How Self-Help is a Dangerous Money-Sucking Scheme Hurting You
Self-help as an industry is full of lies, myths, and dangers. It’s a community of experts and everyday consumers that have techniques and ways of living to heal anxiety, treat depression, and generally improve the quality of life.
Self-help is the act of improving yourself without reliance on others. It extends beyond motivation books and popular psychology to include other ways humans communicate. There’s forums, everyday conversations, seminars, webinars, and books.
The term “self-help junkie” was coined to describe someone who attends seminars and buys many books, DVDs, and CDs on the subject. Junkies fuel the $8 billion dollar industry in America alone.
Self-help addicts are sometimes like heroin addicts jumping between experts wanting their next fix. The educational sources become a source of comfort and security to avoid what really is going on as they intellectualize lessons and never build the learning only possible from action. This article reveals the harsh reality about this dangerous industry that some gurus wish you didn’t know.
The Two Dangers of Self-Help
Pennsylvania clinical psychologist Dr John Norcross says self-help can damage you in two ways. Both are costly, time-consuming, and energy-depleting.
The first general danger of self-help is the direct harm, which includes a misdiagnosis or ignorance of a declining condition. Think of it like a well-intended mother issuing aspirin to remove a headache when the cause is cancer. The dangers are real except with personal development the issues are not physical, but often mental and emotional. Selection of the right helpful material is tricky. A wrong decision can leave you worse off.
There’s a lot going in your mind and body unknown to you. You can know your body is sick because you have a headache and feel weak, but you could have one of hundreds of potential health problems originating from poor eating, harmful drinking, disease, and so forth. Similarly, we are unaware of the hidden operations in the mind. It takes a humble attitude of acceptance to respect a lack of mental and emotional control over your life.
The second general danger of self-help according to Dr Norcross is the indirect harm. You exhaust your physical, mental, and emotional efforts on something unsuccessful so you beat yourself up over an inability to change. Once you believe you cannot change, rarely do you change.
Think of self-help like a Do-It-Yourself job at home. You can probably do good landscaping, fix doors, place flooring, and paint. Books, television shows, and a few friends provide you with good advice. However, you wouldn’t remove the home’s foundations, redesign its shape, or relocate it by yourself. Attempts to solve unknown problems or create something entirely new leaves you frustrated believing it cannot be done. People try to redo their minds from the ground up then unfortunately fall short of what they want and believe failure is destiny.
I’ll further expand on these two general dangers in this article. Please note that I am not against self-help. I love it. I teach it! It empowers you to improve your relationships, move ahead in your career, make friends, and enjoy life more. Self-help teaches you to create your reality instead of feeling what is will always be. What you need to get the most from personal development is an awareness of the dangers and myths in self-help shared to you in this article; otherwise you risk wasting time, money, and effort – and ultimately believe something is inherently wrong with you.
Thoughts are Everything, the Truth About Emotions, and How Self-Help Almost Killed Me
The empowerment given through self-help usually originates from improving how you think. The motto is “think better, live better”.
Thoughts are powerful, yet they are not everything contrary to what is preached by advocates of the law of attraction. To think your universe can form from thoughts alone is absurd.
An overt focus on thoughts ignores the side therapists attend to: emotions. Our thoughts influence our emotions and vice-a-versa, yet the influence is limited. You cannot think your way to emotional healing. After all, thoughts and rationalizations are “safe”. It’s easy to intellectually process your problems and talk about them with complete emotional disconnect when you’re afraid of vulnerability and revealing your real self.
I’ll prove how intellectualizing and thinking stops emotional wealth. Dr Steven Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), who I had the pleasure to work with for Big Talkers, has a nice technique I’ll share below. Give the label of “good” or “bad” to the follow emotions:
- Happiness
- Anger
- Guilt
- Joy
- Sadness
- Shame
Done? I’m guessing you labeled happiness and joy as “good” and anger, guilt, sadness, and shame as “bad”. Take a look at this, however. What if your mother died. Is sadness bad? What if you punched your child. Is guilt bad? When you put this into perspective, the thoughts you attach to “negative emotions” shifts.
