The Dangers of Becoming Self-Absorbed

How social media and current society perpetuates inward thinking which can lead to unhappiness

It’s not just in this time that people have been interested in talking about themselves. We’ve always been interested in ourselves. After all, we see the world through our eyes and experience things through our bodies. Wanting to understand how the world works through our interactions is completely natural.

However, in most cultures, it is looked down upon to brag and talk highly about yourself. In other words, it looks good to be humble about yourself.

In the western culture, specifically the United States, we focus on the individual. Since we focus on our personal successes, we have a greater need for self-validation and personal happiness which leads us to self-inflation, overconfidence, and an overestimation of our abilities.

You might think, I don’t have a problem with being self-absorbed. This is probably true. Very few people are completely self-absorbed to the point where they would be considered a narcissist. However, this doesn’t mean that you still can’t benefit from learning how to get out of your head.

You don’t have to be a narcissist to think too much about yourself

In today’s world, especially in the United States, with the way social media is set up, we are encouraged to share about our lives and ourselves. We have blurred the line between communicating updates and bragging.

Because most of us are not able to do a ton of interesting things on a daily basis, we share the mundane of our lives hoping that it will be appreciated content. This only further promotes our focus on ourselves.

If we want to be successful, we turn inward to criticize ourselves and figure out how to improve. This can apply to becoming happier, getting in shape, etc. Our focus is on how I need to do this, think about that, or share this. At some point, we end up just seeing the world and other people only in the way that it relates to ourselves.

When your friends talk about their issues, you end up sharing a similar one that you’ve had without really picking up the nuances of what makes their issue personal to them. Rather than understanding others, we are excited to talk about ourselves without realizing that at its worst, it’s damaging to our relationships and happiness, and at its best, it is ineffective and improves nothing.

Bonus: Hrishikesh Hirway’s TED Talk on his podcast Song Exploder. He talks about the importance of listening to others and understanding where they are coming from in a really poignant way.

Our society encourages us to think about ourselves

The social media addiction to share about our lives

As with everything, there is a good side and a bad side. On the good side, social media is a place to communicate, collaborate, and be creative.

But on the bad side, it encourages comparison, exaggeration, and manipulation. It’s hard to filter which posts and people are good (encouraging, uplifting, helpful) and which aren’t (make you feel unhappy, dissatisfied with your own life, etc.). They are usually posts from strangers after all!

Even if we don’t participate in creating “bad” posts or posts at all, we can be influenced to think about our lives and ourselves when we go on social media. This ends up getting us wrapped up in ourselves as we compare our lives, looks, body, financial situation, etc.

In order to be a part of a social media network, you have to create a profile. With that, you are essentially a creator too. In which case, you are urged to share and reciprocate.

The line between sharing and oversharing is thin. We can be privy to oversharing if there is any kind of turmoil in our life that creates a need for acceptance.

The responses we get to our posts can become addictive and perpetuate our sharing cycle. We feel like our updates about things in our lives, as mundane as they may be, are important to others. This makes us feel good but it also makes us vulnerable to everyone else’s reactions. Their reactions or lack thereof can make us feel good or bad and can shape our thoughts about our lives and taint our view of what truly makes us happy.

Current culture cultivates focusing on yourself

In the United States, we like to attribute success to the individual rather than the group (Morris 1999). Just think about Tesla or SpaceX. I bet you think of Elon Musk and give him credit for being a genius rather than recognizing all of the intelligent, talented, and extremely hard-working individuals who work at those companies.

This kind of thinking that the individual can succeed by himself or herself promotes self-centered thinking. Instead of looking around you at the different skills and perspectives each person could offer, you want to make yourself the best.

It’s not bad to want to work on yourself and improve. In fact, this motivates a growth mindset, which has been shown to be beneficial for successful people (He 2016).

Too much focus on yourself leads is not a good thing

Too much focus on yourself, however, can again, like with social media, make you think “inwardly”. Rather than thinking about the world and its inhabitants, you are stuck trying to figure out yourself and how to make yourself “better”. It ends up being tiring and not very effective because how can you figure yourself out without context?

We’ve become so obsessed with looking inward and trying to achieve our ideals that it’s actually made us less equipped to be a human on the outside (you know, the type that’s actually connected to other people).

Dr. Svend Brinkmann in an interview with GQ

The self-help industry also tells you to focus more on yourself. In a way, this blog can be approached as a series of self-help articles. But this blog is not meant to be taken literally with you sitting down and writing a list of all these changes you need to make about yourself. It’s supposed to help you think about your attitude toward yourself, your life, people in your life, and the world so you can find your happier life.

