Some writers argue that the very plethora of self-help books is proof that they don’t work. Why, they say, would people keep writing them in the first place if they really solved problems? Over 45,000 self-help books were released in 2020 and it continues to be one of the fastest growing nonfiction categories. These titles range from books written by established therapists, neuroscientists, and researchers to science journalists, business professionals, and high school dropouts. The problem is not that self-help doesn’t work but that in the sea of content, it can be difficult or impossible to discern evidence-based solutions.
I think people should read everything, whether it is written by a high school dropout or a Harvard researcher. You can gain perspective from any walk of life, from any caliber of person no matter how educated. Just don’t believe everything you read. Don’t get your hopes up when you see articles, books, or coaching programs that offer the “7 Secrets to Beating Depression,” or the “3 Easy Steps for Conquering Fear.” I’ve fallen for this many times. I don’t mind the 13.95$ I paid for a bad book or the few dollars I shelled out for a crappy magazine subscription. I do mind the lost time and the unlearning I had to do to embrace healthier strategies of coping. One of the best and worst self-help books I ever read was David Goggins’s Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds. It had a lot of fabulous ideas. It was an excellent story, one filled with heroism and horrible trauma. Goggins’s belief in himself and the confidence of his prose was more than enough to make me fall down the rabbit hole. I identified with his difficult childhood and the way he turned to running and fitness as methods for growth. I too wanted to change my life, quit my shit job, and do something great.
Yet, while Goggins’s methods seemed to work for him, they made me feel terrible. I attempted to motivate myself by staring in the mirror and screaming obscenities. “Do you even want a better life?” I would ask myself, my lip quivering with anger. I would set momentous goals that I was almost certainly incapable of performing, especially since my confidence was so thoroughly shaken. In short, it was one of the most degrading experiences I have been through, and I did it all to myself. I kept doing it because I didn’t trust myself to know what was best for me. Why?
Because I made one of the cardinal sins of self-help. I idolized Goggins. And therefore, he must have been right, and it was me, Jeff, who was wrong. I couldn’t lie to myself forever though. I eventually removed Goggins from the pedestal and moved on to better strategies. And I learned to carry a healthy level of skepticism with me at all times. I read widely and crosschecked my sources. I became suspicious of the “good story” or life experience trap, making sure that I never relied on any one book as a guide for how to cope. I became an avid experimenter, an amateur scientist, whose only subject was himself. I obtained a certain amount of objectivity when reviewing my experiences, keeping a journal where I recorded my responses to different types of coping mechanisms and therapeutic practices. At the time I was learning how to face fear and better control my stress response. I kept a plethora of notes, detailing how I responded to each strategy, where I needed more practice, what worked over time, and what didn’t. This was important because true growth is never straightforward. True growth requires pain and with pain, there comes doubt, burnout, and despair. You have to know whether something isn’t working or whether it is working but the experience just plain sucks. Facing fear is hard. Facing depression is hard. Facing OCD is hard. It hurts. Physically and mentally. I had to make sure that I wasn’t putting myself through hell for no reason. I confirmed several sources for each therapy method I used. And with the confidence this gave me, I continued to push through the pain. Now there were still many outlandish methods I tried, some even finding their way into my mental health toolbox. I found that as long as I kept my mind open and was honest to myself about my responses then I could easily drop something that produced negative effects.
I had become suspicious of the good story or the life experience trap but by no means did I disregard these stories or stop using them for insight. Instead, I put them in the context of the science. As I expanded my reading on the fear response and the psychology of trauma, OCD, and anxiety, I had a better understanding of the methods that people used to face their issues. I could see how each story aligned with the science and could pick out those that were extravagant, misguided, or downright phony. With the proper perspective, in-depth life experiences give an extraordinary amount of clarity to abstract scientific ideas. For instance, I can read about the phenomenon of “choking” in sports, when the left brain takes over and the athlete focuses too much on the mechanics of form and overrides deep unconscious learning of the movement. A doctor who has never played sports may tell me all about the unconscious and the muscular rigidity that comes from thinking too hard about the mechanics of motion but what would a major-league batter tell me about the experience? The batter would take me into the moment. The batter would tell me of the terror of standing on the plate with the lights of the stadium in his eyes. The batter would tell me of his hands slick with sweat, his heart pounding, his throat dry, and his thoughts racing with visions of his contract ending or his teammates sneering at him as he walked back to the dugout with his shoulder slumped.