How do you respond when something is bad? You avoid bad things because they represent pain. If you believe anger is bad, you avoid your anger, feel resentful, misunderstand people, and struggle to manage conflict. If you believe embarrassment is bad, you avoid embarrassing situations and never build the confident social life you want. You spend your life running from what you don’t want.
I almost killed myself because of emotional avoidance (as I share in this video that you MUST watch). I lived in depression trying to avoid things like anger, shame, and embarrassment because these were “bad feelings”. Not letting feelings flow and trying to manipulate them increased their strength.
Dr Hayes says we have a dangerous habit of problem solving with our mind. You need to stop critiquing the experiences in you and just let them flow. Observe them as they occur to you instead of worrying and trying to fix them. This is groundbreaking material I won’t go into further detail because it’s all covered in my Big Talk Training Course and Big Talkers, which I highly recommend you get if this article resonates with you.
Some self-help teachers encourage emotional expression. Students may practice poor expressions of anger and assertiveness, however, then kill themselves like Sydney resident Rebekah Lawrence. This is an extreme case, yet I want you to value the messages sent by your emotions and acknowledge thoughts are not everything.
Positive Thinking
Feeling down or thinking negatively? This self-help CD will cheer you up, but not in the way its creators intended.
Positive thinking is taught everywhere. Every mental health professional I’ve heard recommends positive thinking. I teach it as well. For example, in my Big Talk course I teach people when approaching others for conversation to assume friendship. This reduces anxiety, creates attractive body language, and makes talking easy. Positive thinking helps you better interact with people and them interact with you.
The danger with positive thinking that I see in many “pseudo-spiritual aka law of attraction” teachings is they take positive thinking beyond what psychologists believe is healthy. Dr Norcross says flamboyant claims are made.
Cancer, rape, and poor-wealth do not consistently originate from misaligned thoughts. Victims are made to feel they squandered their mind. They are blamed for environmental influences. Self-blame is unnecessary contrary to what self-help teaches because it perpetuates resistance and shame.
Your entire life is not a product of your thinking. With excessive positive thinking you risk building a life that excludes reality. You may go to exorbitant lengths to avoid a problem by looking for the easy way out. Positiveness becomes escapism.
Your comfort zone can stagnate along with the quality of your life through avoidance. Carl Jung says your dark-side (what you want to avoid) – not the light-side you probably love to focus on – contains the gold you seek. I look back on my life and see that the areas where I have taken a step of courage to breach my comfort zone, I have transformed. Look at your life and you will see the moments you acted in the face of fear created the greatest results. That is the core of transforming your social life with Big Talk and my coaching.
Self-Discipline Myth
Along similar lines as the exaggerated power of thoughts is the undue emphasis on self-discipline. Self-control and courage is important to help you confront what you prefer to avoid because it pushes you outside your comfort zone. However, it depends on the definition of discipline.
Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled says, “With total discipline we can solve all problems.” The more I think about the statement, the more I see its truth. Again, though, it depends on what is meant by “discipline”.
When self-discipline is understood as willpower, self-discipline is overrated – even dangerous. I’ve heard many people express discouragement over their lack of discipline when it’s understood as willpower. They think something is wrong with themselves because they cannot change a habit like wake up early or quit smoking. Eventually they believe change is impossible because they have insufficient “discipline”. We’re made to feel as low-value humans for our innate habitual patterns.
Humans are autonomous creatures, not creatures of willpower. Studies prove 90% or more of your behavior is habitual. We think we’re in conscious control of our lives, but we have behavioral and thought patterns repeating day-after-day. Your patterns simply vary in order.
This isn’t to say habits are permanent, yet to change they require focused effort and systems to assist change. How you use your limited willpower determines if you alter unwanted autonomy, remove a bad habit, and create the life you want.
Most people, unfortunately, waste their limited willpower on resisting people, thoughts, and feelings. Big Talk readers know the importance of acceptance in acknowledging the reality of a problem. Acceptance means you humbly acknowledge your limited willpower, the degree you influence the problem, and the time it takes to stop what you don’t want and get what you do want.
Four Self-Help Myths
- Myth: Eliminate negative thoughts. Truth: Jennifer Borton in a study found people who attempt to abolish negative thoughts obsess about them. What you focus on expands.
