Is Self-Help a Scam?

Welcome back to the Said in Therapy Podcast, where we discuss everything psychology, sometimes serious, sometimes with a funny twist, and talk about the stuff most people only admit to their therapist. I'm your host, Iman Tohami. I'm a therapist with more than 15 years' experience talking to people on a daily basis.

And today we are talking about self-help, the industry, the books, the influencers, the vision boards, the affirmations, and the mirror. We are asking the question nobody wants to ask. What if it's all a scam? Now, before you leave because you think it's a boring topic and you go back to your morning routine journaling or whatever, hear me out.

Because I'm not saying growth isn't real. I'm not saying therapy doesn't work. And I'm not saying the industry doesn't have some good aspects. I am saying the industry that sells you the idea of self-improvement might actually be designed to keep you stuck.

And I think that's worth a conversation. So let's get into it.

Okay, so let me paint a picture for you. Let's say it's Sunday evening and you feel that familiar anxiety, right? And the week ahead, you don't really want to think about, so you open your phone and you see a reel of someone standing in a minimalist apartment or whatever, golden hour light, and they say, six habits that changed your life.

Sorry, six habits that changed my life. These are the things I changed to become rich. And something in you thinks, maybe it's time. Hey, listen, I want to tell you that I fell into that trap. So it's not only you, right?

That's the genius of self-help. It meets you exactly at your most confusing and painful moments. The moments where you need real help and it says, I have the answer. Here's the book, here is the course, here is the challenge, here is the boot camp, the system, just follow the steps.

But here is the question I want you to think about for a little bit. How many steps have you followed? How many books have you finished? How many January 1st have you started a new framework? And where are you now?

I'm not asking to shame you. I'm asking because I think the answer reveals something uncomfortable about the model itself. The self-help industry is worth, depending on which report you look at, somewhere between $10 and $40 billion globally. Let that sink in.

That's an industry with a serious financial interest and you never quite getting there. Think about how it works. If a book actually solved all your problems, you would never buy it again. You would be done. And that's not what happens.

You finish, for example, Atomic Habits. Okay, wait a second. Listen, actually I think it was a good book, okay? But then what happens? You feel inspired for two weeks, then life happens, the habits slip. Let's be honest, they don't stick around for a long time.

And six months later, I don't know, you're buying a new book. Bootcamp or masterclass that you have seen on Instagram, and you pay $27 for it, or $100, or whatever the price tag is. Each product implies that the last one wasn't quite enough.

And the message underneath is always the same. You're broken, we can fix you for a price. That's really not wellness. That's a subscription model built on your insecurity. I know that hurts, but this is something that I had to tell myself as well.

This was a serious conversation when I started looking into different ways to broaden my own brand, if you will. And I'm not very business savvy. So I took all the courses, but when I looked at it and sat with myself for a while, after spending a lot of money, I actually realized no, this is not how it works, this is not helpful.

All the information I'm getting from these books or courses or masterclasses or whatever is something that I could have found by doing some simple research.

Now, here is why I want to bring in therapy. Because I think it exposes exactly what self-help gets wrong. In a real therapy session or in a real therapeutic work setting, whether that's CBT, psychodynamics, somatic, whatever modality, the goal is never to add more habits to a broken system.

The goal is to understand the system. To ask why do I keep doing the things that I don't want to do? Why do I sabotage? Why does progress feel so threatening? What am I actually afraid of? Those are not questions self-help wants you asking.

Because if you really answered them, you might not need the next book anymore. Self-help says do more, be more, optimize more. Therapy says slow down, look at why you keep running. One of those is very comfortable because it just forgets about everything else.

It just wants you to build something new, but building something new on top of something rotten will ultimately just break down. And the other one, which is usually therapy, is very confronting and it's painful to go through it.

While one wants to make millions of you, the other one forces you to look at your life and yourself and to find out what actually the problem is. Now I want to specifically talk about productivity culture for a second, because I think it's one of the most ridiculous corners of self-help.

There is this idea that if you just structure your time perfectly, time block your calendar, do deep work, eat a frog, protect your mornings, I don't know. You will finally become the person you want to be. And look, I'm not against structure and routine.

