Self-analysis paralysis

Let us begin, Dear Reader — because that’s what you now are, isn’t it? A Reader in the self-conscious capital-R sense of the word, capitalized not unlike “God” or “Therapy” or “Keto” — let us begin with a blunt ontological assertion that you have purchased a self-help book.¹ Which already means you’re in trouble.

The promise of self-help books, of course, is that of transformation. To become a better, leaner, wealthier, less apologetically human version of yourself via 240 pages of single-spaced, TED-Talkified platitudes presented in a sans-serif font and punctuated by bullet points that, if read aloud, sound eerily like being scolded by a man in athleisure who owns a whiteboard and no irony.

Now, at this point in your life — which is already spiralling enough for you to splurge $37.99 on books with hokey titles like Thriving Beyond Fifty or Becoming Yourself or How to Heal An Anxious Attachment Style, let’s be honest² — you’re not just reading a book. You’re conducting a full-scale Charlie Sheen-style intervention/rescue mission, and the hostage is you. The “you” who (since we’re being honest) didn’t get up at 5 a.m. today to journal about gratitude or visualize your six-figure passive income stream while doing squats on a Bosu Home Balance Trainer ($199.99 on Amazon).

This is the self-help ouroboros: You read the book because you feel bad. The book tells you it’s your fault you feel bad. Then it tells you how not to feel bad, and when you fail at that, you feel worse.³

Welcome, reader, to the cruel optimism of the modern self-help industrial complex.™ Feeling more nervous than a cat in a room full of golden agers in rocking chairs? Recognition of this fear is the first step toward recovery. Tattoo emblem of wholeness or infinity here along the dotted neurosis identified by your quack spiritual docent. Double-click there to metamorphose into a button-pressing rodent eager for the next glib sugar pellet from your current Deepak Chopra-style guru.

Which brings us to a quick taxonomy:

Self-help books fall roughly into three camps:

1. The Yelling Coach – e.g., Unleash the Alpha Gladiator Within, which tells you the reason you aren’t successful is that you haven’t been aggressively networking with billionaires while doing cold plunges and intermittent fasting. Written by a guy who uses a photo of himself screaming into a canyon as his authorial headshot.

   
   

2. The Gentle Guru – typically a woman with a name like Sage or Ambrosia who has never worn shoes with laces. These books include chapter titles like “Radical Acceptance Is Not the Same as Giving Up” and contain approximately 93 references to tea. There is always a story about a llama farm in Peru that changed the author’s life. Eat, pray, sip.

   
   

3. The Science-Adjacent Bro – a hybrid creature whose primary skill is misquoting and cherry picking behavioural economics studies in a way that makes you feel guilty for using your phone in the bathroom. These books often have graphs. And acronyms. So many (All Concepts Relating Optically & Nonsensically to Your Mind’s Strength) A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.⁴

   
   

Whichever you choose, the core message is the same: You could have been more than a name on the door, and it’s your fault you aren’t. Or maybe your mom’s. But in any case, I’m OK, you’re decaying.

Let’s talk about guilt.

Self-help books, in the guise of empowerment, essentially perform what might be termed existential gaslighting. They present you with a vision of what your life should be (waking up before dawn, meditating in a sunbeam, running a podcast that monetizes your authentic truth) and then delicately suggest that if your actual life doesn’t match this curated utopia, it’s not because the world is chaotic and capitalism is a meat grinder for the soul, but because you didn’t manifest your vision hard enough.

This is where the depression creeps in — not a fast, acute despair but a slow, bureaucratic sort of sadness, like being on hold with the universe (which shares a call centre in Tamil Nadu with the Canada Revenue Agency). It’s not just that you’re not enough; it’s that you were given a PDF and a checklist, and you still messed it up.

But wait, there’s hope.

Just kidding. Not actual hope, obviously. But the idea of hope, which is sold in $18.99 paperbacks with phrases like “Hack Your Inner Narrative” or “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” (actually, we kind of like that one) on the cover. Hope, in this genre, is an aesthetic. It’s not something you experience so much as something you display, like succulents or good posture. You’re not supposed to feel hopeful; you’re supposed to read about hope as a performance of progress. Aspirational, yes. Attainable, not so much.

Eventually, you reach the final page of the book, where the author says something like: “Remember, transformation takes time. Keep trying, Grasshopper. As quick as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand.”

This is a problem.

Because what it really means is: You’re not done yet. Which means: Buy the next book.

And so you do. Because the person you are — the person who reads self-help books — is also the person who believes, with a tragic and relentless optimism, that the next book will be the one that finally makes you whole.

But it won’t. Nor will the next or the next or the next.

Because, and here’s the kicker: self-help is not designed to help you. It’s designed to keep you helping yourself. Ad infinitum. A Möbius strip of inadequacy with a barcode on the back cover.

So here’s my suggestion.

Next time you find yourself edging sideways to avoid the other poor grubbers and lost souls in the Self-Help aisle (which is almost always next to Religion and Dieting, two other systems that make promises they rarely keep), pick up a novel instead. Or a book of poems. Or stare into the abyss of a blank page and write something that doesn’t tell you to be better but to be honest.

Because that’s the only kind of help worth giving: the kind that admits you’re already sort of screwed — but not uniquely so — and that maybe you don’t need to optimize your morning routine before you’ve figured out why you can’t cry at funerals anymore. And if that doesn’t work, there are always those revelatory Dr. Phil reruns.

FOOTNOTES

1. You may not have purchased it. You may have “borrowed” it from your roommate or downloaded it as an audiobook, which you played while folding laundry, during which you retained exactly 2% of its message, most of which involved visualizing yourself as a radiant sunbeam of potential. (BTW, the laundry is still in a heap on your floor.)

   
   

2. The spiral began, as many spirals do, with a breakup, a performance review or turning 30 in a studio apartment with a sad succulent named “Kevin.”

   
   

3. There’s a German word for this. There’s always a German word.

   
   

4. It is crucial that the S.E.L.F. (Safety, Emotions, Loss, Future) remembers to take a deep breath and R.E.S.T. (Rehydrate, Eat, Step Outside, Talk) en route to the sanctum sanctorum in the centre of the soul where a tiny voice representing the authentic you desperately longs to invite the growing legion of self-satisfied self-help authors to go take a flying f*ck at the M.O.O.O.O.O.N!