Looking for happiness in a bookstore or among the shelves of a library is not a bad idea. In fact, it may be the idyllic setting for many people and we may be getting closer to the place where the secret of happiness is revealed. But beyond the love for books that you may have and that makes you feel immensely happy, what we are talking about is self-help books, do they really help?
What are self-help books for?
- As the name suggests, self-help books are designed for you to help yourself. The gossips will tell you that in reality the only person they help is the author by increasing his checking account, but we are not going to start by suspecting anyone’s intention. A self-help book is there to help you find those tools that we all have and that lead us to a better quality of life.
- Among the self-help books you can find the solution to problems of all kinds. If you have anxiety, if you have depression, if you can’t find meaning in life, if you want to learn to manage emotions, if you have self-esteem problems, if you are too shy, if you have little social life… And you can also find a solution to your economic problems, your overweight or your addiction to tobacco.
- In short, these self-help books propose you to change your life to achieve personal and professional success, enjoy good physical and mental health, and find satisfaction in everything you do. Self-help books propose you to be happy, which is not a bad proposal. But the way things look, aren’t they proposing that you be a perfect person?
Self-help books do NOT help.
- There should be a warning in all these self-help books: We don’t teach anyone to be perfect here. Because deep down it is the underlying idea, to do everything well, to improve ourselves, to be happy, to enjoy, to avoid suffering, to earn more money, to feel more beautiful and successful inside and out… And this is where this guy of books become a danger.
- When you read a self-help book, the author confirms that if you follow his guidelines you will be a happy person and have a meaningful life. And you read it, of course, because who doesn’t want to be happy? And as you read it, everything makes sense, everything also seems very easy (because you already know that happiness is in the little things), so you have happiness in your hands, you just have to take it between your fingers and not let it slip away.
- But for some reason happiness escapes you as soon as you finish the book. You continue to feel emotionally bad, confused, insecure, frustrated, incapable and, above all, unhappy. What has happened? Now your initial discomfort is added to another: you feel like a useless person because you have verified between the pages of that self-help book how easy it is to be happy and you are not.
- The message of self-help books is actually: it is very easy to be happy, if you are not it is because you do not want to.
How can a self-help book help you?
- Thus, with this devastating message, the most logical thing is that the problem you had when you saw yourself in the need to help yourself has grown bigger. You may even now have problems that you had not detected before. You had happiness and well-being at your fingertips for a few hours and now they have escaped you. Are self-help books really good for something?
- Well, the truth is that yes. It is as if these types of books have a face and a tail that must not be lost sight of at any time. A self-help book can help you reflect on the moment you are living, to clarify a little more about your needs, to name problems that you did not know how to define well and, above all, to inspire you to make the changes you need in your life. life. Those changes destined to be happy? No. To feel better.
- A self-help book can also help you understand the situation you are going through, to feel accompanied or identified with your problem. When you know that there are other people going through the same thing, your problem is not solved, but at least you know that you are not alone and that, as has happened to the author of the book, you can get out of this situation with flying colors.
The danger and deception of self-help books
- Up to here comes the help of self-help books and from here everything is pressure. Because in the same way that reading it can inspire you to make some change in your life, it can also plunge you into absolute misery. That pressure we are talking about is the tyranny of happiness.
- Everything can be fixed, everything can be solved, you can be happy, you can be the best version of yourself… But the reality is that it will never be enough, you will never reach the goal. Because there is something that these books miss and that is that we are not perfect, we do not need to be always happy to have a meaningful life and, in fact, we cannot and should not avoid pain in our lives. If we avoided it, it would not be a fulfilling life.
- Self-help books pressure you to be happy, to find love, to have more friends, to do what you like in life, to improve self-esteem, to make decisions, to avoid doubts, to avoid insecurities, to earn more money, to be in continuous personal and professional development… Aren’t you exhausting yourself just by reading it?
- Where is the rest, disconnecting from everything, accepting oneself as it is, in applying more understanding and compassion instead of self-demand?
Do you want to read a self-help book?
- This is the flip side of self-help books, and you’d better not forget their ambivalence when you hold a book in your hands. That it’s okay to read a self-help book or several, that they can give you many ideas, that they can motivate you and that maybe you need, yes, a pinch of positive psychology. But don’t go too far, life is not lived only positively.
- In any case, you cannot forget about the most important thing either. If you don’t feel good about yourself, if you are depressed, if anxiety is overwhelming you, if you find yourself empty and with intrusive thoughts, if low self-esteem is causing you many problems in your life or if emotions regularly overwhelm you, it will be better that you go to a psychologist. A self-help book can never replace psychological therapy.
- For the rest, and without failing to remember that with due precautions nothing happens to read self-help books, we would like to give you another option. Have you heard of bibliotherapy? You will also have to read, but in this case novels. Because novels can inspire you more than a self-help book, because in them you can feel even more identified, because your emotions are released with literature, and because, believe us, an adequate novel can heal more than a self-help book.