Self-help books. They’re supposed to help us, right? Provide some clarity within the madness of darkness? That is, at least, the intent. So many ~acclaimed authors~ pump out these books in masses; one for every situation, yet the message is always the same. Stay positive. Pick yourselves up by the boot-strap and carry on. No one’s opinion matters but your own, therefore don’t listen. Don’t let anyone make you feel badly; don’t let anyone do anything you don’t want to. Oh, and don’t forget, what’s a self-help book without the typical story told by a forty-year-old looking to reflect on her life and how SHE was in the worst of places and how SHE was able to get over depression or death or what-have-you and how SHE now lives a better life and SO CAN YOU.
You know what I see that as? A giant “fuck you”. It’s scribbled across every line, every page, and every chapter; preface to ‘about the author’ (Susie Sue has her masters in Psychiatry and has worked with enough patients to know this is what to say to depressed people blahblahBLAH). Yeah, well, guess what? Susie Sue hasn’t dealt with depression. Those people that provided example stories? They’re writing from the future, not from the present. If they were, maybe they would provide the tiniest bit of realism. MAYBE, just maybe, they would express how fucking often people want to die; how people are so afraid of death yet literally hate themselves to such an unfathomable degree that they are more afraid of their willingness to face it.
Where is a self-help book that says that? That tells its readers that, hey, this isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to be really fucking hard and there are some days you’re not going to want to get out of bed. Well, actually no, there are going to be months you won’t want to get out of bed. And sometimes you won’t. Where is a self-help book that isn’t trying to lure me into positivity? Or that understands that I can’t just WILL MYSELF to believe something, or to get over something, or that making various choices to get better is actually so painfully difficult? Where is it?
I am so sick of these books becoming such an utter cliche. It’s like people are too afraid to look us in the eye and ask us what’s wrong, or better yet, attempt to understand it. Do you really think that handing me a self-help book about how to gain confidence and get over abuse and having self-esteem is actually going to ‘fix’ the issue? Depression can’t just be ‘fixed’. The cure isn’t something to be read, but to be experienced. It takes growth and pain and patience and a ton of support.
If you’re going to use your years of education to write one of these ridiculously overstated, truly nauseating pieces on how easy it is to get over such an issue, seriously just stop and throw it out. I don’t need to hear how easy you think it is. Because 1. It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong by not finding it so simple, and 2. I find it quite insulting that you think it is so simple to begin with. Clearly you are naive to the matter, and really, you’re not fooling anyone (except maybe the parents who don’t know how to talk to their children).
(via xmentallychallengedx)
