By: Mia Delgado

Self-awareness is, by many, deemed as a positive aspect and is often encouraged. While there are obvious benefits to self-awareness — the disadvantages are often overlooked. 

What people usually don’t know is that there is a hidden cost to this truth: a psychological confinement that happens when the lens of consciousness is permanently turned inward. 

For me, it has always been in my nature to be the observer — to watch everyone from my little corner. Given that I was in control, I was able to find a sense of enjoyment.

Except now, noticing things has become something pretentious and often depressing. 

I often think, “How has it come to this?”

I used to be a very naive and reckless person. Because I hurt many people in the past — I turned to introspection. 

But lately, I’ve grown deeply fearful of the unknown, especially of people. The thing I fear is not the person themselves, but the torture that comes from their evaluations. 

Since we cannot control the way we are perceived by other people, we are forever confined to their judgement. 

Their scrutinizing gaze is always on us — the performer — and if we were to fail, we believe some sort of great reckoning awaits us. 

At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

And so we build this metaphorical mask in order to gain validation from the Other. We sense that if we are unable to complete a task perfectly, without a single flaw, then we would cease to do anything at all. 

We become so focused on the supposed punishment — the “what ifs” — that we eventually stagnate; we forget what it is to simply be. We would rather do absolutely nothing at all than to be rejected for the person we actually are. 

When trying to explain this perception to others, they often tell us to “stop overthinking it”, which is easier said than done. Because once you become aware, you cannot simply unsee what you’ve already seen; you completely lose the luxury of ignorance.

This awareness becomes so integral to your life that you are no longer able to live in the moment.

You are no longer able to enjoy simple tasks meant to bring you pleasure. Instead, you are forever reduced to a machine; you no longer think or feel for yourself but for the machine that you are operating.

And so, in trying to make everyone else feel comfortable with your life, you become a stranger to your own.

At the end of your life, you will realize that in reality, the stage was always empty.