What if there's nothing wrong with you?

And why I broke up with "everyday" self-help content

Forever finding hearts in nature (and bringing them home)—May 2023

Hi friend,

Last year, Tall Man introduced me to an app he uses to keep track of… well, almost everything. I won’t/can’t be the one to explain his system, but can only say that I think his ideas for how to stay organized are extraordinary. Unlike anything I’ve seen or heard about before. Whenever he shows me some new way he’s using it, I am truly in awe of him.

Tall Man wasn’t selling me on the idea of using this app (and I’m not trying to sell you on it either, which is why I’m not naming it), but over time I became intrigued. I wasn’t looking for a new way to organize my life or to-do list. (I’ve always been a pen-and-paper kind of girl.) Instead, I could feel that there was a gap in my support system, especially since making the decision to stop going to therapy and stop journalling.

One day, I downloaded the app and created only one list. There were no tasks or to-dos. Instead, I wrote a handful of gentle reminders I would see every day.

The first one I added: “There is nothing wrong with you ❤️”.

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For the past few years, I’ve found myself in a complicated relationship with self-help content. Sometimes, I’m in a phase where I’m happy to consume it and to learn new things from the creators of it. And then every six months or so, I’ll enter a different phase entirely. It’s not just that I stop enjoying the content. It’s that I feel deeply turned off by it.

I don’t notice when I’m entering this phase. It just kind of… happens. But if I were to try to point to a tangible thing I do notice, it’s that one day I get 5-10 minutes into a podcast and just think… nope, I’m done. I can’t consume another story about the hard things we deal with as humans, and/or tips/hacks for how to improve myself. Then I unsubscribe from all the self-help things and delete anything I’ve downloaded/saved, and usually start reading fiction instead. This phase will typically last for anywhere from 1-3 months, before I decide to go back and see what some of those creators have been doing.

This hasn’t always been the case. I’ve been consuming self-help content since I was 10 years old. That’s nearly 30 years… three decades of my life¹… that I have consumed content I hoped would help me in some way. And some of it it has helped. It has inspired me. It has given me practical advice for problems I actually needed help with. And even more simply, it has provided validation and helped me feel less alone. But I’ve noticed this new cycle of consumption/anti-consumption enough times now that I had to question it. And at the end of last year, I hit a point where I knew I was done for good.

I unsubscribed from all the podcasts. And I unfollowed any account on social media that was run by a “creator,” choosing to only follow people I actually know or have connected with over the years.

It’s been roughly 4 months, and for the first time: I haven’t re-subscribed to any of it and don’t want to. If anything, I’ve only continued to unsubscribe. This break (or perhaps we can call it a break-up) has given me the space to pay attention to what I’m truly enjoying at this phase in my life. Things like The Ezra Klein Show and

The Culture Study Podcast

by

Anne Helen Petersen

. Good journalism by people who are interested in what shapes our culture and lives. This content opens my mind and allows me to think about ideas in new ways. It teaches me something about what’s happening in the world outside of me.

It does not rely on me feeling bad about myself. It does not rely on me wanting to improve something about who I am or how I live my life. It does not rely on me believing that there is something wrong with me.

But that’s exactly what most self-help content relies on. Not all of it. But it’s what I’m calling “everyday” self-help content relies on. And I’ve finally figured out what the distinction is, and why it hasn’t felt good to consume these last few years.

The way I see it right now, there are two types of self-help content: everyday self-help and special occasion self-help.

Special occasion self-help is content created to help with one very specific topic or problem you are trying to navigate. This is content that is often created by experts in a particular field—and is often consumed in one package, like a book or a single podcast interview. A few examples could be: if you’re stuck in a negative conflict cycle with your partner, you could read a book like FIGHT RIGHT by the Gottmans (or listen to them talk about it on pods). Or if you find yourself in an unhealthy relationship dynamic, you could pick up DRAMA FREE by

Nedra Glover Tawwab

. And there are countless personal finance books that could help you with your money! This kind of content can be extremely valuable, because when you need it, you can find it and get the help you need. Not to be consumed daily, it’s meant for special occasions.

Special occasion self-help is content created to help with one very specific topic or problem you are trying to navigate. Not to be consumed daily, it’s meant for special occasions.

Everyday self-help, on the other hand, is content that covers any/every topic under the umbrella of self-help—and the creators know there’s an audience that wants to consume all of it. It’s often released as a podcast or YouTube channel or social media (or all of them). The creators might cover productivity one week, and attachment styles the week after that. Then narcissism, trauma, sobriety, creativity. The list goes on. I won’t name examples, but trust you can use your imagination or even think about some of your own. This kind of content can still be valuable, and covers topics that touch our everyday lives. But if you subscribe and consume every single piece of it, it can also feel overwhelming. By covering such a huge range of topics, it doesn’t help you with one specific thing. It simply invites you to stay in the self-help world, more broadly—and that’s not a place I want to hangout every day.

Everyday self-help content doesn’t help you with one specific problem. It simply invites you to live in the self-help world, more broadly.

I don’t want to live and breathe self-help. I don’t want to hear about all the possible things I might be doing wrong, and all the ways I can try to do better. I don’t want to constantly consume content that makes me feel like a self-improvement project, or results in even longer to-do lists of new things I hadn’t even considered doing until a creator told me to. And I don’t want to live in a world that needs me to think there’s something wrong with me, or that I’m a problem that needs to be fixed. I have enough of those beliefs to deal with, thanks to complex trauma (which is why it was the first reminder I added to my phone). I don’t need to also intentionally consume content on it every single day (outside of the regular marketing we already passively see). And honestly, doing so has the potential to be more harmful than helpful for me.

