Some sessions about the development of self-awareness for the users of Associazione Uniamoci Onlus

In June and July, we carried out some activities from Guidelines “How to develop self-awareness” produced by Collaborative Economy without Barriers – CEB. The aim of this set of instruments is to help social workers to develop self-awareness in people with disabilities through exercises, suggestions and activities. Self-awareness is the ability to see ourselves clearly by introspection and it is very useful for the personal development. Being self-aware gives us the possibility to discover what is important to us, what we like and dislike and what we want. It is incredibly significant when we have to make a good choice in our lives and it makes us more proactive, with a better self-esteem and capable to see things from the others’ perspective.

The activities proposed during June and July are: “My self-portrait”, “Rate yourself”, “Me over time”, “Flower self-analysis”, “Be able to say no!”, “If you were a business product”, “What about me”, “Yes or no”. Some of those exercises were adapted to participants’ specific needs and current preferences.

“My self-portrait” is an easy exercise who allows to be introspective in a simple way and to observe ourselves’ representation in a graphic appearance. We asked to participants to draw their self-portrait and we left them free to choose the colour technique they preferred, without any indication trying to not affect their choices. Some participants had difficulties with the exercise because they did not want to draw themselves but someone else. Other participants produced very realistic self-portrait, demonstrating they were very able to see themselves as they are. Anyway, a lot of them when we asked questions like “how I feel with myself?”, “Am I happy?”, “Am I angry with myself?”, there they faced difficulties and the general trend was to answer in positive terms.

This trend was evident in some exercises like: “Rate yourself” “Me over the time” and “What about me”: these activities involve self-evaluation about core values, strengths and weaknesses. Participants usually depict themselves in totally opposite ways: or positive terms or negative ones. “Me over the time” shows that often there are unrealistic expectations as to what can be achieved or pessimistic feelings about the future. The use of graphic and more targeted tools such as Flower self-analysis, on the contrary, allowed us to focus more on what they appreciated: probably putting their name in the middle of the sheet and answering questions contained in petals, made the exercise more fun, relaxing and easier for the participants.
“If you were a business product” was an impactful activity: even those participants who did not want to draw that, had the desire to tell which product they wanted to be. All participants could speak about themselves through this symbol and give a price to it, which referred to the idea of ​​self-awareness and self-esteem in a less direct way than other experiences, but very significant and perhaps more targeted.
Some of them identified with some objects they were wearing such as a pair of glasses, but they gave different characteristics to their products. For example, the pair of glasses could be cheap, modern but accessible to all citizens of the world. Or someone has thought about an awfully expensive jewellery line of a single uniform colour.

“Be able to say no!” was one of the most appreciated activities: everyone stood in circle and had to repeat “No!” after the educator. Nobody had difficulties to do that, making the game funnier and expressing their energy in an effective way.

Those activities helped to develop self-awareness among participants and for us, as educators, it was very interesting to discover their strengths and weaknesses, what they like and dislike, what they think about themselves and what they want to improve to be happier.