Learning the language of myself...

We often spend years studying other people. Their personalities. Their relationships. Their motives. Their stories... Yet the greatest mystery you'll ever solve isn't another person - it's yourself.

The art of knowing yourself intrinsically is something we don't speak about enough. For the longest time, I thought I knew myself. I knew the things I liked. I knew the things that made me laugh. I knew my favourite musicians, my comfort meals, and the genre of books that spoke to my heart.

But I didn't know myself in the way that truly mattered. I didn't know the language my mind, heart, and soul were speaking.

I didn't understand why certain things hurt more deeply than others. Why some situations felt unbearable. Or why some emotions arrived like waves that drowned me, whilst others barely made a ripple.

I knew what I was feeling. I just didn't always understand why.

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Knowing yourself to your core is not simply about your favourite movie or the sport you played growing up. Knowing yourself deeply is about learning the quiet, invisible patterns that shape the way you experience the world. It is about learning your emotional vocabulary.

Learning about yourself for who you really are, through a curious lens, is where healing can begin. Understand your darkest fears, wildest dreams, deepest desires, and biggest passion in life. Understand your unconscious patterns, your identity and sense of self, how you show and receive love, your emotions, your vulnerabilities, and your childhood. Understand the past versions of yourself, the trauma you've faced, your self-image, your inner critic, and your needs. Understand your triggers and warning signs. Ask yourself all the deep questions about what ignites your soul, what fulfillment means to you, and whether you are living authentically. Question what true love means in your eyes, whether you still carry old wounds from your childhood, and who you truly are when no one is watching...

Self-awareness isn't developed by reading a list on the internet. It is developed through continuous genuine curiosity and radical honesty.

To show you what I mean, I wanted to do something that feels slightly uncomfortable. Rather than simply telling you to learn yourself, I want to show you what learning myself has looked like. Here's what I've discovered through genuine curiosity and radical honesty...

1. My healing: I have made almost zero internal progress since I was age 12 and first started battling mental health issues. Medication kept me stable, but this masked the maladaptive thinking and behavioural patterns I learned over the years. Medication can reduce symptoms but it cannot rewrite negative beliefs, coping strategies, and behavioural patterns we've developed to survive. I've realised I became complacent in my recovery journey as I was taking my medication. But no amount of medication can rectify these things, and therefore I am now actively trying to learn, unlearn, and relearn certain patterns.

   
   

2. The way my mind works: I am extremely observant in social situations, and I pick up on small shifts in energy or tone when engaging with other people. This leads me to overthink and over-analyse situations that aren't always worth the concern. I'm a very sensitive person and I feel emotions intensely. I am also incredibly analytical with myself. I have a tendency to intellectualise my feelings and I rarely let myself simply feel an emotion. I immediately want to dissect it. Explain it. Find the psychological theory behind it. Somewhere along the way, understanding became easier than experiencing. I'm uncomfortable with uncertainty and therefore I search for answers and explanations. Another thing I've realised, I see the world in shades of grey - not black and white. I can see the nuances in each situation, and can hold multiple truths simultaneously.

   
   

3. Relationships: I long to be deeply known for who I am. Because of this, I'm really sensitive to perceived emotional neglect/rejection. For example, if a friend doesn't check in when they know I'm struggling, my mind immediately catastrophises the situation, leading to negative thoughts of "they don't care about me". My mind then begins to internalise the thought that "no one would miss me if I were gone". I hold loved ones to high expectations or standards - and most of the time they cannot meet them. This leads me to be disappointed in others. I crave true connection within my relationships so deeply, and when people don't match up to this, it hurts. I seek emotional depth in others, and I need to learn some people (no matter how much I love them) are just not capable of providing the level of depth I'm after, and I cannot expect people to meet me at my level. Regarding future romantic relationships, I crave deep love. I want to be seen and loved in the way I love and see others. I desire a love that feels like home and adventure all at once. Deep down, I am a big softie and a romantic. Also I am, for the most part, quite an anxiously-attached individual. I don't want to label myself or box myself into a narrow category, but I seek constant validation and reassurance from others, and I have a deep fear of being abandoned. This causes me to be hypervigilant, as I'm constantly analysing situations looking for hidden signs that something is wrong. This is cognisant of an insecure and anxious attachment style, and this all stems from my childhood.

   
   

4. Who I am: I contain multitudes of opposites - I am both introverted and extroverted. I am deeply sensitive, yet also resilient. I am both emotional and logical. I am independent but I also long for real connection. It's funny because my favourite word as a teenager was juxtaposition, and I have bipolar - simultaneous opposites has always been a part of me. I am also a multifaceted and layered individual. I am very imaginative, creative, adventurous, goal-oriented, curious, analytical, silly, wild, passionate, ambitious, determined, and I have a lot of depth to me as a person. Empathy is also a big part of who I am, and I tend to ask "what happened to this person?" rather than "what's wrong with this person?". Also, I value honesty and transparency highly, and communication is massive for me. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I tell my story to most people I encounter. My name 'Sachini' translates to truth and honesty, and I try to live my life by that ethos. I believe that consistency in honest and transparent communication is so important for any relationship.

