The self-care industry isn't trying to help us

If you were too open about your emotions a decade ago, British people would throw you a worried grimace before running for the hills.

If you told someone you had a mental illness, that was very brave.

Fast forward to 2022 and we are getting better at opening up, but I’ve noticed a ‘vibe shift’ that I don’t like.

We’ve somehow veered off the path of striving for open, honest conversations about mental illness (which are still needed) and have ended up becoming a little, dare I say it, conceited, in our mission to improve ourselves.

Let me explain.

You can’t deny that the self-care and growth industry is booming. You can hardly move on Instagram for snappy advice posts with nuggets of wellness wisdom such as: ‘Putting yourself first isn’t selfish, it’s necessary’.

In UK book sales, ‘mind, body, spirit’ was the highest growing non-fiction category in 2021, up by 50% to reach an all-time high of £18.7m. And before they were books, many were podcasts; that’s hundreds of thousands of hours of thoughtful introspective self-growth content to gobble up whenever we like.

On TikTok, user-generated mental health information is so prevalent, that some people are apparently even using it to self-diagnose. That’s no surprise when messages from videos racking millions of views go something like: ‘If you lose your keys a lot you could have ADHD’.

And just to clarify, I am not including mental health activists in this. People like Dr Alex George and his campaign to destigmatise antidepressants are genuinely helpful.

I’m talking about people who have suggested at any point that your overall wellbeing would be improved if you just bought a certain product (and used their specific promocode for a 10% discount).

Whatever you do, don’t waste your time believing that the self-help industry has all the answers

So, given this, I surely cannot be the only one who is finding the self-growth industry insufferable?

Don’t get me wrong, life advice is great – when it comes from a well-meaning friend or professional. But this industry does not know you, and therefore cannot provide personalised, nuanced solutions.

Instead, it offers sweeping statements all from the privileged position of people who have the time to practice introspection in the first place. No matter their intention, I worry these self-made life gurus are actually distracting and actively damaging the mental health movement, rather than helping people live their ‘best life’.

I realised this when I was at a low point earlier this year and saw a therapist. It turns out I’d been wasting so much energy and time believing that absorbing self-help wisdom would patch me up to completion, when all I needed was a frank conversation with myself and a professional about what was really bothering me.

When I mentioned how overwhelming all the advice out there was to my therapist – from having a morning mantra to saying ‘no’ to helping people who need me in order to protect my boundaries; working out what kind of extrovert I am to convincing myself I had ADHD after watching a TikTok video (I am aware this is shameful) – he just said: ‘It’s all crap, Kitty.’

And it is. This generalised advice distracted me from years of happiness, which I could have achieved within a few months of professional help.

If you don’t have access to a professional, then do what the NHS website advises and get outside, chat to a friend who can actually listen, give to others and try to live outside your mind and in the present. I hate to say it, but get on an NHS waiting list, however far in the future help may seem. Then there are therapists who can offer reduced rates, because they are in training.

The options aren’t great, I agree. But whatever you do, don’t waste your time believing that the self-help industry has all the answers.

It doesn’t.

Sadly, those who inhale self-improvement content daily are probably the ones who need professional help the most. They are the people who believe deep in their bones that they need fixing. But because the market is so saturated with advice on how to live, breathe and think, they are too busy nodding along, setting ‘boundaries’ and telling people they’re ‘at capacity’ to stop and think about the root of their problems.

Perhaps we need to look into seeing a proper therapist, rather than attempting to patch ourselves up with an idea had by a stranger with no qualifications

Besides the fact it is distracting, all this introspection seems to be the antithesis of the proven mental health practice of mindfulness: it champions existing in your head over being present in the world around us. And although useful sometimes, setting boundaries and saying no to friends in need sounds an awful lot like the opposite of helping others, which has been proven to help our mental health.

A few months ago, I experienced a moment that encapsulated the state of the industry. I was at a live recording of a self-help podcast in London and after an hour of toothy-grinned circle-jerking, the host gushed at her fellow growth-guru: ‘Thank you SO much for being SO generous and putting SO much of yourself out into the world’.

Rubbish. It’s not generosity; it’s egotistical, sugar-coated capitalism.

You can dress it up in nice clothes all you want, but these people are promoting books, podcasts and themselves in order to make money off the nation’s insecurity, however pure their intentions may be.

I know it’s controversial to call out insincerity when on the surface it could be mistaken for ‘being nice and helpful’ but it’s important to say.

Because underneath the niceties and Instagram buzzwords is a slightly sinister unsaid promise that life will be easy if you do this, and then this, and then this. But it might not be – I’m sorry. 

Life is knotty and difficult. And trust me, these people are just as clueless about how to untangle it as you are.  

We can get better at dealing with situations, but we can’t categorise everything into neat emotion pots that will sprout little green shoots if we water them enough. That’s not how it works.

We’re not robots. When something awful happens, it’s OK to feel terrible about it. And if it’s too much, perhaps we need to look into seeing a proper therapist, rather than attempting to patch ourselves up with an idea had by a stranger with no qualifications and a well-connected uncle at 4am 300miles away.

So before you add another self-improvement task to your to-do list, and before you say no to that event because apparently being flaky is now celebrated, why not just say screw it and get out into the world as your imperfect self? 

It’s time to take life and ourselves a little less seriously. And maybe if we pull our heads out our arses and faces out our mirrors, we might get some clarity. I know I have.

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