Is Introspection Painful?

I recently heard Jordan Peterson say that introspection is painful. That it is difficult to admit your weaknesses to yourself.

In my experience it’s a lot less painful to be open about your weaknesses than to pretend they don’t exist. The reality is that until you admit your weaknesses to yourself you will live and feel them.

In my opinion, that which is not expressed becomes you.

Recognising and admitting my weaknesses is one of the most liberating and transforming processes I have been through. It’s so fucking amazing that I want to have deeper, darker failings to bring into the light. Sometimes I start laughing out loud at the fun I’m having revealing my shittiest inner workings to myself.

When I out my failings to myself it feels as though they actually come out of me, that they are exorcised. I’m now looking at them like a scientist peering at a sample under a microscope. Objectively. With amused curiosity. I don’t get all defensive about it or try to hide it. I think of these failings as like a cyst that can impact you in varied, subtle and often unknown ways, until you cut it out and it’s just a cyst to be examined in its own right.