The End of Self Help Part 1

I started reading self-help books at thirteen years old, with appetite and fervor. But the true gateway was Women’s Day magazine quizzes at my grandmother’s house, age nine. Sitting on the couch which smelled like tongue, leafing through smoky pages quickly to the quiz section. My grandmother was endlessly patient with me as I quizzed her: Did she like A) bright colors and tango lessons, B) muted colors and waltzing or C) slow dancing and florals?

After tallying the answers into a final and definitive category of mostly As, mostly B’s or mostly C’s, I found out answers that were alternately intuitive and frightening. I learned that I was an introvert, I was naturally disorganized and my grandmother and grandfather were ill-matched and should seek marital counseling quickly. When I read aloud the results of their marital fate, they both laughed heartily with a bitterness and rawness that unnerved me.

As a blemished, tragic romantic of fifteen years old, self-help books held the key to salvation for me. All my awkward intense feelings of difference and aloneness could be changed by absorbing key principles of empowered living and authentic relationships. I could be unafraid or at least love my fear, be a model of self acceptance, financially secure (perhaps a millionaire), multiply orgasmic, ayurvedically balanced, gluten free and 100% creative and alive. I read the books in hopes of finding an antidote to the intimate and messy universe.

So, I accrued a lot of books, hundreds across the spectrum of self-help. I read them under the auspices that I wanted to be a therapist, that I needed to know how to help the socially anxious, ADD symptomatic, traumatized individuals of the world. But really, I read them all for myself. I filled bookshelves with Potatoes not Prozac, Codependent No More, Earn what You Deserve, If The Buddha Dated, also If the Buddha got Stuck and If the Buddha Married. Passionate Marriage and the Inner Child Workbook. Oh, and the magical wisdom of Spiritual Astrology, The Highly Sensitive Person and don’t forget the many tomes of Sark.

If I was bored, I would thumb through Radical Honesty, The Wisdom of the Enneagram or A Path with Heart. I stopped reading fiction altogether. Periodically through our years together, my writer-husband Ben suggested thoughtfully that I read some “real literature.” Let him read intellectual experimental fiction and prose poems, I thought defensively. That wasn’t me. I accused him of not accepting my true self. I had fought hard to feel okay about my self help library. I couldn’t read my books at the cafe without shame but at home, self help piled next to the bed. Eckhart Tolle, Parenting from the Inside Out and Healing Through the Dark Emotions were just my speed. On the bus, it was fine to read a Buddhist-type self book but totally inappropriate and shameful to read a book which genre straddled the self help/new age categories.I knew the rules.

Then one day while I chatted with a friend, she described me as a “distilled self help book.” Her tone was more admiring than judgmental but something inside me vomited, flinched and wilted as she said it. It’s true that I could describe in detail the process of “opening to a feeling” or explain the necessity of safety for trauma survivors. But inside I dreamt of being a wild woman, a self-trusting mystic who wrote poetry and manifestos by open water, did socially engaged art and followed inner promptings to adventures all around the world. Vanessa, the beekeeper, well maybe not beekeeper, but maybe Vanessa, the dancer, the artist and writer. Vanessa the Inner Child therapist, the mother, the herbalist, the wild one.

But I had become obsessed with other people’s wisdom. Other people’s visions of what the world was. My vocabulary was domesticated by self help and I turned away from my own inner-expert. I quizzed myself: Was I enmeshed with my mother? Was I practicing extreme self care? Did I need more mindfulness or to do a body scan? Was I differentiating enough from my husband? What the fuck was wrong and why wasn’t I happy?

I needed a big intervention, a massive change in direction. So I proclaimed AN END TO SELF HELP. Or rather an end to reading self help books. I got some boxes, packed them with all my self help books and got Ben to lug them to the basement. Then I sat on the floor of the echoing chamber that was my bedroom, gazing absently at the empty space on my bookshelves. What to do now? And this is when the shit hit the fan.


Vanessa Brackett
Feb. 2012
Vanessa blogs at increase the levels of radiance