- Myth: Focus on the positive when you’re down. Truth: Harvard professor Daniel Wegner found our limited mental resources cannot maintain our positive mood when we’re in the blues. Create a gratitude list beforehand so thinking is minimal.
- Myth: Exterminate guilt. Truth: Guilt like all emotions contain a message according to Dr Harriet Haberman. Let guilt lead you to forgiveness and positive change.
- Myth: Vent anger. Truth: Iowa State University researcher Brad Bushman found pillow-punching and lifting weights may intensify anger. Reduce anger by distracting yourself through a comedy show, for example, but solve the problem that made you angry otherwise it’ll repeat itself.
What’s Really Going On?
Can you see the pattern of problems in most self-help? Thoughts are not everything, emotions are overlooked, positive thinking is taken too far, and self-discipline is overrated. There is a sinister amount of focus on intellectualizing, which drives the typical self-help junkie. Any self-help junkie will tell you they have a problem with “using what they know”.
Change can feel impossible by yourself. Years go by as you become a self-help junkie and question whether your dreams can become a reality. It’s okay to seek assistance from a therapist, counselor, or expert in your problematic area. Someone cannot drive you to change, but you cannot change without a drive to change.
How then do thousands of people around the globe change their life? Ad Bergsma in the Journal of Happiness Studies questioned whether self-help books help. Bergsma says hope is often what makes self-improvement programs effective. The downside of hope is it leaves you vulnerable to exaggerated claims and an empty wallet.
This post is not intended to degrade anyone in particular or self-help. Many authors and bloggers do their best to help, yet intention is not all that’s needed to affect change.
Naming all self-help books bad or good is like saying all team leaders are bad or good. It’s stupidly narrow-minded. Great materials exist. You can work on yourself with great results.
Personal development is the key behind my continuing growth. Self-help is just one part of it. I encourage it to be yours as well. Be wise in your choices and be aware of the self-help dangers shared in this article.
I feel my subscribers and website visitors need an awareness of this reality. If you’ve read this to feel better about yourself, that wasn’t my intent. Be honest about what you are avoiding. See the little control you have over your autonomous behavior. Invest in courses for your personal growth. Accepting these lessons could be your first-step towards change – and yes, I am giving you hope.
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Update: What are your favorite songs to hype you up for pumping iron? For me, anything by King Tiesto.
I agree with everything stated except the notion that we are not in charge of our autonomous behavior. In fact, “autonomous” connotes an independence or an ability to take charge of ourselves. We creat our own habits! Yes, there are factors that constrain or limit what we can do, but certainly we can make desired changes within those limits. For example, I naturally want to sleep in late and start my day around 10 or 11 a.m. Yet because I was a competitive swimmer, I arose at 4:00 every morning for swim practice. My goals were enough to overcome my natural inclination and get me to exercise control over waking pattern. I had control over my own behavior – whether to get up, or to roll over and sleep through practice. Now that I am not swimming, I get up around 9 in the morning. That is my new habit.
Hi Joshua,
Maybe you let the self-help gurus off lightly!
As it happens, I’ve just finished reading Steve Salerno’s 2005 book “SHAM: How the Self-Help and Actualization Movement Made America Helpless” and that’s a pretty ferocious attack on the “self-help industry” by comparison. It was published just before “The Secret”, unfortunately for him, so he’s had to be content with savaging that on his blog. And I saw a review elsewhere this morning of Barbara Ehrenreich’s more recent book “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, which I haven’t read yet.
Steve Salerno has mentioned on his blog that there’s a growing “anti-self-help guru movement” and I think he could be right. Kudos to you for writing this article.
Like you, I still believe in “self-help/self improvement/personal development” but there’s a lot that’s vague, shallow and poorly understood going around out there these days – I think discerning what’s of value has become a new life skill for the 21st century!
I love the article….and that video made me laugh SO HARD!
Dear Joshua,
I am surprised by this article. I had always believed that what you do is self help business. Whatever you had advocated I believe, falls in the self help regime. All your newsletters, the e-courses you run, all come under this category. I also feel that, even in training and one to one counseling, still what happens is empowering the individual to help himself and that is self help.
