You’re Thinking About Yourself Too Much

Last year, actor Jemima Kirke did a Q&A on her Instagram stories. I always enjoy them because Kirke is blunt and hilarious in equal measure. But her response to one question from a follower struck me in particular. 

What advice, the follower wondered, would Kirke give to “unconfident young women”?

“I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much,” the former GIRLS star responded. 

Louder, Ms Kirke, for the people at the back. Whether the problem you’re encountering is circling the drain of your sanity on Hinge, feeling anxious because your income doesn’t cover your spiralling rent or worrying about what happens now that the new populist President of the United States has made it clear he’s anti-abortion, one solution is prescribed these days: an introspective journey of self-discovery. 

I can’t count the number of friends who have been told during a breakup that the other person needs to “focus on themselves” for a bit. When I open Instagram or TikTok, I find that I am regularly recommended questionable videos about the supposed “power” of “focusing on yourself”. They usually have millions of views. 

A particular favorite of mine simply says “Ghost and focus on yourself”, implying that you can walk away from any difficult relationship and feel good by deepening the way you relate to yourself. 

Of course, there’s merit to getting to know one’s self. It helps you to understand how your life experiences have shaped your personality, your likes and dislikes, your needs and wants. This is also not a new idea. The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates advocated for “attending to oneself” privately before entering the public sphere. He believed that self-knowledge was essential, the foundation of everything. 

But, what if we’re all thinking about ourselves too much now? What if, stay with me here, self-knowledge is a powerful tool only if it is used to help you better navigate your relationships with other people? Crucially, for Socrates, self-knowledge was the foundation of a functional life, not a means to an end in and of itself. 

Dr Heather Sequeria is a consultant psychologist. She says that while a “greater awareness” of “trauma in our physical and mental health is broadly positive”, there are some troubling side effects of this heightened awareness of our internal worlds. 

“In my own practice, I am seeing a growing tendency for some people to become overly self-focused and, at times, emotionally fragile,” Dr Sequeria says. “The causes of this are complex and multi-factorial but increasing addiction to our devices (TikTok especially) and isolation in our communities are two key problems that I see a lot in the people I'm working with.”

One of the aims of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, arguably the architect of the society we live in now, was that there should be more self-reliance. Since the 1980s state support and regulation have gradually been stripped back in favour of private enterprise and individual initiative. This has given rise to the philosophy of individualism. 

However, far from being an idea that resides only in politics textbooks or debates, individualism seems to be becoming a necessary survival tactic. This is something that the filmmaker Adam Curtis linked to the rise of Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis which, conveniently, were conceived between the late 1800s and mid 1900s, as capitalism became the dominant economic model. 

As Curtis notes in Century of the Self, Freud’s grandson — the PR man Matthew Freud — even deployed his grandfather’s theories to help the UK Labour party rebrand socialism for the post-Thatcher world and develop the policies that helped them win power in 1997. 

Today, more and more young adults are stuck living at home with their parents than there were when Labour won that historic election. If you do go to university, you’ll be taking on tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt. And, unless you go on to earn a seriously above-average salary (and/or have rich parents), your chances of buying a house are slim. Getting a job like that is also not straightforward, since the 2008 financial crisis wages for young adults have been incredibly stagnant while house prices have continued to rise. 

After decades of being told that you’re the problem if life doesn’t look how you wish it did — a home of your own or a well-paying job — is it any wonder that young people think about themselves so much? The logical conclusion of believing that any failure you experience is because of something you’ve done is believing that the solution can be found within too. 

Studies have connected living in an “individualistic” society such as the U.S. or the UK to loneliness. One large piece of global research published in 2020 by researchers at the University of Manchester was based on responses from more than 46,000 participants around the world. They concluded that young people, in particular men, living in “individualistic” countries like Britain or America, were more likely to feel lonely than older women in “collectivist” societies such as China or Brazil. Of course, China is not a democratic country but what its society has in common with Brazil is that there is a strong focus on family relationships and bonds. By contrast, in Britain and the U.S., work can often take precedence not only because it is valued culturally but because it is necessary to meet high living costs.

There is a difference between being comfortable with spending time alone and spending so much time with yourself that you become lonely. A distinction between knowing what you need to stay happy and well so that you can show up for the people you love, and being so ruthlessly self-interested that you become solipsistic. It’s a fine line to walk and, if data on loneliness and the so-called “relationship recession” are anything to go by, we are tipping over from knowing ourselves into self-absorption. And, it isn’t making us happy. 