It has a huge impact on my mental health. And it has the potential to have a huge impact on my finances, too. Not just because I might buy into some of the products or services the everyday self-help content creators promote (often on topics I don’t actually need help with). And not just because other people stand to profit from me feeling bad about myself and wanting to self-improve². If I live in the self-help world every day, I’m not actually living my life—I’m just consuming a lot of self-help content about ways I could live differently. And if I’m not living, I’m not paying attention or taking action on what’s right in front of me. There’s a cost to that.

I think I got stuck in the self-help world for a little while, after what happened in 2019. A single traumatic experience sparked the beginning of a three-year journey that I went on with the help of two therapists. That was really important work. And, it’s not work I can or want to do on a daily or weekly basis. It’s too much. It required too much of me. And it took me out of my life in many ways—including my actual work. (This all had a negative impact on my income, from 2020 onward.) It also left me in a state of feeling as though I was still broken, for most of those three years. After I’d work on one problem, I would find another. Then another, and another. This sometimes happened in therapy or even in my journal, but mostly it was through the everyday self-help content I was consuming outside of therapy—and would then bring to our sessions. Little things people would say that would make me think of another aspect of my past or problems I hadn’t considered. Letting go of all three, at least temporarily, has helped me come back to myself—and get back into my life.

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I’m in a really good place right now, friend. Money is still tight. But I feel more content than I can ever remember, in all other areas of my life. I’m taking really good care of myself, both for today and for Old Lady Cait too. I’m finding my flow with writing and work again. I’m in a secure relationship with one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. I have a few less friendships than years before, but the ones I have feel deep and loving. And I’m showing up as more of myself in all situations—and most people are accepting most parts of me. I am enjoying my life and have a lot to be grateful for.

Funnily enough, I think I have the task manager app Tall Man showed me to thank for some of this. Over the last year, I’ve slowly added more and more tasks and reminders to it. We even have a shared folder we can both add things to, which has been a really cool way to connect and build shared tasks/goals into our relationship. It’s safe to say I’m not really a pen-and-paper girl anymore (which I never saw coming). I use it to keep track of more of my life than I’d imagined when I created that first list of gentle reminders. But that list still exists, it just looks a little different now.

I have gentle reminders for my health. Some for my writing and work. Things I want to keep top of mind for my relationship. And one for money. These parts of my life are constantly evolving, and I’ve evolved the language of my daily reminders many times too. Because I look at them every day, I get to ask myself: are these still working for me? What questions/words would feel most helpful for where I am? Basically, what do I want to be included in a list that I can review and think: yes, I did that today, then check it off. None of them came from a content creator. They all came from within, as a result of paying attention to what wasn’t working and what kind of support I needed—then giving it to myself.

I am not here to devalue or downplay the importance of good self-help content. I am someone who values self-awareness and has a growth mindset. When I recognize something isn’t working for me, I want to make a change—and I do. And I think self-help content can provide a lot of value, when it’s time to make those changes. I just don’t think there’s value in consuming self-help content every single day. Ideally, more creators would say they know you won’t follow along forever, and hope you take what you need and leave when the time is right—but that’s not how capitalism works. And, that’s ok. We all need to survive in it. But that means it’s up to us as consumers to recognize what kind of content we want to be consuming—and when it’s time to unsubscribe and move on.

Around the same time I unsubscribed from everyday self-help content, I also changed my reminder of “There’s nothing wrong with you” to “I am not broken.” And that was helpful for a while, especially in terms of how I show up in my biggest relationships. But recently, I’ve been thinking about deleting it from the app altogether. Because for the past couple of months, I’ve looked at it every day and thought… I didn’t need that reminder today. I still check it off the list. But I didn’t actually need the reminder. I know there’s nothing wrong with me. I know I am not broken.

I hope you know that, too—and that you go out into the world and live your life. When a problem really becomes a problem, you’ll know—and there will be plenty of content that can help you. You’ll find it when you need it.

xx Cait

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✍🏼 A few journal prompts for you

Here are some questions I’ve used to reflect on this journey:

• Who benefits from you feeling broken?

• How does feeling broken impact your finances?

• What other topics/hobbies interest you, outside of self-help? What do you want to explore this year?

• If you knew you weren’t broken, how would your content consumption change? What podcasts might you listen to/unsubscribe from? What books might you add to/remove from your TBR list? Which accounts might you follow/unfollow on social media?

• What is one problem you actually want to address this year? How do you know it’s a problem? And how might you begin to look at it?

1. And yes, writing this sentence blew my mind, made me feel sad for my younger self, and also made me want to quit consuming all self-help content forever and ever. 👀🤯

2. As a creator myself, I think another reason why I started to feel so turned off by this type of content is because I can imagine what some of the strategy behind it might be. 1) Know there’s an audience of people who feel broken and/or want to improve themselves. 2) Constantly create and release new content that shares how. 3) Grow a huge audience. 4) Become recognized as a person who has grown a huge audience by simply promoting self-help (this is the part that feels strange to me, as I’m not sure what good this is actually doing). 5) Earn more and more income through ad revenue, sponsored content, etc.