Routine actually calms your mind and your nervous system. Structure can be really helpful. But ask yourself this why are you so desperate to be productive? Because more often than not, when I sit with that question with myself or my clients, what comes up is fear.

Fear of being worthless. Fear that is, I don't know, if I'm not producing, I have no value. This is what the world was feeding you. The fear that rest is laziness. The fear that slowing down means you're falling behind.

And no productivity system addresses that fear. It gives you a new outfit, nothing else. You can have the most optimized calendar in the world and still feel completely empty at the end of the day. And when that happens, self-help is the answer for what you shouldn't do.

Self-help always wants you to say, I need you to do better. The answer self-help offers is you need a better system. Not maybe the system isn't the problem. Maybe there is something else.

Here's another thing that bothers me about traditional self-help. It's almost aggressively individualistic. It's all about your habits, your mindset, your discipline, your morning routine, whatever. The implicit message is if your life isn't where you want to be, it's a you problem.

Do better, work harder, think longer, believe more. But what about the external conditions people live in? What about the systemic barriers, the generational trauma, the economic pressure, the communities people are raised in? What about the fact that some people are starting from harder places and telling them to journal their way out of it?

It just doesn't help. It's not helpful. It's actually brutal and cruel. Real therapy acknowledges contexts. It says, of course you responded this way. And here is the situation you lived. Understand where you're coming from to understand who you are today.

Self-help too often says winners find a way regardless. But honestly, that's not empowerment. That's playing dressed up as inspiration.

Okay, I don't want to just bash everything without offering something real, some type of solution that you can that you could use and build on. Because I do believe change is possible. And I have seen it over and over again.

I have seen it in therapy rooms, in honest conversations, in my own life, in people who do the actual work. So what is it that actually works? Number one, relationships over content. The research on this is pretty consistent.

Human connection is one of the most powerful agents of change we have. Not a book, not a course. A person who sees you and stays. Therapy works in large part because of the therapy relationship between the therapist and the client, not the techniques.

Number two, understanding before action. Before you try to change a behavior, try to understand it. What function does it serve? What was it protecting you from? When you know that change becomes possible, because willpower alone doesn't do the work.

It achieves nothing without understanding. Number three, tolerating discomfort instead of optimizing the way out of it. Guys, this is extremely important. We live in a society that doesn't like uncomfortable situations. Discomfort is the number one enemy of our generation.

This is why we spend so much time scrolling and not thinking and feeling. Growth is uncomfortable. And the self-help industry often promises a smooth path. And that trust me, just trust me, that doesn't exist. There is no smooth path to growth.

There isn't. The real work involves sitting with hard feelings, not hacking your way past them. Number four, community and accountability. Listen, it's not about the influencer you follow. Of course you might like influencers. You know, I follow them too.

Actual humans in your actual life who know your actual situation. This is irreplaceable. I think you all might ask me for a conclusion now, or you know, some type of reflection. Is self-help really a scam? Okay, listen, here is where I end.

The content isn't always the problem. Actually, there are a few things that I really like about the books that I read from that industry or from that corner of the internet or the the books world. And I'm an I'm a very fast reader, so trust me, I have read quite a few books.

Some books carry really useful ideas. Some frameworks do help people orient themselves around it. And I think this is also important. I cannot just bash everything, you know. I'm not saying burn it all down. What I'm saying is be suspicious of any industry that profits from your belief and your insecurities.

You know, they want you to believe that you're not enough and that you need to be better. Be suspicious of solutions that never quite solve the problem. Be suspicious of advice that ignores your history, your context, your nervous system, and your humanity.

And it replaces all of that with five steps or a morning routine. I'm telling you, that will ultimately fail. You're not a broken machine that needs better software. You're a person complex, so many facets, shaped by experiences in your life deserving real understanding.

Real understanding unfortunately doesn't sell as well as PDF guides. The most radical thing you might be able to do is stop consuming content about your life and start actually living it. Maybe with help, real help, human help, but on your own terms.

So this is what I have got today. If that episode hits somewhere, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Leave a review. It really helps if you leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. And yeah. If you want to go deeper on any of this, I link some resources in the show notes.

I'm Iman Tohami. This is Said in Therapy. Take care of yourself. And I mean that in the realest way possible.