According to figures from the UK, Europe and the U.S., young adults today are spending much more time alone than in the past. At the same time, the mental health of young adults is declining. Rates of mental distress are climbing for younger people, but not for those in middle age and beyond. An enormous amount of robust public health research tells us that there is a casual link between time alone and depression, lower life satisfaction and, in the end, higher mortality rates. 

While it’s true that depression is not a simple condition with a simple cause, it’s also true that too much inward focus can exacerbate and, even, cause it. 

A study published in 2020 by researchers at the University of Liverpool concluded that we can think about the bad things that have happened to us too much. When a person who is in a depressed mood ruminates, they are more likely to “remember more negative things that happened to them in the past, they interpret situations in their current lives more negatively, and they are more hopeless about the future”, the study concluded. 

This preoccupation with problems also makes it difficult to move beyond to allow for a focus on problem-solving. Even in people without depression or anxiety, the study cautioned that rumination can contribute to negative emotions. 

Last year, my dad died unexpectedly. I was quickly surrounded. Not as I feared by my grief but, instead, by the love of friends and colleagues. My phone did not stop ringing, my diary was filled and I was never, really, alone. I worried that when things calmed down and everyone stopped checking in on me so much, I might fall apart. But, the opposite happened: I’d been held together by the people around me. 

After the shock subsided, I realised that some friends had stopped telling me about their problems. They didn’t want to “bother” me, they said, because my dad had died. But far from feeling “bothered” by talk of dating, housing problems or work dilemmas, I craved hearing about it all. And, when they started to tell me, I realised that thinking about other people — rather than myself or my dead dad — was a healing balm. 

“At the end of the day we are a social species,” Dr Sequeria says. “We are internally wired up to be resiliently connected to others. By focusing too much on our own internal struggles at the expense of that, individuals risk isolating themselves, contributing to increased loneliness and missing the broader healing that comes from our social and community relationships.” 

“What we focus on tends to expand and shape our experiences,” Dr Sequeria says, “it is always influencing how we perceive and respond to the world around us.”

So, if we focus on ourselves and how we feel, then we are limiting our experiences by definition. 

I don’t write this critique of the great expedition for self-knowledge in the spirit of meanness nor from a place of personal disappointment. On the contrary, I’ve benefitted greatly from talking therapy where I learned to understand myself in the past. I have also enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love style yoga retreats. I wish more people could afford to access both. 

But, in undertaking my own journeys of self-discovery, I’ve learned that getting to know yourself is only useful if you use whatever you find out to better serve your community. We cannot mediate ourselves into happiness simply by wishing for it in a dark room alone unless, perhaps, we all become Buddhist monks and retreat from society entirely. But, even then, I’m sure something would come up. 

Dr Sequeria is particularly troubled by the “simplified catchphrases” on apps like TikTok and Instagram where people often advocate for “self-knowledge” as a route to happiness and success. 

“These quick fixes can lead to a kind of emotional isolation, where people feel temporarily empowered by self-focused phrases, but lack the tools to engage in deeper, relational work that would be truly healing,” she says. 

We hear so often today that younger people are worried about receiving a phone call and struggling to text their friends back. We know that fewer young adults are entering relationships which results in marriage and children. And, perhaps all of this will be our downfall. 

For Dr Sequeria, relationships are the answer. Healing cannot happen in isolation. Humans, she says, “are social beings” and we need to be around one another. 

Instead of sitting on our phones and thinking about ourselves, we should go out into the world. In lieu of ordering dinner in, we should eat with friends. Even if briefly. As research from Oxford University shows, the more often people eat with others the more likely they are to feel happy and satisfied with their lives. We should not hide behind dating apps but, instead, get offline quickly and meet new people. We should volunteer in our communities and get to know people — whether that’s at a foodbank or a community garden. 

Love is relational. It is give and take. You cannot love yourself and yourself alone. Life is not meant to be lived in solitude. That’s why solitary confinement is such a cruel punishment. The great, complex machines that are our brains are not being used properly if we only use them to think about our own internal lives. Becoming too preoccupied with yourself won’t fix your problems, particularly if they are related to high rents or house prices. But, reaching out to other people will always make you feel better.