Meta-Awareness: The Hidden Skill That Makes Therapy Work

What is Meta-awareness?  Meta-awareness is the ability to notice your own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as they are happening.  It is an essential, yet often overlooked tool in therapy.  It’s easy to quickly dismiss or deem certain experiences as irrelevant.  However, when you become more curious with your inner experience, insight will start to bring awareness to your self-patterns.  Maybe you realize you tend to minimize your feelings, change the subject when you feel uncomfortable, or rush to fix something instead of just feeling it.  Creating awareness around these patterns is the first step to change. Meta-awareness in therapy allows you to begin to shift these psychological patterns into something you take hold of and actively shape.  Suddenly, you start to become better at observing your mind, rather than getting swept away by it!  

In order for therapy to be the most effective it can be, Meta-Awareness must be practiced both inside and outside of session. Simply identifying these patterns helps develop the gap between awareness and growth. When you are outside of a therapy session, use Meta-awareness, and observe yourself during everyday stressors, moments of joy, or conflict, and see what you notice.  Then you’ll be able to bring these insights back to therapy with you, not just to report, but to help your mind organize itself. This is where the deepest therapeutic work will happen, the space between reaction and reflection.  In time, and with consistent practice, Meta-awareness will allow self-awareness to eventually become effective self-transformation.