A Diatribe Against Self-Help Books
Several years ago, I briefly became obsessed with self-help books. I’d just gone through a bad breakup, the type of breakup that feels like your soul has been ripped out. Only imagine your soul being long and tightly coiled like your intestines, and imagine the universe ripping it out little by little. The breakup had been bad enough, but now my ex wanted me back. I knew that we shouldn’t be together. I also sensed that resistance would be futile.
I have no doubt that there are many worthwhile self-help books out there, but the ones I read, all top-sellers on Amazon, essentially categorized people as being either good or bad. They didn’t put it in those exact words, but that's what they implied. We, the readers, were described as being imperfect, perhaps naive, but generally self-aware, empathic, willing to take responsibility for our actions. In other words, pretty darn good. And they, the ones who had hurt us, were described as being self-absorbed, manipulative, exploitative. In other words, well, bad.
Such thinking is problematic and ultimately harmful. People are multidimensional, so when we try to see them in one-dimensional terms, we don’t actually see them. And we in turn find ourselves ill-prepared to navigate the complexities of interpersonal relationships.
I think that buying into this binary thinking actually made me more likely to go back to my ex. These books initially persuaded me that she was bad, but then I started to remember our good times. I remembered looking into her eyes and seeing, not villainy, but fear, tenderness, longing, the same things that filled my own heart. And so if people were either good or bad, and if she wasn’t bad, then it followed that she was good. I concluded that I must have misjudged her, that things must not have actually been that bad. And you know the rest of the story.
I ultimately found help, not from books, but from a wise psychotherapist. Whereas those books had encouraged me to see my ex as a label, my therapist pushed me to see her as a human being. Perhaps, like the rest of us, my ex was both bad and good, both loving and hateful, both fascinating and frustrating. I was reminded of that famous Walt Whitman poem: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
In time I started to see that I too contained contradictions and multitudes. Just as I had resisted acknowledging my former partner’s good qualities, I had also resisted acknowledging my positive feelings for her. I had been approaching the issue like a multiple choice question. “What do I feel for this woman? (a) Love or (b) Hate.” I had in the past tried to convince myself that the answer was (b), but I now saw that there were dozens of answers to that question and that the correct response was “All of the above.”
I had feared that acknowledging I had positive feelings for her would unleash something inside me that I wouldn’t be able to control. If I admitted that I loved her, then oh hell, there’d I go again, running back to her. But I now saw that my feelings were like objects in a bedroom closet. LIke a scared child, I had worried that turning on the light would reveal a monster, and so I hid under the covers. But then I turned on the light and saw there was nothing to fear.
I still felt love for her, and had that been my only feeling, I would have again gone back to her. But I saw that my love was accompanied by other feelings, including anger, annoyance, and disgust. And then I realized that I wasn’t even exactly sure what I meant when I said I still loved her. Love is an obfuscating word because it can mean so many different things. Upon more self-reflection, I realized that I desired her physically and that I often desired her company, but as I thought back to our history, I remembered that my desire always had a short half-life. We had some special weekends together, but come Sunday evening, I always wanted to be alone. She would be fun for a short time, and then she would be too much.
One result of integrating my multitudinous feelings was that I started to feel more like myself. My emotions, I now saw, were not intruders that needed to be fought off but rather a fundamental part of me. I was my emotions. And so when I acknowledged my emotions, I was acknowledging myself. And when I accepted my emotions, I was accepting myself.
At the end of the day, I have no doubt that these self-help books help many people. Some relationships are truly abusive, and anything that extricates someone from such a relationship is a blessing. If there’s something truly dangerous in the closet, then telling your children that there’s a monster inside might for a time keep them safe. My point is that telling such lies does not help in the long-term. At some point your kids are going to realize that monsters aren’t real and will start exploring on their own. What they need, what we all need, are not lies, but more light, more understanding.
And so out of desperation, I started reading self-help books, and before long I had become convinced that she was “a borderline,” maybe “a narcissist,” that she had ensnared me through her “love bombing,” that I had become “trauma-bonded.” These books helped me feel like I was regaining power, and I managed to stay away from her.
Until, inevitably, I didn’t. We resumed dating and enjoyed six beautiful weeks together, and then, true to our pattern, things got progressively awful, and we finally broke up again.
I have no doubt that there are many worthwhile self-help books out there, but the ones I read, all top-sellers on Amazon, essentially categorized people as being either good or bad. They didn’t put it in those exact words, but that's what they implied. We, the readers, were described as being imperfect, perhaps naive, but generally self-aware, empathic, willing to take responsibility for our actions. In other words, pretty darn good. And they, the ones who had hurt us, were described as being self-absorbed, manipulative, exploitative. In other words, well, bad.
Such thinking is problematic and ultimately harmful. People are multidimensional, so when we try to see them in one-dimensional terms, we don’t actually see them. And we in turn find ourselves ill-prepared to navigate the complexities of interpersonal relationships.
I think that buying into this binary thinking actually made me more likely to go back to my ex. These books initially persuaded me that she was bad, but then I started to remember our good times. I remembered looking into her eyes and seeing, not villainy, but fear, tenderness, longing, the same things that filled my own heart. And so if people were either good or bad, and if she wasn’t bad, then it followed that she was good. I concluded that I must have misjudged her, that things must not have actually been that bad. And you know the rest of the story.
I ultimately found help, not from books, but from a wise psychotherapist. Whereas those books had encouraged me to see my ex as a label, my therapist pushed me to see her as a human being. Perhaps, like the rest of us, my ex was both bad and good, both loving and hateful, both fascinating and frustrating. I was reminded of that famous Walt Whitman poem: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
In time I started to see that I too contained contradictions and multitudes. Just as I had resisted acknowledging my former partner’s good qualities, I had also resisted acknowledging my positive feelings for her. I had been approaching the issue like a multiple choice question. “What do I feel for this woman? (a) Love or (b) Hate.” I had in the past tried to convince myself that the answer was (b), but I now saw that there were dozens of answers to that question and that the correct response was “All of the above.”
I had feared that acknowledging I had positive feelings for her would unleash something inside me that I wouldn’t be able to control. If I admitted that I loved her, then oh hell, there’d I go again, running back to her. But I now saw that my feelings were like objects in a bedroom closet. LIke a scared child, I had worried that turning on the light would reveal a monster, and so I hid under the covers. But then I turned on the light and saw there was nothing to fear.
I still felt love for her, and had that been my only feeling, I would have again gone back to her. But I saw that my love was accompanied by other feelings, including anger, annoyance, and disgust. And then I realized that I wasn’t even exactly sure what I meant when I said I still loved her. Love is an obfuscating word because it can mean so many different things. Upon more self-reflection, I realized that I desired her physically and that I often desired her company, but as I thought back to our history, I remembered that my desire always had a short half-life. We had some special weekends together, but come Sunday evening, I always wanted to be alone. She would be fun for a short time, and then she would be too much.
One result of integrating my multitudinous feelings was that I started to feel more like myself. My emotions, I now saw, were not intruders that needed to be fought off but rather a fundamental part of me. I was my emotions. And so when I acknowledged my emotions, I was acknowledging myself. And when I accepted my emotions, I was accepting myself.
At the end of the day, I have no doubt that these self-help books help many people. Some relationships are truly abusive, and anything that extricates someone from such a relationship is a blessing. If there’s something truly dangerous in the closet, then telling your children that there’s a monster inside might for a time keep them safe. My point is that telling such lies does not help in the long-term. At some point your kids are going to realize that monsters aren’t real and will start exploring on their own. What they need, what we all need, are not lies, but more light, more understanding.
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