the concept. I struggle with it ’cause it’s so psychologized, but certainly boundaries can be valuable.

But they also aren’t like the entirety of what makes relationships meaningful. Like in our relationships, if someone says something hurtful, well, it’s understandable that the other person might feel upset, So one possibility that instance is for the person to establish distance. Maybe they frame the relationship as emotionally unsafe. Okay. And and you know, maybe that’s initially they feel some of those things, but if they actually establish distance and say, Hey, this is unsafe, what might that lead to in the relationship?

Another possibility is to have a conversation around it, right? Maybe a difficult conversation. And to explain the hurt, to listen to the other person’s perspective, does something need to be repaired on either side. Again, sometimes distance is necessary, right? And sometimes taking some distance for a minute in a relationship can be really helpful. But also, if because something is uncomfortable means that we’re immediately going to establish this distance and label something as emotionally unsafe, what might we be missing there? another way of saying that is have we become so skilled at identifying when our relationships hurt us that we’re actually then becoming less skilled at figuring out how to work through those with another person.

and this is where sort of what I was talking about more at the beginning, the kind of self-absorbed part, that it’s like, okay, well, I’m only seeing this through my lens, And I’ve been hurt and therefore that’s sort of that. And I think there’s a difference between protecting ourselves from, you know, genuine harm and then, protecting ourselves in conflict or disagreement from some of the vulnerabilities that come with intimacy. So don’t misunderstand, I don’t think this sort of argument I’m making should ever be used to pressure people to like remain in abusive or otherwise like coercive relationships.

But in ordinary relational conflict, what would happen if we lean into these sorts of difficult conversations? Rather than immediately making proclamations about, using super psychologized language about what’s happening. Now I do think there’s a moral dimension to this that I I want to talk about before we wrap up. And I think like much of, let’s say, like contemporary psychological discourse centers on what we need, what we deserve, what supports our well-being, etc. you know, I do think these questions matter, but I also think they’re incomplete.

I think there are some other questions that maybe deserve equal attention. Like some of the ones that feel important to me, uh what do we owe one another? What does it mean to be dependable? When should we uh prioritize another person’s needs? What responsibilities come with, a relationship, family, community, etc. So I wanna advance the idea that a meaningful life isn’t constructed exclusively around personal fulfillment. Like sometimes doing what matters does involve acting in ways that are inconvenient, uncomfortable, or even sometimes emotionally costly.

another way of saying this is not every meaningful decision will leave us feeling better about ourselves. an easy example of this to me that I’ve heard a lot in therapy is caretaking. Like when people are caretaking for, let’s say, like an aging parent, that responsibility can be exhausting, it’s complicated, and it could also be deeply frustrating. You’re not supposed to say that out loud, but it very well can be for people. So then if we evaluate that experience exclusively through the lens of personal well being, personal well being.

We very well may conclude that this situation is unsustainable or it’s interfering with our self-care, etc. And by the way, sometimes it genuinely is. I mean, caregiving r requires support, it does require let’s say shared responsibility and also limits. So th those are important considerations. But there’s also this other dimension that I think deserves consideration, you know, love, responsibility, the history, reciprocity, what what it means to show up for someone who once showed up for us, right? Now, not all parents showed up for their kids, right?

But in these situations where I’m listening to people in therapy, often the parents did show up in one form or another. And so I wanna say is that not every difficult relational situation like that is a sign that we’ve like not established appropriate boundaries. So again, like questions from this that emerge for me h has the language of like individual psychology, individual well being and mental health sometimes displaced this kind of um richer conversation about responsibility, community care, etcetera? Now, it’s easy to criticize the broader culture.

but of course, therapists are part of the broader culture, whether we acknowledge it or not. And I would invite us as therapists to consider how our own questions and practices may be contributing to this. Like, let’s think about some of the questions that regularly get asked in therapy. How did that make you feel? What did that bring up for you? What do you need from this relationship? What would it mean to prioritize yourself? How can you protect your emotional well-being? Listen to all of those questions about the self.

Now, these can be excellent questions in certain set of circumstances. I’m not saying the questions are bad, but I wonder what happens when they come to disproportionately dominate the conversation. At the expense of additional questions, like hey, what might the other person be experiencing in this? what kind of friend, partner, parent, colleague, etcetera do you want to be in this situation? what sort of responsibilities matter to you here? What might be worth doing even if it doesn’t make you feel better?

