Why do people hate on the self help industry?

[Chrissy j]

Like seriously so many people think that it doesn't work and it's a pseudoscience garbage scam. I read an article on Psychology Today where a psychology Ph.d destroyed it saying all of it doesn't work. There are traps with self help like not taking action, losing your ideals, and self criticism. You also have to research other fields if you want to do Personal development I feel like, not solely relying on self help theory. But I feel like these people who shame it are the people who aren't growing or living their life to the fullest. What do you all think? Sometimes I feel like I'm the only dreamer...

[Nahm]

@Chrissy j ha! Nice post. You’re not the only dreamer. I’ve been to hell, now I’m in a beautiful dream. There are billions of perspectives. I find, a lot of people don’t equate “self help” to what can actually help them with their stress, frustrations, suffering in general. The ego wall is strong with most people. In general, I think, at least in my country, “helping one’s self” seems to all too quickly equate to making more money. ?

[Faceless]

Lol I wasn’t aware of a self help industry. Sounds contradicting... but as far as helping yourself, it’s the only way. 

As for the walking PHD’S and there babble, it’s all part of there conditioning. There influences become there securty. There is a lack of responsibity in this “McDonald’s” psychology and it’s standards that emphasize conformity accordance to ideas and abstractions.  

I see those people with phds going on there to. It’s hillarious. 

[d0ornokey]

@Chrissy j

yeah it's annoying as fuck. i once had an argument with someone who called all of self-development BS and they're just trying to scam you of your money. 

[Faceless]

The psycho therapis & psychology expert took the place of the priest. Lol

Edited December 20, 2017 by Faceless

[Leo Gura]

@Chrissy j There is an old Chinese proverb which say something like: He who is saying it can't be done shouldn't stand in the way of the one doing it.

The problem is that those psychologists writing for Psychology Today are themselves neurotic as hell. There is a big difference between working on yourself and being an academic who reads books about dysfunctional people.

You can read every textbook ever written about psychology, but it will not grow you much as a human being.

[Faceless]

My favorite book is the book of myself??

[Ayilton]

They don't know the genius of being   Guys

[Ocean]

Back in my self-help days I always liked the Lincoln quote, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six hours sharpening my ax." Working on yourself highlights the faults and issues in others usually. Best to ignore and fake you're okay.

It's strange how no one complains about working on the body for health, yet find 'mind training' pointless and a waste of time. That tended to be my remark when someone slated what I was focusing on and it usually got a 'fair enough' agreement. 

As fun as it was (learning the many perspective and techniques of others for a happy and successful life). After a while I learnt that dropping things was the way go. 

[spicy_pickles]

Sometimes, the role of someone with a PhD is simply to find something to discourage/disagree with/prove wrong/etc. 

[Extreme Z7]

Most people don't do self-help/personal development for various reasons.

• They might think they've already got life figured out. (Couldn't be more wrong)
• They might be so depressed, self-help content literally cannot resonate with them.
• They're dogmatic and closed-minded.
• They're too lazy to even bother to look into it.
• They're too distracted with all the other stuff they've got going in their lives.
• They think they can just "figure life out on their own with logic and common sense!" (Couldn't be more wrong again)

[SOUL]

 There are people in this world who have such extreme mental conditions that they require professional help.

All those people who are professionals paid a lot of money to get accredited as such and the last thing they want is potential customers not choosing to spend $300 an hour for years for them to be told by the professionals what to do and prescribed drugs that would need to be overcome to get the healing the more mild cases these typically entail.

If they were only left with only the extreme cases they couldn't afford to be professionals so they expand their customer base by scaring mild cases into thinking they're more extreme than they really are and that's the professionals are the only ones who can help them.

Although, there is quite a bit of regurgitated and repackaged pseudo psychology that people passed around as being more effective than it really is.

The heart of the matter is regardless of whether you're seeking help from professionals or exploring ways to help yourself the individual needs to take it upon themselves to do the work of healing.

Too often most  people whether they're going to professionals or purchasing self-help programs are simply seeking someone else to tell them what to do and want a quick fix instead of doing real self work and soul-searching.

Edited December 21, 2017 by SOUL

[Joseph Maynor]

I’m sure psychologists dislike it because they view it as pseudoscience and a threat to their counseling dollars.  Same reason lawyers would throw a fit if there were really good legal resources that the public could buy on the shelves.  A lot of self-help books are either too dense or contain too much fluff — there are few really well-written and edited self-help books around.  I’ve literally read a self-help book that contained only one useful idea to me — but that idea is amazing.  It was like digging into a pile of straw and finding a large diamond nestled at the bottom of it.  It seems like the self-help publishers just want to move books, and a lot of self-help books contain a lot of inspiring anecdotal accounts and promises — but they fall-short on delivering many useful tools to the student reading the book.  It’s like they get you all excited about a better life, but then leave the How-To up to you.  Or the books are way too technical to ever be taken seriously by the reader.  When you write (especially a book), you gotta always keep the reader squarely in mind.  What does the reader need to know, how to communicate that to them, and then what tools can you give the reader to begin to apply the theory to obtain actual results from the work.  As a writer, you should be able to apply your own theory and tools in your own life and get the promised results yourself.  That’s a great test to keep self-help materials on-point and useful.  But there’s a conflict of interest in that book publishers just want to sell as many books as possible.

Edited December 22, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Shu]

A cliche subject in every field.

As a rule of thumb In whatever field you deeply curently warking on, youl always going to stumble upon a horde of veraiety protesters for veraiety of reasons. The same is for the allies.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Shu