Self-help is my crack
I’m hiding it from people unless you’re addicted too.
In which case I’ll ask which books, vids, and or inspirational gurus, methods, quotes are you into? *writes them down (if I don’t already consume it/them).
This journey first started subconsciously with the occasional inspirational quote in my 30's. It started decades before that when Walden books still existed (remember that store? or Borders?) and even earlier when I was like nine or something and I noticed my aunts extensive collection of Chicken Soup books. If you don’t know Chicken Soup for the soul books it’s pretty OG when it comes to self-help using real life stories to motivate and inspire (although I always wondered if they were more like “based” on a true story stories).
Fast forward two decades, at around 28 I hit a quarter life crisis, moved to a new state, started up college — again — and switched careers. The spiral of my mental and physical health was real. I recalled my aunt — who is spiritually devout, honest, a hard-working believer with RA — and decided self-help can’t be so bad. My aunt had been living with debilitating RA for decades, surely that — or her consistent faith — fed her motivation and courage to keep going?
Took me another couple of years because I’m a stubborn Taurus who believes they can overcome all things in life without help (it’s really a positive thing too) but finally reaching thirty I googled some information and came across a plethora of self-help content that had no end. There’s self-help for the fit folks, for the design divas, for the introverts, dateless, spiritual, lazy, poor, and even me (I fat — past tense of fit — in all those categories at some point I’m sure). I honestly just clicked a random video and months later I swear I thought of myself as some ultra inspired Buddha.
Which you can imagine must have been quite annoying to anyone with a problem or anyone who would involuntarily listen to my advice about their problem. Because that’s what self-help does! It makes you an asshole.
Ha. No but seriously self-help makes you invincible. It gives you disturbingly obvious tools to tackle everyday feelings and problems.
It gives you a cyber community (whom you never want to speak to or ever see — even their avatars hurt your eyes) who are just as addicted and assholely as you!
So of course I felt obligated — like those boujee-stuck up-upper middle class-make the students teach themselves professors —yes, obligated to impress upon all my inspirational and motivational knowledge to anyone whom I deemed needed it.
Except many people didn’t need the self-help advice I had to share. They love their (yes, I’m going to say it) — normal, drama ridden, everything stays the same — lives. They’re moderately happy. And even at times more than happy. Their therapist is social media and the little serotonin boosts they get from doing a little bit better than some of their friends or a random stranger and having that liked or shared in their social circles or on their social platforms.
This year, I weened myself away from the self-help — the motivational guru’s, the life coaches, and the spiritual speakers — and honestly, when at first it seemed like I was done and could live like a normal person, it got scary. It got scary because I came to rely on the/their words like a Christian to their bible, like an addict to their drug. Self-help helped me cope and find answers. Removing it altogether put me in a place where I was expected to remember all that I learned, to be able to be my own cheerleader, to use the methods that worked to bring me out of mood swings and funks. That was a lot of responsibility. That was too overwhelming.
I took a vacation this month and drove to California from Texas. It’s about 1,500 miles. In the middle of the desolate desert I clung onto the only whittling stations where a pastor gave out inspirational sermons. Eventually I switched to auxiliary devices but on the return trip back I allowed myself to listen to an inspirational audio book and let the sermons come as they came. I caved.
Maybe self-help isn’t as addictive as crack but it definitely gave me that psychological confidence that I craved. And when tempered — like my aunt with her collection of Chicken Soup for the soul books — self-help is well…helpful. And although I felt the need to hide it in the past because I perceived self-help as a drug, or as embarrassing, or as a back door way of cheating at life, today, not hiding it at all, I am a healthier person mentally and physically because of self-help — even better I’m practicing restraint on the whole giving advice where it isn’t asked for thing. Go me.
