There's No Such Thing as Self-Help

I was the queen of self-help books. I read many and each had some nugget I could take away, that helped ease the pain, end the nagging inside me, fill the empty hole. My life didn't really change. Some things would get better for a while. For the longest time I couldn't understand why the books didn't really fix me. Melody Beattie. Wayne Dyer. Steven Covey. Harriet Lerner. So may more. And still the empty pit was there.

I took classes and workshops and joined groups. Same thing. Each would make me feel better for a little while, and then I'd return to that dark space within me. The space that was never filled up, never went away. I was so sure that there was something fundamentally and inherently wrong with me. I learned to put on the mask to plod through my days and kept some little clicker of hope alive within that maybe someday I would find that elusive answer. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just be happy?

All of this reading and all these workshops and all these group sessions taught me enough about my life and my background and my childhood and my marriage and my choices and my parents and my siblings and my bosses and my friends and my colleagues that I could intellectualize all my problems away. HA! I discovered why I thought I was the way I was, but never the "fix".

Three things about self-help:

- My meet and greet with cancer was a huge lesson. I can't even begin to list or describe the things I learned, truly learned, and took into my heart, mind, and soul. It was the push I needed to realize that there is no such thing as self-help. We each have to do our own "work" whatever that may be, but we can not do it alone. Each of us need support, in varying degrees and from different sources. Sometimes we can't find that support or reject that support. We don't live in this world alone. The empty pit of feeling alone seems so true, but we are not alone. You are not alone.

- All the gurus are saying the same thing. (This is a post in itself, for some other day). The same primary message is there no matter the source. AA, Steven Covey, Wayne Dyer, the Bible, Deepak Chopra, Buddha, to list only a few. Different words, different languages, different eras.

- True self-help comes when you learn to trust: yourself, others, your higher power/creator/God (insert your term here). Trusting means you get to the point that you realize you are not in this by yourself. Your life, your actions, your feelings are yours alone. To make a change or grow into yourself, you do the work. Trusting others makes it happen.

This past weekend, I went to a Hay House I Can Do It conference. I can not say that it was life-changing, but I can say it was affirming. I will continue to buy and read the books and attend workshops and go to classes. I know I will learn something new, feel something new or feel something old, but I now do this not to fix myself but to remind myself of what I know. I am not alone. Neither are you. Reach out to someone. Reach out for someone. Keep reaching. Don't let go. Reach some more.