Self-Awareness Needs a Witness

One person’s opinion of me arrived in Crestone before I did.

A local friend I’d made before moving here full time had decided I was her worst enemy. She cut me off without explanation. Within a few weeks of arriving in Crestone, I decided to start teaching dance and posted an announcement to the local Facebook groups. Immediately, this person commented on my post, attacking my character publicly. Mortified and upset, I found a way to reach her directly and asked for an explanation. “I have no moral dilemma telling people in Crestone about what you did,” she said. “I want you to leave.”

But I wasn’t leaving, and I had no idea what I did.

For the next year, I dreaded every social interaction with someone new. Was this person told some horrible, untrue story about me? Is this person allied with the woman who hates me?

I wasn’t totally unfamiliar with this kind of conflict. My adolescence was marked by repeated bullying from girls I’d considered friends. In elementary school, one girl was eventually expelled for how far it went. That history, combined with a difficult relationship with my mother, had left me with a deep wariness toward women.

But what made this situation unique was the small town setting. This woman’s version of me arrived before anyone had the chance to form their own impression. I had no established reputation to fall back on and no accumulated goodwill. I was constantly worried that her story had preceded me in every social setting.

My first year in Crestone was challenging. I wanted to connect with people, but putting myself out there felt genuinely destabilizing.

Then, unexpectedly, she reached out. She explained and apologized. No excuses, no qualifications. It turned out that she’d been told lies about me by someone else. Lies she’d believed. She admitted she’d never given me a chance to tell my side of the story. Over tea, face-to-face communication provided us both with much-needed clarity, and now, two years later, we have a beautiful friendship that we both cherish.

Recently, I was involved in a somewhat similar conflict. I got wind that someone was badmouthing me, claiming I had bad intent without ever directly communicating with me. When I realized this was happening, I waited for the familiar social dread to arrive, but it never did.

I started to ask myself why this situation wasn’t affecting me in the same way the other situation had. It wasn’t that I knew I’d done nothing wrong, because I’d known that the first time too. And it wasn’t simply that I had more friends now, because regardless of how many people I have in my corner, I still care about their opinion of me. Something deeper had shifted.

Then it hit me. I realized that my sense of self was no longer fractured in the way it once was.

I grew up isolated. Aside from my parents, I didn’t have any significant adult mentors or elders. I had very few friends growing up, made almost zero friends in college, and lived a pretty anonymous early adult life in densely populated cities.

Up until recently, if someone had asked me to describe myself as far as character attributes, I would have stumbled. I assumed I was nice enough, likeable, capable, reliable, and trustworthy. But I wasn’t sure about any of it. In my late twenties, I had done a lot of work to cultivate a greater sense of self-awareness and self-love, but upon arriving to Crestone in my early thirties, I was still unsure about how I came across to others.

So what’s changed? Over the past few years living in Crestone, I’ve had the experience of being witnessed, over and over again. I’ve shown up in many different contexts alongside many different people. Each of them has mirrored something back to me. Not flattery, just honest reflection and feedback. I no longer have to speculate about who I am, because I am surrounded by mirrors.

Mirrors don’t always show us what we want to see. If we find ourselves in the same conflict repeatedly, or notice the same dynamic playing out with different people across different chapters of our life, that pattern is also a reflection — uncomfortable, but clarifying. Witnesses don’t only confirm who we are at our best. Sometimes they show us things we might need to take ownership of and improve.

Of course, self-awareness isn’t something we can construct by way of external reflection and validation alone. The interior work matters, and provides an essential foundation. But the internal work can only take us so far.

When I got to Crestone, someone else’s story about me had already arrived. For a year, I lived in the gap between who I hoped I was and who I feared strangers thought I was. What I’ve gained since is a more accurate reflection of myself than any rumor could overwrite.

One person’s negative opinion of us lands differently in the context of community. When the people around us know both sides, their read on the situation carries context and credibility. That’s what witnesses and true community give us: the kind of self-awareness that holds even when someone tries to shake it.

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To read more of my writing on social anxiety and communal living, check out this post…