This question drives the exploration of how outward focus and the advisor role can protect us from self-examination and hinder personal growth.
Observing others reveals traits that influence their behavior, achievements, posture, flexibility, expression, and responsiveness. When we focus on another person, we quickly see their strengths, weaknesses, and reasons for struggle. Observing others is faster and clearer than observing ourselves.
Focusing on another person’s state, rather than our own feelings, helps us objectively assess how their condition relates to their life. Observing from the outside creates the emotional distance necessary for impartial analysis and enables us to spot inconsistencies, rigidity, superficiality, or loss of functionality in others without disturbing our sense of safety.
When advising, a person draws on knowledge gained through experience, learning, or observation. Advising can reflect good intentions, a wish to help, or to build a relationship. It also shifts attention away from oneself, creating a role that makes others less likely to ask about us. This role offers competence and clarity, reducing the chance that we must look inward.
Adopting the role of an expert creates predictability in relationships. When others recognize us as someone who can advise, they begin turning to us with questions and expectations. These expectations allow us to maintain a structure and hierarchy in the relationship, providing a sense of stability. The structure of the role reduces the likelihood that we would have to present ourselves as in disorder, vulnerable, or confused. In this way, we can maintain contact with others without simultaneously having to delve into our own inner state.
Tension in the body helps maintain this structure. Tight muscles reduce the flow of our own feelings about how we are, which makes it easier to stay focused on the outer world. Through tension, we create a sense of restraint that prevents individual inner impulses from developing into a conscious experience and into a broader, deeper awareness of ourselves. Tension creates a feeling of external clarity, direction, and efficiency, and makes it harder for others to feel and see us. In this state, it seems we are functioning coherently, even though contact with the inner world is limited.
When attention remains directed outward for a long time, sensitivity to the inner state gradually decreases, leading to an illusion of relief. The body becomes accustomed to a mode of functioning in which movement is aimed at efficiency and completing tasks. The feeling that something is not in order diminishes or disappears. In this state, a belief appears that there is no need for an inner look, that it is better this way. When bodily signs appear, such as fatigue, stiffness, reduced flexibility, or loss of adaptability, we often attribute them to external circumstances or to aging. We rarely understand them because of a long-term absence of contact with ourselves.
Advising others becomes a way to sustain control and avoid self-exploration. When we point out what others should change in their posture, breathing, or movement, our sense of knowing is reinforced. Believing we understand others suggests we also understand ourselves, affirming our own goodness and justifying advice-giving. This illusion of knowledge fosters a feeling of inner peace and competence, making further self-exploration seem unnecessary. Advising thus serves as a protective mechanism that keeps us at a distance from our true feelings.
The adviser role protects against intrusion into our inner world. When we help others, they seldom ask about us. By providing information, we leave no room for questions about our state of affairs. Others may also hesitate to challenge an expert, wary of negative consequences and the possibility of needing their help later. This creates a balance that keeps us unexposed. Such a lack of exposure safeguards us from facing our own inner tensions.
Looking inward often reveals unexpressed feelings, incomplete understandings, and unnoticed tensions. Therefore, we develop ways to redirect attention. One is excessive care for others. Caring for someone else helps us connect with a sense of meaning. Then life seems directed and grounded, reducing the need to explore what lies beyond our regulation.
In this way, we develop a system focused on maintaining outward balance—being responsive, informed, and helpful—while neglecting our inner state. Over time, unchecked tensions become normalized, disconnecting movement and making breathing less fluid. The relationship to oneself grows superficially correct but increasingly distant and less authentic.
Gradually directing attention inward requires conditions that enable a sense of safety. Once these conditions are present, the body begins to release tension when it has enough time and perceives that change does not threaten its structure. Over time, it then becomes possible to feel those parts that were previously hidden. At this stage, the difference between role and state is reestablished. When a person senses this difference, they can gradually reduce the need for the role and begin to deal more with the state. For this, they need time and energy. They gain these by focusing less on others and more on themselves, while using others as a mirror. Importantly, this process is neither fast nor linear. Unfortunately for the ego, it unfolds according to the body’s timing. With every shift toward greater presence, advising becomes a complement to experience, rather than a substitute for it. As a person begins to perceive themselves, their view of others becomes gentler—less focused on fixing, and more on understanding and influencing through example rather than lecturing. In this way, we move from the mindset of ‘do not look at what I do, but listen to what I say,’ to one where example draws others in.
By directing attention inward, we realize inner order is not something given by advisors, but something we cultivate ourselves. When that order shapes our daily life, the need for traditional roles shifts. Being an adviser becomes just one option, not the default. What then matters is not who knows more, but who is more in touch with themselves and grows from that awareness. Improvement rooted in self-perception is deeper and more lasting than that based solely on intellectual understanding, which remains fragile.
Conclusion
If feelings of recognition and a desire for change arise while reading this explanation, it makes sense to create conditions in which this change can gradually be realized. When an individual recognizes that their way of functioning is based on maintaining tension, roles, and an outward orientation, they can gradually begin to develop a new relationship to their body, movement, and inner states.
Developing such a relationship requires direction, time, and an appropriate process. The AEQ 2.0 approach provides a structure for this process to unfold safely and effectively. With a combination of somatic exercises, sensory deepening, and an understanding of bodily patterns, contact is gradually established with previously excluded parts of the body. This enables reducing tension and establishing greater inner coherence.
If the reader wants a more authentic connection with themselves and seeks to transcend the structure that makes them an adviser, controller, or knower, AEQ 2.0 offers a tool to start this process. Learning unfolds gradually, at the body’s own rhythm, and under conditions adapted to emotional maturity.
Work in this direction does not mean giving up the role. Rather, it means upgrading it. It does not lead to loss of competence, but grounds competence in inner relationships. In this way, a state gradually develops where functioning is coherent, responsive, and rooted in one’s presence.
Aleš Ernst, author of AEQ method 2.0