But it still might be worth doing. What would it mean to respond with generosity rather than self-protection? What are some ways that you might participate in the situation differently? Now, these are just questions I’m, know, saying off the top of my head here, but I hope you can see the difference of these two questions. Like one is disproportionately focused on the self, the other is looking at Other people in broader context. Now, the point isn’t to replace one rigid set of therapeutic questions with another.

That’s not what I am proposing. It’s to broaden the conversation. I can’t tell you how often a client might describe feeling unappreciated by a partner. Now, a therapist in that instance might understandably explore the client’s hurt, unmet needs, the relational history, the whole thing. Also, you know, imagine asking what the partner might be struggling with, what the client appreciates about the relationship, and what kind of contribution, you know, the client hopes to make to that relationship. Now, you can ask these questions in ways that don’t like invalidate the client’s experiences.

Hopefully they create a more expansive understanding of the relationship. So are we sometimes, unwittingly uh even helping clients become better interpreters of their own suffering without necessarily helping them become more generous participants in relationships? Now, listen, there are relationships in which partners have tried for many, many years. I mean, it could be romantic partners, could be business partners, you know, whatever. I think often this is felt most acutely in romantic relationships or familial relationships, but there could be times where people have tried for years, right?

And so they’ve already thought about what the partner might be struggling. They’ve already thought about all of those questions. So believe me, those conversations can be a bit different then. But also sometimes there are people who haven’t really considered those things, right? And they’re just thinking about the relationship through their own lens. And it can be helpful to broaden the context. So then I wonder if self-awareness might be best understood like as a means rather than an end. So then a major part of understanding ourselves may not be like to become increasingly sophisticated observers of our inner lives.

can be some value in that, but it may be more about Becoming more capable of participating in relationships, communities, experiences, et cetera, living life is another way of saying that, right? In that way, insight matters because of what it makes possible in living. Emotional awareness matters because it can help us respond more like thoughtfully to ourselves and others. understanding our own histories matter because it can like loosen the hold those histories might have on our futures. I don’t love this term, but you know, personal growth matters it become become more meaningful when like it expands our capacity to contribute to something beyond ourselves, right?

Like if we’re growing just for ourselves, that’s different than if we’re growing because when we grow, it contributes to something larger than us. And it makes me wonder like, what if we measured the success of psychotherapy less by how much people understand themselves and more by the possibilities that become available in their lives? Like a person might become more quote unquote psychologically healthy, not simply because they feel better, but because their world becomes bigger, because there becomes more possibility. Not because they’re focusing sort of incessantly inside themselves and on insight.

So to close this sucker out today, I don’t think the problem is self-awareness and I also don’t think the problem is psychotherapy itself. I think a potential problem arises when the self becomes the primary reference point through which we evaluate every experience. Don’t get me wrong, therapy can help folks reclaim like a sense of autonomy or agency and also dignity, possibility, et cetera. But I do think if we’re not careful, it can also participate in this like cultural movement that encourages people to turn inward endlessly.

And then they’re searching for answers to questions that might only be answered through actual participation in the world through living. And so to me there’s a fundamental difference between understanding our lives and living them. There’s a you know, a difference between like protecting our well being and creating a a life that feels worth caring about. I wonder what if one of the most like meaningful contributions psychotherapy can help along and help us do is become a little less preoccupied with ourselves and maybe a little more available to the people and the world around us.

Are we helping people develop, deeper understanding of themselves in therapy? Or are we helping them develop a richer relationship with their life? Now, I don’t think those goals are mutually exclusive, by the way. We can help people develop a deeper understanding of themselves and also develop a richer relationship with their life that increases possibilities. They’re not mutually exclusive. And I want to propose In fact that at its best, psychotherapy does both. But I do wonder sometimes if we confuse the first with the second and what the consequences might be of.

Alright everyone. Thank you. Thanks for hanging out on this episode of Therapist Confidential Podcast. It’s always great being in conversation with you. This speaking of self-absorption, this is the time where I’m supposed to tell you to like rate the podcast and give us likes but if you actually you know are enjoying the episode, Feel free to drop me a line about your thoughts on this topic. And, feel free to share it with others, because ultimately my hope with this is that not that you hear my ideas and think these are the right ideas, but hopefully they invite some conversation with others in our field and beyond. All right, I appreciate all of you spending some time with me. Until next time.