Self-Aware?

I wonder about people who say they are self-aware, who extol how much work they have done on themselves, who claim they have worked through their issues. It seems they often are the least self-aware, maybe because they think they have done their work, that they have conquered their dragons. Or maybe they say that stuff because they want to hide their fear of what they have yet to do.

I also wonder if you can really ever get rid of an issue. I know you can work on an issue, and make it so that it doesn't bother you as much as it once did, but can these kind of issues, these deep-seated, really problematic, subconscious problems ever go away? Or can you just make them more manageable, so that you can function normally, and only be affected by them on occasion?