How Self-Help Grifters Keep You In A Loop
There is the addictive nature of their work, but they also instill emotional dependency.
Ever since I had a fascination for human emotions, my journey through self-help was very different from what many self-help gurus went through. Even when I don’t explain it the best, human emotions and what makes people tick have been something that interested me from the start. I love to know why we do what we do and how we react to certain things.
As a result, I went from being emotionally stunted to having a good grasp of my emotions and understanding other people on an emotional level. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy writing about emotions from time to time.
The second is that through my research of traditional self-help gurus time after time I see a particular theme. Under the guise of helping other people, many individuals participate in keeping their audience from actual improvement and keep them stuck in a loop.
Take Tony Robbins and his seminars. Even though he’s the face of personal development, one particular strategy is a bit dubious. Robbins' ultimate goal is to rewire people’s thinking to be more confident and to achieve incredible success and one of his strategies in doing this is the fire-walking experience.
The idea is to take your shoes and socks off and walk across a line of hot coals.
But as this Forbes article points out, many individuals talk with excitement over this experience — as if it was some religious conversion ritual — but often it doesn’t result in them becoming multi-millionaires or masters of the universe.
No doubt this is the same case for the much larger seminars where only a handful out of the thousands that attend actually see some improvement in their lives.
Part of it can be other human emotions like procrastination, or obsession with technology. But I’d argue it’s a lack of emotional understanding and that gurus leverage specific emotions to keep people in this loop.
Gurus Excel On The Positive While Neglecting The Negative
I wouldn’t say every self-help guru indulges in toxic positivity, but it is still a major cornerstone of the industry. And to a lesser extent, gurus and ordinary people alike are more used to positive emotions and willing to explore those more.
But when it comes to negative emotions, that interest falls off. Worse, it falls off hard for self-help gurus.
You can begin to see this when you consider some of the general advice that they give to particular complex emotions. For example, Tony Robbins has 10 tips to help with recovering from depression. But reading through the various tips, it’s a whole lot of nothing.
The first tip sets the tonne by suggesting to stop thinking so negatively. To confront head-on particular ways of thinking like “depression runs in the family” or general limiting beliefs.
The reality is depression is a more complex mental illness than mere limiting beliefs. Legitimate depression instills the idea that you can’t function as a human being because your emotions are so severe. One does not simply outthink their depression. You can go from one day being really interested in something to the next day not caring about it at all.
Robbins’ article mistakes depression as more along the lines of sadness.
But that’s the point here. The article doesn’t provide a lot of depth on what can be done with overcoming depression. The article provides broad and general advice which is understandable. But the structure of it still implies that Robbins’ doesn’t know all that much about depression.
His attitude seems to be to stop thinking negatively and brute force the problem by building mental fortitude. He leverages optimism rather than offering practical advice and more research beyond a statistic.
But for a lot of people, they are none the wiser as positivity is more contagious. Not to mention the fact that overcoming depression is way more complicated and people prefer to hear these simple answers.
Positivity is contagious and when compared to practicality, positive vibes win in our minds every time.
But that can form a slippery slope.
The Good Vibes Prevent Us From Truly Learning
For some of us, we already get the idea that all positive vibes aren’t always great when we consider toxic positivity and to an extent hustle culture and how it impacts us when things go bad.
A lot of gurus conveniently omit how positive emotions can blindside us, and cloud our judgement or decision-making. In some cases, it can make us into narcissistic assholes.
Too much of a good thing is bad but a lot of gurus don’t practice that restraint. Many are convinced that depression is just a matter of thinking positive vibes, being around better people and setting goals. They don’t realize that there are days when depression episodes kick in and no amount of goals or being around other people can really help you.
You simply need to let depression go through you.
This applies to all other emotions as well, but gurus don’t even hint at the fact that you’ve got to learn to process the good and bad emotions yourself. They don’t talk about their specific experiences with those emotions or try to do a bit of digging if they’ve never been in those states of mind before.
They lack empathy and the advice they offer ultimately lacks empathy. And yet it’s so effective and it affects other people in a way where they focus more on the content rather than on themselves for once.
Going back to my emotionally stunted self, how I managed to overcome it wasn’t by listening to Tony Robbins, Rhonda Byrne, or anyone else. I sat with my emotions and processed them myself in my own way. I spent hours talking to myself, inspiring myself when I could. I did this for days.
