How Much Self-Help is Too Much Self-Help? (Part 2)

Again, self-improvement is a great goal. This post is not intended to discourage you from taking charge of your own growth with established programs. It is simply intended to flag a few flaws in most self-help programs that are actually detrimental to our mental health. In part 2, we finish off the list of things to be careful of when engaging in a self-help program:

  1. Risk of overemphasizing personal responsibility
    • Finding a sense of agency in our lives is very important to starting positive change. However, that agency needs to be informed by a reasoned assessment of what we can control and what we can’t. This assessment is  highly personal  and based on your unique circumstances, and therefore, a book can’t really address it. Because of this, these books are limited to emphasizing the reader’s responsibility in their lives. Unfortunately, this can lead to the reader feeling that they are the whole problem while ignoring structural influences. Further, it can lead people to expect changes in their lives that aren’t possible given their circumstances.
  2. Self-Help is limited in its insight and depth
    • No matter how good a self-help program is, a book can’t get to know you. Because of this simple fact, the insight any program can have into your life is limited by its “one size fits all” format. This lack of personalization and insight limits the effectiveness and efficiency of the suggestions. Also, because of the one-way nature of the program, a self-help program can’t probe the depths of your personal story. This makes many of their interventions relatively shallow.
  3. Optimization pressure.
    • This is a larger problem bubbling up in our culture: the pressure to optimize all areas of your life. Social media is full of people outlining schedules in which all aspects of their lives are optimized from health, to finances, to family. This optimization mindset is a quick path to feeling dissatisfied with one’s own life as it is, and burnout. Though improvement is an important goal, ideally it comes from a deep belief that we, and our lives, are enough just as they are. If we fall victim to this optimization mindset, the list of possible improvements becomes functionally infinite, and we may be trapped in a never ending chase of “enough” in all aspects of our lives.

Understanding the dangers of self-help can certainly change our relationship with this type of program. Hopefully knowing the pitfalls will be enough to get the most out of self-help without falling into some of the traps that can actually make them bad for your mental health. In Part 3, I’ll go over a few specific recommendations for how to best engage with self-help, avoiding the pitfalls and taking advantage of the help.

David
Simply Counselling Services