The Dangers Of Self Help

Why self-help could be making you feel worse

Let me start by clarifying that I am not hating on self-help. I wouldn’t be writing on Medium if I was. However, as a psychologist and healthcare practitioner, I do feel that self-help books should come with giant disclaimers. I wanted to raise a few things to be mindful of for those of you who consume self-help resources.

The Middle-Class Problem

Self-help literature is generally aimed at the middle-class market. People with access to technology, people who can afford little luxuries like candles and baths, people who are above the bottom three rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. People with privilege. What is often overlooked in the tailoring of self-help to these markets, is the fact that the potential efficacy of the solutions provided can be completely undermined by the very factors that are being overlooked. For example, issues arising from existent (and implicitly accepted) unequal power structures. Take the white man that talks about the benefits of becoming assertive, overlooking the very real inequalities that exist for black men and women in the workplace. An unintended consequence of the oversights is that techniques may feel inaccessible, or worse, backfire. And this lends itself to the very human tendency of self-blame.

Self Blame and Criticism

If I may be so bold as to say that self-criticism is a cornerstone of the human condition. We’re actually not very good at being kind and gentle to ourselves. What’s more, we’re not necessarily good at spotting that we’re not good at being kind and gentle to ourselves, so the habit persists. We keep talking to ourselves like we are terrible, failing, deplorable humans. There are often a lot of positive beliefs about self-criticism, which are intertwined with perfectionism. People believe that being hard on themselves is motivational and helps them to strive and get things done. However, both my clinical practice and the research indicates the opposite is true. The harder you are on yourself, the less able you are to get things done. This can simply be understood in terms of the pressure being too great.

So if the purpose of self-help is to make us achieve more or “do better” and make us feel better about ourselves, but it fuels self-criticism because we don’t perceive ourselves to be adequately performing in accordance to the self-help guidance, it may be that self-help isn’t achieving that at all. Early in therapy, perfectionism is often assessed for and explored to determine how it may impact on therapy. I suggest that the authors of self-help material should prompt their readers to do the same before embarking on their self-help journey.

Information Overload

A factor that can impact on self-criticism and reduce peoples’ self-efficacy (a sense that they can do what is being asked of them), is the amount of information provided. Cognitive Load Theory was proposed by John Sweller in 1988. The premise was that we have finite mental resources to process and store information. Factors such as the breadth of information and the number of things pulling our attentional resources can increase the cognitive load, making it harder to retain information. Chances are people reaching for self-help materials are dealing with things that are very demanding of their attentional resources. From big life decisions to interpersonal issues, these all play out in present-day problems that need attending to in some way, shape or form. Add to this a lengthy manual of tips and tricks, it can all become very outfacing very quickly. Before you know it, another book abandoned on the side, with the insidious sense of rising guilt at yet another project failed.

The Cognitive Load Theory does suggest ways that we may enhance learning.

Break It Down

Break down new material into smaller parts. Books already do this with chapters and headings, but this is broken down into intuitive parts based on the author’s knowledge and assumptions. This is helpful for the reader, but to ease cognitive load even more, consumers should be encouraged to decide for themselves where to break. It might be that an awful lot is packed into one chapter. Having a licence to pause and consolidate earlier, can be fundamental for adequate understanding enabling later access and utility of the information.

Reduce Split Attention

An illustration that includes labels can effectively integrate information and reduce the burden on the brain to do so. In this vein, it is really helpful to summarise key points from the text that pull it all together.

Interact With The Information

As working memory is fundamental for us to be able to confine things to long-term memory, we can take advantage of the different sensory modalities involved in working memory. We have a certain capacity assigned for visual information and auditory information. Hearing the information out loud can enhance our learning if we’ve been reading primarily. Having a conversation about the things we’ve read could be an option to enhance our learning.

The Intention-Behaviour Gap

It is well-established in the field of health psychology that there exists an intention-behaviour gap. This is the phenomenon whereby setting the intention to act in a certain way, does not necessarily translate to behaviour. The gap between intention and behaviour is associated with executive control resources, which are governed by particular brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex. The paper suggested that to reduce the intention-behaviour gap, demands on executive control should be reduced. The suggestions about dealing with information overload are examples of interventions that can be used to reduce executive control demands.

An often-overlooked factor impacting on motivation to act in accordance with intentions is the role of emotion. BJ Fogg a behavioural researcher at Stanford recently collated the findings of research looking at the role of emotion in motivation ad behaviour, in his book Tiny Habits. A massively underestimated factor contributing to the adoption of new behaviours is reinforcement. We often withhold any sort of reinforcement for a behaviour until a particular outcome and quite frequently we shift the goalposts on ourselves. For example, think about taking up running. We may set the goal to start running 5k within a certain time. We start by running less than 5k at whatever speed we muster. For people who enjoy running, the act of running may be self-reinforcing, but for those that don’t enjoy it (like me), this can be a distinctly unrewarding process. If we don’t praise ourselves for the effort, no matter the outcome (time and distance) it can then actually become an unpleasant process, which quickly becomes incredibly demotivating. BJ Fogg suggests that to help us form new habits, we should break the tasks down and reinforce ourselves for the tiny steps along the way. That way we get the nice dopamine hit and feel better about what we’re doing. Feeling good is a motivator! Who knew?!

The Self-Help Disclaimer

Ok, so here you are consuming interesting articles on Medium. Reading the odd book here and there. Maybe browsing informative videos and social media accounts from time to time (or compulsively… whatever!). So how to work with the information you consume, without subconsciously guilt-tripping yourself and feeling overwhelmed?

Continue as you are, but perhaps as you consume, do so with the following simple self-help disclaimer in mind:

You physically cannot put everything in practice and that is ok! Your moods will fluctuate regardless of how many healthy habits you have and that is ok! Focus on what you’ve done for yourself, not what you’ve left undone. We are all eternally learning and consolidating and revising. That is what it is to be human. If you’re doing that, you are doing good.

Let’s start as we mean to go on. Jot down one thing you will take away from this article. And you’re good to go! Well done you!