It is in the combining of information that you find truth. No one book will solve all your problems. There is no one path that you can follow that will carry you through life. This is why you must read, read, and read and question everything. Could I understand the batter’s story without understanding the psychology behind choking? Could I fully understand the science of choking without the context I get through the batter’s experience?
Now I want to turn back to the argument posted in the beginning. Some of the more educated self-help authors like to point out how crowded the genre is and how much misinformation is out there. They tell you that you need to get to work and stop reading and act instead of trying to find out what is wrong with you. This is laughable since the ones who make these suggestions are right there on the bookshelves with everyone else. Maybe they are a little more honest, but they still cash their checks at the end of the day. Self-help does work, just as therapy works. It just isn’t easy. My therapist offered similar caution to me when I started reading psychology books. She even asked me to stop reading self-help and psychology at one point. Luckily at that time I had cultivated my healthy level of skepticism and disregarded the well-meant suggestion. I think her idea was that I was too focused on solving my problems and that I wouldn’t find the answer in my books.
I don’t believe there is an answer. I believe there are thousands of answers to how to advance in life and I don’t believe that you can get there without learning. I think many therapists get frustrated by their clients reading self-help for some of the reasons I’ve mentioned above. People tend to self-diagnose, follow trendy advice, and use pseudo-therapeutic jargon to dismiss accountability for their actions. So for my last little piece of advice here I am going to advise you to trust no one, not even yourself. People are biased. All of us. There is a reason there is a peer review process for scientific papers. We need the objectivity of other people to give us distance from our work and our problems. This is why I never advocate for someone to choose self-help over therapy. But I will also never advocate for someone to choose only therapy. A therapist is with you one hour a week, or sometimes even one hour a month. How long do you want to wait to get better? You have to take the reins of your own life if you want to overcome your issues. No one will do it for you. A therapist is not the answer. A therapist is part of the answer. It is one tool out of many. And this therapist might not even be specialized in the disorder you are facing. They might not be qualified to treat you. Even if it is a good therapist, you might be facing several issues at once. I was struggling with OCD and was seeing a specialist for this disorder, yet I also had social anxiety that kept me from dating and seeking the job opportunities I wanted. My OCD therapist gave me excellent exposure and response prevention counseling, but she did little to help me face the social fears I wanted to overcome. I found these resources and strategies myself by reading several books on dating, anxiety, and the fear response. I discovered something called a fear hierarchy and used it to design my own treatment method. And I got great results. This never would have happened if I waited around.
I will save the most important part for last. Practice humility. Humility is one of the most important tools you can cultivate in life. Not only does it make people like you more, but it also prepares you for the mistakes and redirection you are going to experience. Going back to David Goggins’s book here I want to talk about my lack of humility. When I read his book, I was very gung ho. I would brag about my progress and try to look tougher than I felt. I had done this in college quite a few times, putting on a brave face and a cocky attitude to hide my intense fear of dating and social situations. I created a façade that I was constantly defending. When I failed, I would make excuses to others and myself. I felt I had to protect my ego, my image as a tough and resilient and cocky person. And feeling as if you are faking it all the time is horrible. You tell others how you want to be and inside you know that you aren’t living up to that version of yourself. It creates a feeling of perpetual deficiency. You are never enough. In this space, failure and weakness seem like the worst things in the world. If you practice humility you learn to accept yourself no matter where you are. No matter whether you just screwed up on a first date or failed your geometry test. There is no façade you have to live up to. You are perfectly happy with where you are in life.
Now that I write this, I wonder how many people will say that the above is common sense. It may seem that way but in reality, it isn’t. If we are honest with ourselves, we will all acknowledge that we make these mistakes, no matter how educated or enlightened we think we are. The writing above offers a shift that might seem simple at first. Use critical thinking, write out your responses to obtain objectivity, and practice humility. In reality, these simple things are the hardest things in the world to accomplish. They require daily attention and practice to get good at them. And they are only guiding principles, they don’t solve your problems. They don’t win you money or romantic partners or cure your depression. Yet if you use these guiding principles, you will be better equipped to do the long, hard work of going after your dreams and defeating the demons in your head.
Alright, this is Jeff Perryman, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.
