What is self awareness?

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I have moderate/pronounced classic autism and told I lack self awareness, but not entirely sure what that means. I think it means am not aware of how I look and act to others. I only know from what is said to me about it. But I am aware of my problems like with talking and my sensory overload and getting lost easily and things like that. I'm aware that I need special care and not like other boys my age like my cousin. Like not that aware of self as much as aware of my situation. I'm confused about this.

I am glad you asked this Ezra because I don't really understand either. I am very aware of what I am going through but that does not mean that I always know how others see me. So I am also curious to know what self awareness means from an Autistic diagnostic perspective.

The Wikipedia.org article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-awareness about self-awareness describes it as "...the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals." The article describes self-awareness among those with autism as "[c]hildren with ASD may struggle with self-awareness and self acceptance. Their different thinking patterns and brain processing functions in the area of social thinking and actions may compromise their ability to understand themselves and social connections to others (Autism Asperger?s Digest, 2010)."

I have a bit of self awareness, I think in how I experience things through writing (some speech). Not my behaviors, including speaking repetitive words alot until what I meant.

This is more of a question than an answer, but I'm thinking about how people report "out of body experiences". I mean, your typical dyed-in-the-wool neurotypical is _so focused_ on how he looks to others that even at times when he is at the brink of death, he has a photorealistic image of how he looks sitting/lying/whatever at the place where he is. ( Meanwhile, the same person probably claims to be incapable of feeling his own _heart beat_, an absurd claim yet nonetheless rather believable since he doesn't seem to get confused taking someone else's pulse trying to feel the difference between their pulse and his own pulse in his fingers )

I think I lack a certain amount of self awareness, but I'm only becoming aware of that as I'm getting older.

Maybe that means I'm gaining self awareness.

I don't know, I'm confused.

I can look back at my life to a time when I was a teenager and I know that I completely lacked self awareness.

I think it's when you are fully awake to who you are and how you are perceived by others.

You say that you are not aware of that, but you just wrote about it. That's what is confusing me about this. How can someone lack self awareness but talk about themself?



I don't get that. it's over my head. I need the for dummies kid version.

I think this should be called "other-awareness" or have a name of its own. It's about you, but it's not a part of you and it doesn't get created by you in your mind -- it's a part of the other person and it gets created by them in their mind.

It just seems weird to call that self-awareness....I don't think thoughts about other people, and then refer to or think about those thoughts as being part of the other person, because they aren't -- they're a part of me. If the other person is aware of my thoughts about them, they are aware of something about me, not something about themselves. (I'm not saying that's not part of what "self-awareness" means -- or can mean -- I'm just saying it doesn't make sense to me.)

Last edited by animalcrackers on 30 Jul 2014, 5:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't understand either. You are self aware, because you're you. If you were not, you would think that you're not you? maybe you think you're god, because you think you're everyone, I don't know? Maybe it is humor . How is an NT, or anyone else for that matter going to know that you don't think that you are you? . Forgive me for confusing myself?

I feel like the term "self-aware" is used in a weird context by NTs and probably other Aspies. Isn't Autism meaning "self"? In Greek I think? I feel like I am overly self-aware. I am aware of how I feel and what I want. But I guess what they mean is to know when you're acting "weird" and that it's not "normal" and which things make others uncomfortable or what distracts other people. To me "self-aware" is really putting a person in a position to leave themselves and their feelings behind and to only act according to what others are comfortable with. So, it's like, you actually have to be aware of everyone else's feelings and comfort level.

I think what people usually mean when they say "self-aware" is being able to leave your body and watch yourself/experience yourself from another human's body perspective. Like, people want you to look at yourself from their perspective. Someone could say something like, "Wouldn't you think that was weird if you saw someone doing that?" Whatever it is. But I understand that people are different and so when I see people doing whatever they're doing it doesn't bother me unless they're going to come up and shank me or something violent.

Self-awareness, within this context, I believe, means being aware of how someone perceives you RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT.

When you are self-aware, you know how you are behaving, and you know how someone would react to your behavior at the MOMENT OF THE BEHAVIOR, rather than later on. Since you have this awareness, you have the ability to modify the behavior once you're tempted to engage in the behavior.

Some autistic people are not aware of how their behavior affects them and other people AT THE MOMENT OF THE BEHAVIOR. They frequently know after they think about it for a while.

Does that make sense?

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 30 Jul 2014, 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In that case, im not very good at that.

Neither am I.

I'm confused by it too. I read that self awareness basically means that you know you are yourself and seperate from everyone else, but I don't understand how anyone could not know that they are not everyone. From reading the other replies, it sounds like it actually means you don't know how others see you, but I'm still not really sure.

^^^This.

I am not usually on target at how others would react to my behavior or how my behavior might fit in socially. But I am aware of what I am doing and feeling. Sometimes I can't identify my feelings but I am aware that I am feeling something. And I can intellectually self analyze really well as if I were someone else analyzing my behavior. But I can't always tell how my behavior fits with others socially. I can tell obvious things like I know that I can't walk around naked or scream my head off just because I feel like it in a public area but I don't know how to tell subtle things like sometimes I laugh at things that are not funny to others or I might say something that does is not appropriate and I can't anticipate how that will be taken socially all the time. So does this mean that my self awareness is poor? Trying to understand this is a bit confusing to me.