The Toxic Trait of Self-Help
By serving the individual, it fails the collective
Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash
Raised in the Midwest and coming from a farming lineage, I have a built-in do-it-yourself mentality.
When I was a kid, I needed little to no outside motivation to keep me going when times were hard. I had cat posters on my bedroom walls reminding me to “hang in there!”
No one—not my parents, not my teachers—ever needed to discipline me. I was fully capable of attending to that task myself. When I made a big mistake at my first corporate job, my boss, having noted this about me, told me I could “kick myself”. He knew that I would do just that—no shakedown needed.
For many years I was a long-distance runner. Definitely the kind of activity in which you have yourself and only yourself to keep you going. Whether I’ve faced relationship breakups, mental or physical health challenges, or just general loss or disappointment, I have only ever depended on myself and my positive (berating) self-talk to get back up and out there again.
I prided myself on my resilience. My bounce-back ability. My seeming endless endurance, which I proudly inherited from my mother.
As you can see, I have always been an easy target for the self-help industry.
Never let them see you sweat.
You are the master of your fate.
There’s always a silver lining.
If you can imagine it, you can create it.
Quitters never win and winners never quit.
You can heal your life.
Your thoughts create your reality.
The mottos and mantras of the self-help and spiritual growth community are so closely tied with those of our American culture as a whole, that it is a fair question whether they are the same thing in the end. They do serve the same master after all: capitalism.
American culture, like the self-help community, is focused solely on individual efforts, successes, and failures. It does not consider these things within the context of the whole. Like the self-help philosophies, it pressures individuals to make their own success in the world—as it is. The status quo, in other words, is kept safe from our purview.
In this way, self-help aficionados can ignore cultural and systemic barriers that might be in the way of traditional success. They can downplay sexism, racism, ableism, classism, or any other ism or phobia, because you can do whatever you set your mind to.
Self-help suggests that your struggles originate in your thinking, or maybe your habits. Negativity, pessimism, scatteredness–these are not the mindsets of winners! We ought to learn how to “fake it until you make it!” Practice good vibes only! And get back on that horse!
In the self-help world, barriers are there for us to personally overcome. They are not something that we should all work together to remove. How else would we develop our muster, our grit, if not through hardship, right?
In the self-help mindset, opportunities abound if we just think positively, hone our habits, and micromanage our self-talk. The only time we talk about failure or loss is after we’ve gotten back up again. If we don’t, well, uh, try try again?
Self-help spokespeople love to share good rags-to-riches stories. Meanwhile, what are they doing to push for decriminalizing poverty and serving the poor?
Think about how, in a world of self-help mentality, we see each other as competitors. Other people are a barrier to overcome, the influence to win over, the prop to manipulate.
Contrast this with a (imaginary) world in which we don’t see the world as the dog-eat-dog arena we’ve been sold. How might our lives feel when we seek well-being for everyone on the planet?
The toxic trait of the self-help world is right in the name: “self.”
And it is all about the self. As if we are the only ones responsible for our situation in life. As if we live in Wall-E type bubbles. As if we all have the same access to the right foods, alternative health care, and scented bubble bath.
There is nothing that serves the status quo of our society and those who benefit from it than a populace that believes that everything is within their control to change. One that is so determined to fix the tiny swatch of their own lives without considering the entirety of the social fabric.
No wonder capitalism quietly co-opted the self-help industry. As long as we are selling all kinds of lifestyle hacks for greater health, the medical system doesn’t have to consider how it fails us. And so it doesn’t.
If we are each fully capable of becoming rich on the wings of our own work ethic and drive, then the employment industry doesn’t have to reconsider minimum wage. And so it hasn’t.
If we can all make lots of friends and influence people by just learning a few tips and tricks, then none of us have to spend time learning growing our empathy and compassion. And so, well, we don’t.
The self-help industry is not really interested in helping us grow. It is designed to keep us distracted from what real issues that stand in the way of all of our well-being truly are. More than a seaweed wrap, we need clean water, clean air, fair housing, good public transportation, and good-paying jobs for all of us. But as long as we are busy staring into our magic mirror, we can tune out the plight of the other. They are just attracting what their energy is putting out, right? Or maybe it’s just their karma? Bring me another mango smoothie with flax seeds, please.
“Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt,” said the Roman poet Juvenal. It might be mantras and motivation these days instead of bread and circuses, but they do the job just as well.
Most of us feel the painful divide among us all. We see the wealth class growing fatter and more and more of us falling below the poverty line. What to do? Start a juice fast? Or come together to push for meaningful tax reform?
I am so over the forced, regurgitated content of the self-help spaces. I want change that is real and impactful. Something that goes beyond just scratching an itch to feel good. I want work that is grounded in the innate connection between our personal health and the health of the collective. I want to explore how, by lifting up those around us, our own well-being improves —as much if not more so than a six-week series of float sessions.
The self-help message boils down to “rising above.” But what about diving beneath? What if breakdowns and failures and losses do not come into our lives just to be pushed off of? What if they are a part of a very natural, very healthy, life cycle in which we can all participate?
It is not enough for us to be able to pay our medical bills through crowdfunding. We have got to demand a better medical system. It is not enough for us to be able to juggle multiple jobs and eek out a living. We need to join our voices in a common cause. If we want to be self-care advocates, then fine. But we must also become whole-care activists.
Let us do more than try to overcome systemic barriers that exist for some and not for others. Let’s remove them all.
Let us do more than commit to eating clean, organic foods. Let’s make sure that these kinds of foods are available to all people, in all places and at all income levels.
Let us do better than place all of the responsibility for our well-being at our own feet. Let us learn how to lean on each other, carry each other through hard times, practice empathy, and never, ever look away.
Let us cease placing the blame for anyone’s situation on their shoulders alone. We are all complicit in building this world, and so we are culpable when we look away, too. Let us seek a greater truth behind the lies and propaganda of personal responsibility.
Making us believe that we are isolated and alone in our journeys is a tactic that keeps us from trusting each other, learning from each other, and supporting each other. Given the growing rifts in our society, we don’t need more “self” anything. We do need, however, a lot more “we.”
We do not need to continue investing in self-care. We do not need to continue to hand our money over to an industry that will just tell us we have to do it ourselves. Wee need communal care. Devotion to one another. And a commitment to shared responsibility and shared experiences in a shared world.
Self-help is self-serving. And these days, that’s the last thing we need.
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