When I wandered into self-help I was a middle schooler who suddenly understood that my life did not have to consist of only being acted upon, but that I could have a say in the way my life went too. Not just how well I did in class, my attitude, or how many friends I had, but that I could be the one to understand/change who I was and most importantly— what was “wrong” with me.
This kind of thinking was introduced to me via the web but started early on in 1859, with Sam Smile’s book, “Self Help.” The opening sentence is,
“Heaven helps those who help themselves.”
I would be introduced to iterations of Smile’s ideology as YouTube became a predominant search engine. I watched everything from "How to be prettier," "How to Be More Confident," to "How to Lose Weight." The videos themselves felt like something I consumed that set me apart from most.
By my sophomore year of high school, I listened to Tony Robbins every morning after my 4:30 a.m. run and 5:30 a.m. weightlifting session before I started class at 7 a.m. I felt like the best version of myself when I was pushing through exhaustion, anxiety, depression, etc. As I chugged along I had an endless range of books, videos, and podcasts that kept me feeling like I was doing something right.
Increasingly, it’s harder to get away from the kind of pseudo-inspirational self-improvement advice that I worshipped in high school. As the internet grows more aware and algorithmic. You don’t have to pick up a book or watch a podcast, just say something to your friend one day and TikTok will probably feed you someone’s misguided advice within the hour.
While It’s not a bad thing to want to improve ourselves or help others do the same, it seems we have all gotten trapped in a constant cycle of trying to fix every little thing that the world has told us is “wrong” with ourselves. We experience self-help messaging in different ways from the very obvious self-help and self-improvement to more convoluted language like “healing.” The most alarming part of the genre of content is that we are expected to fix everything from our skin to our grief all by ourselves.
Self-help and advice often overlook the fact that many of our individual problems stem from lifetimes. Each of us has complexities and intersections in our individual lives and needs that deserve to be considered as we make decisions and create an existence that feels right for us. An example of this one-dimensional advice is the discourse around the "bare minimum" that became popular in relation to relationships/friendships.
I remember saying to my therapist that I was really grateful for the way someone in my life treated and cared for me, and then I said “ I shouldn’t be grateful, being treated well is the bare minimum.” it was something I heard so many times on the internet” You shouldn’t be grateful for someone treating you well, that’s expected, that is the bare minimum”.
My therapist asked me why I had said that and I’ve never felt so indoctrinated by the internet than I did then. I realized like, “Oh, it’s actually not super common to be treated well, to be in spaces where we feel safe and wholly ourselves, there is absolutely nothing bare or pathetic about that feeling.”
It's confusing to feel like everyone is telling us what to think about ourselves, life, politics, beauty, and the people we choose, and even more to feel like all that advice is a value judgment on the way we live. Advice tends to be so far removed from our personhood. This could be different if we think about shaping and changing our lives with others. There are so many opportunities for help/care to be something collaborative and not just something we do by ourselves.
Still, it seems that There are many ways to fix ourselves by ourselves, but what if we looked at ourselves as unfixable? Then what? What if you never get over the thing, are never prettier, more charismatic, or successful? Do we get to be hurt by our failure to constantly improve? Can we sit in our grief surrounding the ways in which we can't make peace with the world we live in? We get tattered and beaten down, and sometimes the only thing we need is to allow others to see us; not as broken or pathetic or in need of improvement, but as just as ourselves.