'The Last Self-Help Book'

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need: Repress Your Anger, Think Negatively, Be a Good Blamer & Throttle Your Inner Child
by Paul Pearsall

INTRODUCTION

A Science of Well-Being
Life used to be so simple before we all
started reading about how to live it.
Ben Wyld

SELF-HELPLESS
Sixteen years ago, I was gravely ill with Stage IV lymphoma. I feared I was going to die, my doctors thought I would, and my family did all they could to avoid accepting that I would. In a clinical sense, I did "die"; my vital signs were so weak that life was barely sustained.

Like many critically ill people, I panicked. I wanted a sure guide, a plan for healing, a way to help myself both physically and mentally. Even though I had been a scientist and clinical psychologist for almost twenty years, the terror of my illness caused me to seek the kind of certainty that scientifically based psychology seldom offers. I wanted something—anything—that could help me retain control of my destiny. I abandoned my scientific thinking in favor of slickly packaged promises and programs that offered exactly what I wanted to hear. I entered the world of self-help.

The seductiveness of self-help books appealed not just to me but to my friends and family, all of whom were desperate to help me. Almost every day, I was presented with another new program or technique, and I ended up with more than fifty half-read how-to-heal books and tapes shoved under my bed, each to be displayed when the person who sent it visited. The books actually began to interfere with the operation of my hospital bed.

But strangely, the more self-help ideas I was given when I was sick, the more pressured and helpless I began to feel. What's wrong with me? I wondered. All this tried-and-true wisdom and I can't benefit from it? Why did the philosophy behind self-help seem so obvious to everyone but me? With all the pain and death surrounding me on the cancer ward, the prescriptions for a positive attitude, for mind over matter, and for unwavering hope began to ring hollow and to feel almost sacrilegious. The self-help mantras were failing to provide the three things I needed most: meaning, comprehension, and management. Traditional psychology has shown that this is what constitutes the sense of coherence essential to real self-help. Why couldn't I do what millions of self-helpers said they did? Was I a self-help failure?

When a nurse said, "These books are really getting in the way," the metaphor was not lost on me.

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