self awareness sucks

This is the one I promised you in episode one. Eighteen episodes ago I asked why self-awareness sucks. This is where I answer whether it was worth it anyway. I go back through the whole season, not as a summary, but as a story. What changed. What it cost. And what I found on the other side. I also finally say the thing I wasn't ready to say in episode eleven. And I report back on the thing I s...

Self-awareness is supposed to help. So why does it sometimes make everything harder? This episode names seven paradoxes nested inside that one central problem. Some of them you'll recognise immediately. Some of them might create a new one just by being named. That's kind of the point. This is episode seventeen. One away from the end. And it's the one that explains why the journey was a...

This episode is about music. But not really about music. It's about the year six booklet that sent my nervous system into a full risk assessment. The Rebecca Ferguson concert that ended in dismissal. The Five Seconds of Summer song I sent at university and the response I genuinely didn't know what to do with. Discovering Billie Eilish and Ren before anyone was talking about them. And what...

The words weren't the problem. The context was. This episode is about connotation, denotation, semantic satiation, and why the same word can mean completely different things depending on who's holding it. It's also about the words from school, fat, ugly, weird, boring, and why they weren't inherently catastrophic. The context made them that way. And contexts can change. That's...

You feel like you know them. They don't know you exist. This episode is about parasocial relationships, what they are, why they're not new, and what happens when you find yourself on both sides of one simultaneously. It's also about online dating, the 2019 beauty community implosion, being recognised from a video I'd completely forgotten making, and what it felt like to post on You...

For most of my academic life, the times I tried hardest were not the times I did best. This episode is about the Goldilocks zone, the grip, and what actually happens when you hold something too tightly. It's also about a journal entry I forgot I'd written, a competition win I almost missed entirely, and the realisation that I am the writer of my own life, not a character waiting for the pl...

In this episode, I finally talk about the thing I said I wasn't ready to talk about in the last one. The fear that lives in romantic situations specifically. The one where all the others collapse into one at the same time. I get into the confidence loop, how it gets installed, how it runs, and why breaking out of it from the outside never quite works. I talk about the difference between the pe...

In this episode, I do something I probably should have done sooner. I name the thing that's been running underneath every single episode of this season. Fear. I get into what fear actually feels like in the body, the three distinct profiles I've identified in myself, and why they all point at the same thing underneath. I talk about the difference between fear-based editing and values-based...

In this episode, I pick up where the last one left off, because the same tool that lets you understand yourself can also be turned outward and used to manage how you come across. And the line between the two is a lot blurrier than I used to think. I get into Goffman's theory of frontstage and backstage selves, the performer who exists only in my head, and the specific fear underneath all of it...

In this episode, I get into something a bit lighter after the last couple of heavy ones, but it's still personal. I talk about growing up bilingual, and how that shaped a lifelong hyper-awareness of language: the blessing and the curse of being able to read what's underneath words, and what that's cost me when it comes to overthinking my own. But mostly, this episode is about the momen...

In this episode, I get into something that gets thrown around a lot in spiritual and self-help spaces: shadow work. But rather than the mystical version, I want to talk about what it actually looks like in practice. I talk about the belief I carried for years that I needed to be remarkable to be worth noticing. Where it came from, how it showed up everywhere, and the shadow version of it — telling...

In this episode, I get into something I think a lot of people carry around quietly: the relationship between self-awareness and the body. Specifically, my relationship with my skin, my relationship with exercise, and the moment I realised the patterns I had in one area were showing up everywhere else too. From cystic acne and the all-or-nothing approach to skincare, to avoiding the gym because I c...

In this episode, I talk about the idea of being perceived, and how something as small as a throwaway comment can completely shape the way you see yourself. From internalising being called “boring” to unknowingly building a personality around it, I reflect on how easy it is to adopt narratives that were never really ours to begin with. I get into confirmation bias, identity, social media, and the s...

In this episode, I talk about why “cringe” is often just confidence we haven’t built yet. How secondhand embarrassment can be a reaction to visibility, vulnerability, or joy. And why so many of us stop ourselves from doing the things we want to do because we are worried about how they will look to other people. This episode is about letting yourself be seen. About doing things without rehearsing e...

In this episode, I talk about a realisation that slowly settled with me: free will is reason enough. I reflect on why we feel the need to justify our choices, rest, boundaries, and decisions, and how over-explaining often comes from wanting understanding rather than permission. This episode explores people-pleasing, honesty, and what it means to let “because I want to” be a complete sentence.

In this episode, I talk about the moment a very simple realisation finally clicked for me: no one is coming to do it for you. I reflect on how this shifted my mindset at the end of university, the transition into adulthood, and what it really means to take responsibility for your own choices without turning it into pressure or perfectionism. This episode is about awareness, agency, and the slow, u...

In this episode, I talk about the first time I realised I needed to change something about myself. It wasn’t dramatic or life-altering, just a small behaviour that didn’t sit right anymore. I reflect on how telling tiny white lies became a habit, why it felt uncomfortable, and how choosing honesty became my first real act of self-awareness. This episode is about noticing, sitting with discomfort,...

In this intro episode, I talk about why I started this podcast and what I actually mean when I say self awareness sucks. I share where this idea came from, why growth and doing “the work” can be exhausting, and why there is no real finish line. This episode sets the foundation for honest conversations about reflection, communication, and learning how to live with awareness without shrinking yourse...