The outcomes of inward focus

When you focus too much on yourself, you end up becoming self-centered. Everything is about how it relates back to you. Regardless if it’s about a situation between another person and the world, you find a way to make it about yourself.

Don’t get this confused with empathy and the ability to relate to someone else. Empathy is good but making everything about yourself is harmful.

This can then lead to bragging. Or at least sounding like you’re bragging. Because you relate what other people do back to yourself, you end up talking about yourself.

It’s hard not to think about yourself and not to want to talk about yourself to others. Studies show that talking about ourselves “may be inherently pleasurable – and that people may be motivated to talk about themselves more than other topics (no matter how interesting or important these non-self topics may be).

It’s impossible to not talk about your accomplishments to someone, especially recent successes. For example, say you got the promotion you’ve been working hard for at your job. You don’t have to keep that to yourself.

Telling your close friends and family and letting them share in your successes and happiness is wonderful. This is nothing to feel guilty about or hide.

Bragging is when you use your successes, however recent, to put yourself up in the eyes of others. However, announcements of milestones like getting engaged, having a baby, etc. are also perfectly fine to share. It’s how often and how you go about sharing that shows how conceited you are.

Giving attention to our relationships is healthy

Relationships are important. Although we should not allow them to take precedent to the detriment of our happiness, having good relationships can improve the quality and the joy in your life.

There are many studies that show the benefit and the power of good relationships. In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers book, he talks about a small town called Roseto in the United States in the late 1950s. Although heart attacks were an epidemic in the U.S. during this time, the people in this town did not reflect these statistics. They were well under the standard of those with heart disease and those over sixty-five who experienced a heart attack. Overall, these people were healthier not just in body but also in mind. There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, very little crime, and no one on welfare. 

It turns out this wasn’t due to a healthy diet and exercise. Nor was it due to good genes or geography either. It was their social structure. In other words, it was their relationships with each other that made them happy and therefore healthy and well.

Giving other people the chance to be heard and understood is powerful

Giving to others can be very beneficial. In a lot of articles that discuss how to be happier, they suggest the reader go do something good for someone else.

One way to give to others is to truly listen to them. Talking about ourselves feels really good and so does being listened to. Now, give that gift to someone else.

Really listen to them. And not just listen to hear their words. Listen to understand them. Dr. Stephen Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, discusses ways for people to practice being better listeners.

He argues that people want to be understood. So do you, which is why you have the urge to share; but try giving someone else a chance to be heard and understood. By doing this, you’ll learn that there are differences in the way each person perceives the same situation (Covey).

Good relationships give back to you

Hopefully, by taking the time to truly listen and understand the people in your life, they learn to listen to you as well and your connection with them strengthens.

Happiness articles often talk about how important having good relationships in a person’s life is for well-being. This applies to being self-absorbed as well. When we are determined to share about ourselves and brag about ourselves, we show that we are missing that outlet to do so and the support that helps us feel satisfied with ourselves.

Good relationships don’t have to come in the form of a significant other. It can be parents, children, siblings, friends, and even pets.

Sometimes, the best comes from loosening up a bit and allowing spontaneity back into your life. Other people are somewhat unpredictable which can cause uncertainty but can also liven up your life a bit.

People can give you a new perspective and even help inspire you.

Take some time to see the world and people around you

Go be social beyond the screen. Interact with your friends and family in real-life settings when possible. There is a sensory input that you get from face-to-face communication that you can’t get through technology.

Get out into nature and take a hike (you don’t have to be an outdoors expert or in super fit shape) with a friend or family member.

Take a break

We need to stop focusing too harshly on ourselves and evaluating our lives. We don’t constantly need to make ourselves better, more optimized. We’re not robots.

Look beyond yourself

You know by now it’s important to value others. We can’t all run around focused on our own lives without appreciating what’s happening around us.

Do things that help build true confidence and happiness. You could cook something, work on your hobby, play a musical instrument or some music, or finish reading a book you meant to start but haven’t. Have people in your life that you can show those small accomplishments off to. And most importantly, work to find the balance between yourself and the rest of the world.

Live happier,

Nicole

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About the author

Hi! Here is a little bit about me, I have worked in various neuroscience and psychology research labs studying emotional social control in people with early onset schizophrenia and mood disorders. In college, I majored in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley. I love to read and learn about happiness and mental wellbeing and so I created this blog to share the ideas and stories out there. You can read more about me on my About page.

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References

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon & Schuster. New York. 2020.

Dweck, Carol. What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means. Harvard Business Review. 2016 Jan. 13.

Morris, Michael W. Culture and the construal of agency: Attribution to individual versus group dispositions. Journal of Personalisty and Social Psychology. 1999. Vol. 76. No. 5. 701-717.