Self help and what exactly is this all about - Naked truth chapter 26

Do we need this?

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

“Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not” - Janis Selye

SELF HELP EXHAUSTION

Self-help here, self-help there, self-help on TV, self-help promoted by gurus, influencers, and fake celebrities. One cannot esscape —on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. Turn in any direction, and you’re met with an avalanche of platitudes regurgitated, coated in various shades of sugar, and delivered with poise and determination, as if unlocking the ultimate secret to eternal joy and happiness.

"There is considerable evidence that self-help books don't help people with their problems or aspirations, and may actually do some damage." - Ray Williams

Everywhere you turn, there’s another book claiming to hold the answers to all your problems. Bookshops are lined with them, audiobooks narrated by so-called authors flood the platforms, and now even AI churns out books and reads them back to you online. The message is always the same: This is it. The solution is here, right between these pages. Just read it, and bingo—everything will be fine.

Martha couldn’t help but feel annoyed by it all—the relentless push to improve, to transform, to somehow fix oneself, forever being coerced to fit in other people’s criteria of perfection and ideal.

A TRIP BACK IN TIME

She tried to pinpoint the first time she’d come across the concept of self-help. It wasn’t easy. Hours of reflection brought her to a hazy memory: a copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and later, Napoleon Hill’s “Rich dad poor dad” might have marked the beginning of her closure to such a genre. But even back then, they were just books to her. Interesting, sure, but not life-changing in any shape or form.

Martha had always been a voracious reader, dipping into a world of ideas that covered a world far beyond motivational manuals. From worldwide classics to Romantic writers, biographies to detective novels, poetry to short stories, her reading choices reflected a curiosity that defied categories. Those self-help books had been little more than a few leaves in a huge deliciously colourful tree of literature, never something she felt compelled to follow or live by. They were just books, she thought. Nothing more, nothing less.

Years later, Martha moved to a so-called advanced country and, out of curiosity, enrolled in a coaching training course. That’s when things began to shift. What initially seemed like an opportunity for personal growth and even a dream job quickly revealed another layer of the self-help industry’s intricate web of deceit.

Welcome to a new kind of brainwashing. Welcome to the dream-selling factory, where every limitation is framed as a failure to dream big enough, and every success is sold as a product of the program. Welcome to the world of self-blame programming, where you’re subtly taught that if you’re not thriving, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough, visualized clearly enough, or believed deeply enough.

What started as a quest for insight now felt like a machine designed to churn out hope, repackaged and resold, with the promise of a better life just one more step away.

This was also the time when self-help books became “the thing” - when personal bookstore shelves began to overflow with one title after another, each promising the secret to a better life. “How to be more successful.” “How to heal yourself.” “How to build yet another MLM empire.” “How to become the best meditator.” Each book fed into the growing addiction for the latest “how-to,” the never-ending quest for perfection, success, and fulfilment.

ABOUT BEING GULLIBLE

Martha couldn’t help but wonder: “How did I become so gullible?” How had she transformed into a naive, wide-eyed soul, swept up in the crowd chasing dreams that were never truly her own? Dreams marketed as universal but tailored to no one. Dreams that kept her running, always striving, yet somehow always feeling like she was falling short and on a path which was not her own.

Could it be the result of a desperate attempt to belong? That deep, unshakable desire to fit in, to find connection, led her to make the same mistakes over and over again, as though they were inevitable. It felt less like a choice and more like an unconscious surrender to something far greater than herself.

To Martha, it resembled a cult—a system of thought where the brainwashing wasn’t a sudden phenomenon of the last three to five years, but the culmination of decades. It was a slow, deliberate erosion of critical thinking, packaged with a Coca-Cola in one hand and a Big Mac in the other, symbolizing the seductive allure of convenience, consumerism, and conformity.

Like a virus, it spread quietly, insidiously, and Martha knew all too well how it had infiltrated the lives of people in the former Eastern Bloc.

As soon as the savage promises of capitalist ambition seeped into these once-guarded markets, the contagion took hold. It preyed on a collective hunger for something new, something better, something more. It fed off the deeply ingrained feelings of inferiority felt by those who had spent decades behind the Iron Curtain, bamboozled by aggressive marketing, manipulation techniques, and the false belief that “They—the others—know best.”

Self-help arrived nicely tucked into the Pandora’s box of Western ideals. Once unleashed, it spread unchecked, hypnotizing the masses with its seductive promises. False concepts were sold as truths, confusion was sown, and those in vulnerable positions—people searching for solace, for clarity, for something just beyond reach—were left exploited, chasing an ever-elusive dream.

Was life better, clearer, less murky, less unsettling, better aligned with one’s own circumstances before the self help virus exploded in our faces? Martha thinks so.

Until next time, be well!

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