We listen and we judge self-help books.

Don’t get your knickers twisted.

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Reading is wonderful. Reading, according to me, is one of those hobbies which doing more of is going to get you some positive affection from your elders. Reading is accompanied with myriad benefits whilst providing you with a sense of escapism, it is “anti-brainrot.”

The question remains, are all types of readable content worth consuming?

Across bookstagram and booktok, (names of online book communities in Instagram and Tiktok respectively) runs rampant various debates on what you should read, what you shouldn’t, how much you shouldn’t judge, and how much you’re going to judge anyway.

The common factor remains, problematic readable content make themselves available, such as some dark romances that validate sexual assault but come off as ‘enemies-to-lovers’ or ‘you-don’t-understand-dark-romance’.

Self-help is another category that I’d like to pitch as a teensy bit problematic. It does not sit right with me that people with no psychological or scientific backgrounds, type away in their computers how strangers all across the world need to follow their methods of thinking.

Of course, they’re presented in a way that reflects just how much the writer values autonomy, but you wouldn’t trust an engineer to operate on you, would you? Why should authors with no medical or psychological backgrounds decide anything about your life.

Of course, some of you might be thinking, ‘but they’re just writing, you don’t have to read or follow their words’, sure, but if the book is titled ‘YOU’RE DOING THIS WRONG, COME HERE AND FIX THIS’, it is screaming for obedience, isn’t it? Just search for any self-help book in such fields, you’ll know I’m right.

The entire point of this post is not to trash authors writing self-help, but for readers to be mindful of what they’re consuming. Therapy is expensive, I get it. Yet, the self-help books are not substitutes for therapy. You are a completely different person, you have your own set of lived experiences that some other person across the world typing on their keyboard will never go through.

Therapy might be expensive, but do not make it replaceable.