The Self-Help Books and Articles Trap

Imagine that the cooking recipes did not include the ingredients, or that to learn to dance a tango they will explain to you in writing "6 tips to dance a tango", without images, or photos, or videos or drawings. Nothing. I could explain the logic of why you have to use the pan and not the oven, but without the ingredients it is going to be quite difficult anyway you cook the recipe, right?

Well if that seems difficult to you, I assure you that everyone can learn to make a carrot cake in a couple of attempts, and everyone can memorize the steps of a tango by repeating them with their own feet over and over time. And on the contrary, there are people who spend years trying to overcome a depression or a personality problem. And yet, while a written article does not even consider teaching you to dance, they do believe that in five minutes of reading they can change your life. But not. And although it is hard for us to admit it, it's the same deception as self-help books.

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The importance of experiential learning

Let's see, you learn to walk by walking, to speak you learn by speaking, to write you learn by writing, to swim you learn by swimming. Starting from that base, it is unlikely that by reading a book you can overcome a problem that you have dragged on for a good part of your existence. I don't want to be a party pooper, but these types of problems carry emotions and behaviors. Just as a book will not teach you to dance or drive, a book will not teach you to practice behaviors that are not even in your usual repertoire of behaviors. No book teaches you to face fear, nor can it do it for you. It is something that you have to do and it is not easy, because if we could choose, we would not feel sadness, fear or anxiety about certain things and our life would be simpler. If you could choose, surely you would already lead the life you want because no emotion would be an obstacle.

Self-help books tell you things like “do things that encourage you”, “seek support from your loved ones”, “be more positive, look at everything from the point of view that we will explain below”. But this has two drawbacks.

Lack of individual treatment

First of all, have you thought about whether the behaviors the book talks about are going to help you? I mean, if they are going to help you personally. Psychological treatments are individual for a reason: it is analyzed what that patient values ​​and what causes discomfort, how and why. To him and not to another. Self-help books are sold like holy water to everyone. For example, the behavior of building relationships and creating a greater support network: this idea of ​​making gala of our gregariousness that many self-help manuals collect does not really go with all the world.

Although studies show that people with more positive social relationships are generally happier, introverts they do not particularly enjoy getting together with large groups of friends to do things together, in fact they enjoy more of a good book and low external stimulation. So maybe the problem with your sadness is not that you need more people in your life or that you have to interact more with them.

What if you have the right people around you but you don't know how to express yourself to them on certain occasions? To begin with, this is a different problem that some may associate with not having adequate social skills, But it may actually be because you experience anxiety in certain contexts, and then the problem is the anxiety. But for this it is necessary to analyze in depth what is happening and propose concrete solutions for that problem. Socializing with people outside of your circle is not the solution then, nor is keeping an interest in someone who doesn't really interest you. More is not better. Not to be happy, not to relate better, not to have less anxiety, not at all. And sometimes what is missing is not the what, but the how. Self-help books are usually quite general to deal with certain difficulties and therefore insufficient.

Lack of experiential learning

Second, these limitations entail attitudinal learnings that a book does not provide. No reading can adequately teach you to learn behaviors, or emotions and attitudes. The knowledge transmitted by the readings is semantic and therefore can produce learning at the cognitive level. It is like a book teaching you to drive: it is procedural learning, you have to practice to learn to drive, no book is enough.

This means that self-help texts and tips teach you a new theoretical perspective and allow you to store knowledge about what could lead to happiness, but you don't integrate them into your behavioral pattern. It's like a clever teacher is explaining history to you. Okay, you may remember it phenomenal, but it is still semantic knowledge (of data and objective facts and foreign to you, because no self-help book is personalized).

What really produces a change, a learning, is personal experience, you autobiographical memory, since it is endowed with a strong emotional charge, both good and bad. And it is that both your virtues and your defects come from there, that means that the environmental opportunities (situations, people ...) with which you come across and what you do in Each situation you face has a greater impact and influence on your personality and your personal and attitudinal changes than any self-help book will have. Never.

Now think that every day you go through more or less the same situations, you interact more or less with the same people and you act in your environment in the same way more or less than yesterday or the day before yesterday. Einstein used to say "if you want different results, don't always do the same thing" and this masks the terrifying reality that you are an active agent of your own personal change, not a passive agent, is your behavior the only one that matters to get the prize: be more sociable, be happier... Well, your behavior and environmental opportunities, it's 50/50, but you can't control the environment, only the way you you answer. Thinking differently is not synonymous with acting differently, because between thoughts and actions there is a barrier: emotions.