Resting the matter of self help aside I want to express my thoughts on the “ thoughts “ myth you talked about. Your article projects the concept that there is a disconnect between thoughts and emotions. I disagree. Emotions follow thoughts. Emotions are mind states, caused by predominant awareness about something, and this predominant awareness about something is the definition of thought.
Emotions can be easily identified while it is generally hard to find the basic thought that creates an emotion. But since thoughts create emotions, it is really essential to have better thoughts to create better emotions. What we really want are better emotions, and these better emotions could be generated by better thoughts.
So, thought management is very essential, in personality transformations and that is where the Positive thinking, affirmations, visualizations etc. come in. But, the focus and practice on Positive thoughts should be gentle, comfortable and easy leading. The basic idea is not to worry or get agitated on the occurrence of negative thoughts, but gently leading the mind to more positive realms.
Also, I find the concept of discipline very essential in personal transformation. Disciplining is based on the concept that mind and body are part of the same system and influence each other. Of these two, it is easier to control the body than the mind, and by controlling the body one can indirectly but effectively control the mind. So discipline is aimed actually at the body, but can provide powerful leverage for the control of the mind.
I believe that without a disciplined approach to your courses, no gain is possible. Again the very program of disciplining should be gradual, easy leading and comfortably bearable.
To sum up, I feel that the objective of any training programs is to enable better thoughts through better disciplining. I cannot understand how else it could be.
Regards.
G.Ramasubramanian
Corporate trainer and Master NLP Practitioner
9444128486
nlptrainerram@gmail.com
@ g ramasubramanian Great comment. All your points are valid and true. You brought up many new points that need further discussion by themselves.
Firstly, as I said, “Please note that I am not against self-help. I love it. I teach it!” … “Naming all self-help books bad or good is like saying all team leaders are bad or good.”
Secondly, thoughts absolutely affect emotions. There’s not a disconnect between the two. You can think better thoughts and change your emotions. HOWEVER, there’s a murky grey zone here hurting many lives: 1) What emotions are you trying to change with your thoughts and why? 2) What emotions are you avoiding with your thoughts? Ask yourself these two questions and you’ll be ahead of many people.
This is such a big issue I see in people I work with and myself. The biggest problem with self-help junkies is they get stuck in their head, manipulating emotions instead of just letting them flow.
The majority of people (ESPECIALLY guys) are too logical and too rational – especially in those studying self-help because we’re taught to be in control of ourselves.
Let’s use an example. You get angry over a friend not inviting you out. Most self-help would tell you to not let it affect you. NLP would get you to reframe it, “Maybe my friend is hanging out with another group of friends for tonight.”
Good use of positive thinking changes a limiting perspective of, “My friend hates me because he didn’t ask me out” to something like “Who knows why I didn’t get asked out. There’s a million possible reasons. Whatever.” Good.
What’s going on however? What’s the message of anger sending you about not getting asked out? Do you feel rejected? Do you not love yourself enough that you need to see your friend wants to be with you tonight? Does the relationship suck? Do you need to receive value from other people because your seeking something from childhood? The possibilities are endless.
Some people don’t dare ask these questions because it brings forth emotions like shame and guilt they will not touch (they think these are “bad”). Wayne Dyer in Your Erroneous Zones is a well-known figure who’s fueling this problem of emotional avoidance. “Kill guilt because it’s a useless emotion.” Please! This is such a serious issue plaguing self-help.
The issue isn’t in how you think. If you manipulate your thoughts, you put yourself in an elusive state. Emotional manipulation with thoughts is dangerous because you avoid the messages emotions send you and stop yourself accessing your complete being. My Big Talk course teaches you to accept these dark parts of yourself you prefer to avoid, which enables you to not fear rejection, embarrassment, approaching people and lets you deeply connect with others in conversation. Unfulfilling relationships exist when both parties don’t know how to access their dark sides.
I guarantee you’ll see a growing surge of experts recognize the importance of emotional work over the coming years (I saw a few leading experts acknowledge it last year – David DeAngelo in Man Transformation is one).
Also relating to Tonya’s comments, I’m not saying discipline is unnecessary! No WAY! Read and reread the self-discipline myth. So much is preached about positive thinking and self-discipline that the article uncovers the other, overlooked side of these issues.
I think everyone needs to read the article over and over. It’s not a one off, light reading.