Self Regulation Personal Factors: Self Awareness

Self Awareness includes:

  • Knowing how we are feeling
  • Knowing what we like and dislike
  • Predicting our emotional response to a situation
  • Reflecting on past emotions
  • Knowing abilities, strengths and challenges
  • Understanding how thoughts and feelings impact ourselves
  • Our ability to monitor and reflect on behaviour

How Self Awareness skills can support self regulation:

Before we can regulate our emotions, we must be able to understand how we are feeling within a given moment. This is where self awareness comes into play. Self awareness begins with an awareness of our physical selves (e.g. a baby playing with its toes), and then moves into preferences (e.g. a toddler favouring one colour truck over another). As we begin to understand ourselves, we also begin tuning into how we are feeling internally (our emotions). The older we get, the more attuned we are to these feelings and the slight differences between them. We learn our cognitive, physiological and physical reactions when we feel certain emotions. This allows us to begin to shape our behavioral response (the beginning of self regulation). Self awareness also allows us to understand what triggers us, and helps us anticipate our response to a given situation. Depending on our problem solving and motor planning skills, this knowledge allows us to avoid or respond to that situation appropriately. For example, I’m extremely fearful of snakes, so when I go to the zoo I know to avoid the reptile enclosure!

How issues with Self Awareness may impact on self regulation:

When a person lacks self awareness, they are not able to predict responses to situations, avoid triggers, or understand the emotion they are feeling. A child with self awareness issues may not understand how they are feeling, and may not be able to recognize things that may help them remain regulated. Self awareness is the stepping stone to social skills and awareness, which is another block on the seesaw of self regulation. Individuals who have difficulty with self awareness will have difficulty monitoring what is working or not working for themselves, or reflecting back on past events or interactions to improve for next time.

A specific example of Self Awareness:

Whilst working at an autism specific school, I was moving some boxes of various items from our therapy office to a cupboard elsewhere in the school. I asked 2 of the older students to assist me. After a few trips, one of the students entered the room where the cupboard was and stated the other student  wasn’t coming in because he didn’t like balloons. I looked around and saw a half inflated balloon sticking out from the top of one of the boxes. I immediately put it in the bin (who knows what it was doing there in the first place!) and thanked the student for letting me know. I then went outside and told the student that the balloon was now in the bin, and apologised for it being there. His response was “That’s ok, I just don’t like balloons. It’s an autism thing”. Both students then proceeded to help me with the rest of the boxes.

Talking to one of his support workers later, I mentioned how impressed I was that he was able to so calmly let his peer and myself know that he didn’t want to enter the room because of the balloon. She told me that this was a more recent development, and that a couple of years prior he would become extremely upset and angry whenever there was a balloon in his presence. She told me that on a recent excursion, the class walked past a newsagent with balloons out the front. The student calmly took himself another route (great problem solving!) and rejoined the group with no further ado.

Being able to recognise his trigger allowed him to use his communication and executive functioning skills to manage his self regulation. A great example of self awareness at play!

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