Should we keep waiting for self-help to fix us or is it time to fix self-help?

Although it may be difficult to admit, many of us come to the self-help field to be fixed. We wouldn’t want to state it so bluntly, but it is often the case. And it may not be the only reason we come, but somewhere under the surface we hope we will finally, once and for all, be fixed.

I was attracted to the field after getting into recovery from an eating disorder and substance abuse in 1989. I was ready to begin a new life. I had enough pain and jumped in with both feet. I discovered my passion for a career in the field. I earned a Masters in Mental Counseling and for many years worked as a therapist treating people with trauma, addiction, depression and anxiety issues.

As I continued my own path of personal growth, I changed and life changed. The hospital where I worked closed its doors and I realized I was burned out from all the pain I had witnessed. So many people seemed to be succeeding in recovery only to fall back into the despair. Often I felt helpless, not knowing how to make a lasting difference. Feeling that I needed to come up for air, I chose to explore other avenues. After some space and time, I returned to the field when I discovered life-coaching. Intellectually I knew for myself and my clients that there was nothing to “fix”, that really it’s about uncovering our truth which may be buried behind limiting belief systems and it’s about creating our purpose because we have the courage to do so.

There is nothing wrong with exploration. It’s when we are driven that it becomes a problem. There is nothing wrong with searching. The problem lies when we never allow ourselves to find. There is no absolute measure here because our inner state shifts and changes. Only we can determine for ourselves when we have crossed the line.

If you had asked me, I would have said that I knew that someone else didn’t have my answers. Yet I secretly hoped they did. I wanted the answer. The one that would have everything fall into place. An answer I would receive and never question. A dear friend recently shared something similar. Wondering if his current relationship was the “right” one, he said he wished that a prophet would materialize from the heavens in a puff of smoke and tell him the truth. Although then he chuckled and admitted that even then he would say, “Are you sure?”

This is the tragic fate of the human condition. We seek certainty, yet even if we have it for a fleeting moment, we don’t believe it. We want guarantees. We want to know how it’s all going to turn out. We forget who we are, what we are. We forget (as one of my dear mentors taught me) that “the only thing wrong with us is that we think there is something wrong with us.”

So back to self-help. It is broke and we need to fix it. And yes, I said fix it. “Fixing” does have its place.

When we were young and broke our favorite toy, we desperately begged our parents to “fix it!” Many times they did, and sometimes they may have snuck out and bought us a new one. This may not have been true with you but I ask you to go with the metaphor for a minute. Quite often things can be fixed. We break our favorite dish; we glue it back together to fix it. We wreck our car and take it to the shop and they fix it. We break our arm and the doctor puts it in a cast to fix it. But then we think we can, should or must be fixed ourselves.

To apply this to self-help, I believe we can fix it. It will be different, transformed, we will know it’s weaknesses but we can fix it. Like a house with a structural problem, we need to start with the foundation of self-help and shore it up. The first house my husband and I owned was a remodeled 1912 Victorian. After moving in we discovered it had termites. And the reason it had termites is that the frame itself was sitting on the dirt. Somehow our inspector missed this, but that’s another story. We had quite a problem on our naïve homeowner hands. We had to dig under the home and re-build a foundation. The house had to be shored up to do this. We dug a cave under the home and slowly and carefully built a solid foundation. Returning home one day, we discovered that our office appeared to have been ransacked. It turned out that the shoring had begun to fail and the structure itself started to fall into the gaping hole beneath it. There was a three inch gap of daylight between the wall and the floor. Disaster averted, we took even more care with the process.

This is the work we have ahead of us in our task to fix self-help. I have been emphasizing the foundation, but we need to look more deeply than that. What type of ground are we building upon? Is it rocky, sandy, or expansive soil? How has that soil been treated?

Then we need to look at the materials. Are they constructed with integrity? Are they sustainable? Who are we hiring to oversee this job? Are they personally invested? Are they properly credentialed and trained? Are we staying aware of what’s going on? Or are we sitting back and hoping for the best? Are we willing to take the time to educate ourselves? To interview the contractors? To make sure we resonate with their vision and they resonate with ours? Are we willing to be responsible for how it all turns out? Or will we sit back and complain if we aren’t happy with the results.

Self-help needs our help. There are problems. We need to take responsibility. And together we can fix self-help.

It's about time

Sometimes it takes a tragedy for us to say what we haven't been saying. The recent deaths at the James Arthur Ray event has begun to open up a new conversation in the self-help industry and beyond. I say it's about time!

I am deeply disturbed that innocent people died doing something they thought was important to their personal growth. And I am relieved that we can bring this inquiry out in the open.
Have you ever wondered when self-help became synonymous with “there’s something wrong with us”? Or how it became about the eternal search for something, a search outside the self? Why did it become about needing the perfect teacher, book, course or practice? How did it become about something out there on the horizon?
When did it become a dirty word?

As a coach, author, speaker and radio show host with a Master’s Degree in Counseling and over 20 years of experience in the field of personal development, I assist people in discovering and living their dreams.

Yet, one profound day, I caught myself waiting for Jack. Jack in this case was Jack Canfield of the Chicken Soup for the Soul fame but I admitted to myself that it could have been anyone or anything. I had forgotten where the answers lie. It was painful to admit, but I realized I had become a self-help junkie!

I first discovered my passion for personal development after recovering from an eating disorder and substance abuse in 1989. As a result I became eager to provide assistance to people who felt trapped in their own life experience.

During my years as a therapist, I worked with clients struggling with eating disorders and substance abuse as well as depression, anxiety and trauma issues, providing both group counseling and individual therapy in inpatient and outpatient settings. With my coaching clients, I am their champion in discovering their power and breaking free of their personal barriers.

Yet somewhere along the way, I forgot who I was. On that fateful day, when I caught myself waiting for Jack, I declared an end to all this waiting and searching outside ourselves for answers.

To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with self-help. Many of us wouldn’t be where we are today if we hadn’t taken this journey. And it’s important to emphasize that there are many self-help leaders (including Jack Canfield) who operate at the highest levels of integrity. Additionally, I have found that most people who are drawn to self-help have a huge commitment to make a difference in the world.

The root of the “problem” lies in our relationship to self-help, our bottomless quest to be someone, something or somewhere other than we are, our endless seeking, searching.

I am determined to illuminate these patterns those of us who become stuck on the self-help treadmill. Those who are determined to find the answers but on a deep level, a level often kept hidden beneath awareness, remain unsatisfied. Because for those of us who are starving in the midst of plenty, this is what self-help has become.

It’s time to reinvent self-help and I can't do it alone.