self-consciousness

Noun

self-consciousness (uncountable)

1. The awareness of the self as an entity.
   • [A]nd that one great and all-important occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the rise of self-consciousness — that is, the coming of the mind to a more or less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of...1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., page 165
2. Shyness; a feeling of unease in social situations.
   • Adam Gopnik has, by many accounts, including his own, a lovely life. A longtime staff writer for the New Yorker and bestselling author, Gopnik lives in Manhattan with his wife, Martha, a film-maker, and their two children, and he moves in the kind of circles that allow him to drop casual lines into...2017 December 8, Hadley Freeman, “Adam Gopnik: ‘You’re waltzing along and suddenly you’re portrayed as a monster of privilege’”, in The Guardian