Why is it so hard to be objective about one's self?

Or that the further you move from a particular moment-- you're able to be objective about a particular moment only because it occurred in the past. It's hard to see ourselves--it seems that we're trying to move away from the imaginary or the fantasized self so that we can incorporate reality. With integrating new information comes change or the morphing of self, which is necessary so that we can escape emotional petrifaction.

Freud writes, "In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it - the present, that is to say, must have become the past - before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future."

Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

Similarly, why is it so hard to tolerate a still image ourselves--it seems a healthy sense self-criticism or self deprecation allows room for growth.

In a Charlie Rose interview Cate Blanchett states "There a sense of not being able to grow with people's love of one particular thing you've done. And so I think the best thing to do is to remove one's self as much as you can so you can maintain a connection to the world around you. That's ideally what acting is, it's revealing what it is to be human."

Charlie Rose interview December 26, 2006