   
   

5. My struggles: I am extremely impatient and end up seeking quick short-term dopamine fixes to help myself feel better. I am very inconsistent when it comes to working towards long-term goals where you don't see benefits immediately. For example, I know that going to the gym now will help my future self be fitter and healthier. But due to the fact I won't reap the benefits of the gym immediately, I become impatient, and therefore start becoming less consistent. This reduces the momentum, leading to a lack of productivity, and in turn I procrastinate my next steps. To add, I have a perfectionism issue, which leads me to procrastinate majorly or even avoid a task due to a fear of not doing it well enough. I put such pressure on myself to be as close to perfect as I can, even though logically I am aware that perfection is a myth. Also, I struggle with self-esteem and incongruence between my current self and my ideal self. It's funny because I think I'm pretty great in some aspects, but the feeling of self-hatred overwhelms this. My self-hatred comes from me not acting in alignment with my ideal self in regards to behavioural outputs. In essence, my day-to-day actions do not match up to the ideal version of myself. My ideal self is consistent, patient, hard-working, disciplined, driven by values, and able maintain balance. I struggle a lot because of this misalignment and I'm actively trying to reach congruence. But I need to learn my worth is not determined by these external outputs (or lack thereof), but is determined by my kindness, empathy, ambition, passion, courage, authenticity, resilience, creativity, curiosity, and many other internal traits.

   
   

6. My fears: I have a lot of big fears. I am afraid of not living up to my potential. Of being mediocre. Of being unfulfilled in every aspect of life. Of never being seen by others for who I truly am. Of not being loved wholeheartedly in the way I desire. I too have a lot of big dreams and goals that I may not ever achieve, which is another fear. Some are related to my career and professional/academic development. Others are related to my day-to-day life in terms of hobbies or activities I want to try. I also have goals to do with my mental and physical wellbeing. But my biggest dream in life is to be content and fulfilled. And I'm scared I won't ever find this.

   
   

7. The lesson: A big lesson through all this introspection is that conscious awareness is not the same as an internal belief. I really struggle to internalise certain truths. I am aware of things on one level of consciousness, but I'm currently unable to ingrain these truths and believe them. For example, I have learnt recently there are certain loved ones who are incapable of meeting me at my level of emotional depth - I am aware of this. But that conscious awareness has not travelled into my unconscious mind, and I still find myself getting hurt. Another example regarding perfectionism - I know perfection is not real, I am aware of that, yet I still struggle to implement and internalise that belief deep down. A further observation, I realised I spend much of my life trying to become someone I believe will finally deserve the life I want. I keep believing that once I'm disciplined enough, productive enough, healed enough, successful enough, confident enough... then I'll finally feel worthy. I'm slowly learning that worth was never something I had to earn - it was something I had to recognise from within.

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The more I learn about myself, the deeper I want to go. And I'm learning that self-awareness and self-acceptance are about greeting every version of myself with honesty, curiosity, and compassion, rather than with judgement or shame.

Curiosity creates space. Judgement closes it.

For years, I misunderstood my own mind. Not because it was broken, but because I hadn't learned its language yet. And now, the more I grow, the less interested I am in judging my mind. I'm more interested in continuously understanding it.

Everything about yourself - your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours - contain snippets of information about you. Every emotion is speaking to us, trying to communicate. Learn to listen to what your mind and body is trying to tell you. Once you begin to listen to that language, you will slowly learn how to understand, accept, and heal old wounds.

Healing isn't about silencing the mind. Nor is it about eliminating the pain. Healing is about becoming more attuned with yourself. It's about slowly learning the language of yourself and responding with compassion instead of criticism.

I also want to caveat that self-awareness sounds beautiful, but it is not always comfortable. Sometimes you are faced with harsh realities and truths that you suppressed over the years. Sometimes during thorough introspection, you uncover things you wish weren't true. There will be parts of yourself you struggle to accept, and there will be memories you wish you could rewrite. But the goal of self-awareness isn't to discover all your flaws and weaknesses. It's to understand everything that has made you, you.

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All these aspects of myself I just described are not set in stone forever. I, as anyone, am constantly learning, adapting, and evolving. Therefore, continuous dedication to learning about each version of yourself is so impactful in the healing journey. Learning yourself is a lifelong process, and the version of me writing this today won't be the same version of me a decade from now. That's exactly the point. We aren't meant to finish learning ourselves - we're meant to keep introducing ourselves to each new version that emerges.

And that's the beauty of humankind. We are not fixed or stuck. Just like the ocean, we are never the same sea twice. The tides retreat. The storms pass. New currents form. Yet somehow, it is still the same ocean.

We spend so much of our lives trying to find ourselves. Perhaps we were never meant to be 'found'. Perhaps we were meant to keep learning our own language as it evolves, meeting each new version of ourselves with the same curiosity we'd offer someone we deeply love. And perhaps that is the greatest act of self-love: to spend a lifetime becoming fluent in our own ever-changing soul.