Whether my day was good, bad, or alright, I talked about what was on my mind. In some cases, I even journaled about it.
Getting to this state of mind isn’t all that challenging, but it’s more of going through that process that is difficult. Emotions are tough to pinpoint and they can be jarring. They are traumatic, triggering, or disappointing. At the same time, they can be inspiring, motivating, and hopeful. To truly extract those aspects, listening to what most gurus tell you isn’t going to bring about success.
I started to get that idea as soon as I had a better look at Elon Musk after people were singing his praises on how emotionally intelligent he is. Never mind the fact Tesla settled a $3 million lawsuit over racial issues and hate speech increased around the time Twitter was bought.
Those can’t be coincidences, right? This is Elon Musk, the emotional intelligence genius. This is a man who generously terminated workers for staying home and looking after their health. Such a benevolent guy.
When you don’t have a good grasp on your emotions, it’s easy to look at how Elon Musk is this great and caring individual prior to his Twitter buyout. But it’s those kinds of emotions that can deceive people to not bother doing a little bit of digging or exploration of themselves or of other people.
It’s All Tied Up With A Crutch
When you have positive emotions, it’s easy to lean into them and get addicted to those feelings. We all know this through the drug called dopamine that our brain produces. Positive emotions light the part of our brain that produces that and so we feel like we have a natural affinity for positive emotions. This can gradually override our negative emotions which keep us grounded and realistic about our plights, actions, decision-making, and more.
Instead, with so many positive emotions, we think all negative emotions are bad or toxic or unhelpful. They are what store our “limiting beliefs” even though in many cases our limiting beliefs could be chalked up to rational judgment.
With enough positive reinforcement, we begin to ignore the drawbacks of positive emotions. We might not reach a point where we indulge in toxic positivity if we’re aware. However, we do embrace our need for positive emotions and pick-me-ups whenever we experience negative emotions.
It results in us not being as emotionally aware or intelligent as we could be if we simply learned to process those emotions. Instead, it feels better to focus on our need to find emotional comfort.
These two aspects, as mentioned above, are all reinforced by this third element — the emotional crutch. This is the loop that prevents people from having some alone time and actually learning about their emotions.
Instead, these are various elements that keep us from having those conversations. These are the elements that make us think people like Tony Robbins, Elon Musk, Rhonda Byrne, Oprah, and so many others are here to help us overcome whatever problems were dealing with.
In reality, all they do is reinforce the same talking points — or their followers do it for them. People were convinced Elon Musk was a great guy just from listening to his backstory even though some of the “tragedies” were by design.
And sure some of that advice can be helpful in a vacuum, however, there is never an encouragement to do things yourself or how to get things started. Sometimes there is, but people think and process information and emotions differently.
Again, maybe Tony Robbins’ article on depression might help in some minor cases, but looking over it, it seems more aligned with those feeling a little down or stuck in life. Even so, when you don’t fully comprehend your emotions, you might still think this is helpful enough or at least makes you feel better.
And so you keep going back to that person, taking their words to heart and never questioning, but also never trying to apply it in your life. After all, they conditioned you to focus more on the positive emotions and not actually do anything with them.
While self-help does talk about introspection and self-reflection, these tend to be the last resort or are covered very broadly. They are also biased towards self-help gurus' goals which amount to positioning themselves as caring individuals while enriching themselves.
What they often have to say about these topics doesn’t help you. I know this because as someone who was emotionally stunted, what I went through was much different than what common advice offers.
It’s not a matter of stopping negative thinking or eating healthier foods. If you are to change your life around, you need to overcome some deep-rooted emotions and instill several habits and have a more supportive network to encourage that change.
Personal stories do help, but there comes a point where the content and the speeches don’t help and you need to apply what you learned. And that becomes so much harder for gurus who prefer to be conservative and stick with simple fixes rather than offer deeper insights.
Sure, making some deeper suggestions and ideas is scary and it can lead to misleading people. But I’d argue that the simple path that so many gurus offer is even more misleading. As we can see it’s enriched key individuals while their audience is convinced that these are the best self-help gurus around and deserve to be respected while being immune to fault.
All the while, they can’t see that the advice is bland and is not bringing them any closer to their goals. That is until they bumble about on their own, get messy, make mistakes, and figure things out on their own.
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