A concept that changed my life is the concept of 'emotional slavery' used in Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication theory (NVC). He teaches that others are not always responsible for our feelings, and that we often feel the way we feel because an important universal human need is not met. Yet we are not taught to be aware of these feelings. He says that in our modern culture it's common for 1) men to be taught to deny their feelings and 2) women to be taught to deny their needs.
By listening to his talks and his audiobooks and using the definitions, frameworks and spiritual ideas behind NVC, I started to become more aware of the strategies I came to use, and the potential for evolving those.
Rosenberg believes that the adoption of NVC comes in three steps that we can all go through once we start applying his ideas. It starts with 1) 'emotional slavery' - where we are unaware of how we blame everything on others and make them wrong for what they do. Second we go through the 'obnoxious phase' where we feel angry when we become aware of our slavery ways, and where we realize that we might have been stuck in various strategies where we also thought we were responsible for others' feelings and needs. We are angry because we want that to change. Lastly comes 'emotional liberation', where we are learning to better understand our feelings and unmet needs and where we can start asking for what we want.
I practiced NVC together with my ex-partner, and in my eyes we both grew our self-awareness enourmously.