That is, I can be aware that I have to study to pass (I know the behavior that I have to carry out), but the emotion of boredom, apathy or demotivation prevents me from carrying out that conduct. I may know that to get a job I have to do a job interview with the boss, but talking to the boss makes me anxious and scared, and I decide not to. A self-help book tells you "talk to your boss" or it says "talk to strangers to be more sociable" or "get out of bed to get over it. before depression ”, but it does not tell you how to overcome emotional barriers to do what you already knew beforehand that you had to make. And I'm talking about really getting over them, I'm not talking about a motivational speech that fades out of your head the next day. If that speech were effective, you wouldn't need a self-help book again. But is that to overcome them you have to do things. And that "doing" costs a lot.

There are no magic self-help recipes

It is much easier to read a book, right? How tempting the hope that without much effort your life and you will change forever. And so immediately, when you start reading, you gain more control over your own life. You are already doing something for yourself, and that makes you feel better, but it doesn't change you, it doesn't make you more sociable or happier in the long run, and that's why you read another and another and another... Because momentarily is a negative reinforcement that lessens your discomfort and gives you a certain sense of control (the illusion of control, a common cognitive illusion derived from a bias of optimism). It is, in short, a placebo.

The most sociable and happy people do not read these books or articles, but they have never needed to read them, because to be happier and more sociable is learned through experience. There is no correlation between being sociable or happy and the number of self-help books that are read. It is something that one builds by relating, living experiences and trying to act on his personal values ​​and the life he wants to lead. And changing your behavior when you are not getting the desired results.

Progress requires effort

There is another reality that you are not going to like either: changing hurts, restructuring your mental representations about the world, about yourself, about society, it hurts. There are restructuring therapies aimed at rebuilding the conception of the Self and of relationships with others that profoundly modify the meaning of many knowledge and behaviors, risking our cognitive identity. Changing these representations for others that are more effective for oneself is very costly, demanding and is even a reason for anxiety.

The discomfort we feel and that moves us to modify our ideas and our behavior is part of that learning: means discovering and rethinking our representations by seeing the implicit expectations we had about violated the world. And it is complicated in the social and psychological world. For example, modifying the idea that the earth is flat by the new representation that it is round, was difficult a few centuries ago (in fact it is difficult with many semantic ideas about world theories: is homeopathy effective? Is the evolution of species real? Many people will give you one answer and some will give you another regardless of what the data says, and it is their representations, their interpretation of the world).

However, much more difficult is to accept other types of ideas such as that your partner is unfaithful and you must leave it, that you are really not comfortable with the people around you and that is why you do not have adequate communication with them, that your friends are not really because deep down you have different values, or that the path you have chosen professionally has stagnated and you should dedicate yourself to something else... All these ideas hurt and all of them hide underlying problems that They can affect happiness or social skills, indirect problems that really should be addressed more than "how to be a more sociable person" or "how to be more positive".

To make matters worse, it is common that when we detect these inconsistencies that cause us discomfort between the social world and personal representations, these are so reinforced and consolidated with the implicit learning processes that are very difficult to modify. The change is even more expensive.

In conclusion

Change is not easy. Believing that change is simple is an easy idea to sell since it is what many would like, but accepting this advertising slogan also has a cost: guilt. After reading a self-help book, you might wonder "if it is so easy, why am I not getting it?"

Guilt is also an easy trap, because it is not a writer who sells you this idea, not many, not all psychologists, or coaches; is society: from those who sell adventure, free spirit and youth when they sell perfumes and cars ("if you buy this, you will be cooler"), those who defend that the world is a meritocracy and that you just have to strive to get what you want without getting on your feet (such as positive psychology), even people who deceive themselves under the pretext of not have problems or limitations, neither in their social life nor in anything because they do such a thing and advise you without taking into account who you are, that is, without empathizing with your emotions or circumstances.

Y there they are, the emotions of each one, fears and anxiety playing a crucial role that everyone decides to ignore. Conveying learning is more than explaining your version of events, no matter how much scientific and empirical support it may have. I can explain that to start a car you have to insert the key, turn it, remove the handbrake and so on, and they are objective and real, but until you are the one who insert the key and until you do it a few times you will not really know how to start a car. And in the same way, do not start your happiness either.