Why self-help books are like Instagram
Howdy readers and personal development enthusiasts!
Today’s topic is about self-help books and whether they are as useful as we need them to be or not.
First, some context.
Some years ago -7-10 - wow!, I was super exited wondering the bookstores and discovering authors and scientists that I knew from academia starting to write popular science books and self-help books.
They explained in very simple terms the concepts and methods that I learned in school or that I was passionate about.
I absorbed those books religiously.
When I started to earn my own money from therapy, books were my favourite spending. Especially when now I could buy them new and enjoy them.
Then I started to gain experience as a therapist, and I used to recommend books - self-help books - to my clients to supplement the sessions.
I always recommended books that I had previously read and were congruent with my expertise and values as a therapist (aka: evidence-based based, mostly based on cognitive behavioural therapy).
Then I noticed something. I used to feel anxiety any time I was reading some of these books. Not only anxiety, but a feeling of discontent.
My mind was always looking for ways to improve my life. My thinking, my feeling, especially my behavioural conduct.
It’s like I never did things good enough, often enough, long or short enough.
There was always something that I could do better.
Fast forward 7-10 years I feel like the shelf space of self-help books has quadrupled. You can now find books on any kind of self-help.
The funny thing is that I start to see the same discontent & anxiety at my clients or my friends about different aspects of their lives - be it parenting (“Oh, I read that you shoudn’t say that to your child” expressed with a defeated and sometimes ashamed voice) or anxiety (“Oh, but in that book, it says that you can rid yourself of anxiety just by doing this - why can’t I do this? What is wrong with me?”)
Nothing is wrong with you.
The books are written in certain and rigid terms because nuances don’t sell.
The information is black or white because we don’t like uncertainty.
And the list can go on.
Reading self-help books compulsively as a way to improve your life is like comparing yourself with others on social media.
Yes, you read that right. I am comparing self-help books with Instagram.
As is in Instagram, where you don’t see the context of the person you are comparing yourself to, the same is true with self-help books - they cannot see your context. They just can’t.
The worst part is that comparison usually comes with a sense of hopelessness. It’s useless to try to work on my anxiety. If I cannot get rid of it as I read in X book, then why try?
The effect is that either:
I give up and just resign myself to a miserable life, or
I work myself crazy doing everything in my power to reach that impossible goal and live with another type of anxiety.
I am not denying that there might be people who are genuinely helped by the self-help books, I know some.
But what these people usually do is that they integrate the info into their lives, not the other way around.
So next time you want to pick up a self-help book to help yourself, just ask yourself what you want to take from it. And if you catch yourself feeling discontent and anxiety about yoyr life when reading it, just pause a bit.
Good luck.