Why is it that the most introspective, passionately self-help pursuing, new-age wisdom-soaking people I know are the most screwed up?

     It’s not fair, you know.  They work really hard at getting happy.  They should be happy, and if there were any justice in this world, they would be.

     It’s possible that some of them started out more screwed up than the rest of us, and it's really, really helped them be less screwed up than they would be otherwise.

     It could be that this crazy obsession with mental health is driving them insane.

     It’s possible that they only THINK they’re screwed up enough to need help…I mean, we all know, deep down inside that we’re a little broken on some level, right?  Our parents were overly critical, we were picked on in high school, we have repressed guilt from some crime or accident that we were responsible for and never got caught out about…whatever…

     We’re all a little screwed up, and most of us fake being normal, and we do it really well.  Maybe some of these people don’t realize that the rest of us are just pretending, and they think they really are the only ones who are weird and damaged.  So they keep trying to “fix” themselves and wonder why it doesn’t happen.

     Even worse, they keep trying to “fix” me.  “You're too intellectual”, “You’re out of touch with your emotions”, “You stuff things too much”, “You need to ‘release’ all these negative experiences”. 

     Well, I’ve been there, done that and all I got out of it was a vague sensation of feeling ridiculous.  Oh sure, there was sometimes a brief after-glow of relief, but it was accompanied by a persistent sense of disappointment.  I am assured that there are other activities that cause this to a much greater degree, but that isn’t exactly a selling point.

     Personally, I think it’s because that stuff is generally a huge scam predicated on false assumptions.

     These false assumptions are that we are somehow supposed to be free of negative feeling, that we should be constantly evolving on a personal level, reaching higher and higher levels of personal fulfillment and self-satisfaction, and that we can make our lives meaningful by some form of sympathetic or symbolic “magical” manipulation of the world around us, or our own internal emotions…and many of them seem to think that we can meet these high expectations for our lives by lowering our expectations of ourselves.

     Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made my brief forays into the self-help jungle.  Sometimes it can make you feel pretty good for a while.  Doing the exercises, finding a whole new symbolic framework with which to describe the problems, you might even learn something new about yourself.  But the main benefit of all these self-help programs is a sense of doing something…which does make you feel better…but it doesn’t really solve the problem.

     The problem, see, is that you are a human being.  And human beings do, say, think and experience many things…and everything you do, say, think and experience has a variety of effects on you and the world around you.  There effects are seen and unseen, positive and negative, foreseen and unforeseen…but they are legion, and their effects are permanent.  So you’ve got the good, bad and the ugly all rolled up in one package; your life, and you take it with you wherever you go.

     Nothing you can ever do will ever change that some days you’re going to be cranky, or that the fact that everyone loves your sister more really frosts your cookies, or that you have emotional hot-buttons your friends just shouldn’t push…

     But if you are a functional human being; if you can hold a job and do it well, if you have some people in your life who respect and support you, if you can be supportive of others, if you can love, and be loved…if you can hit the bumps and pull yourself together again and get on track, then quit wasting your time and money.  Most any hobby you try will give you as much enjoyment, satisfaction and sense of progress as sitting in your apartment working your way through another program; probably more.

     If you're not functional…if you keep making the same mistakes over and over, and you and the people you love keep getting hurt, and nothing is working out, and you think everyone would be better off without you…well…get help…from a professional who can look you in the eye and hear your voice and see you as an individual and help you work out the kinks in your life.

     Don’t get me wrong, I think that some of this stuff is mildly beneficial.  Just like if you gamble enough, eventually you can end up with a big score…but in the end, if you keep track of everything you’ve put into it, does the pay-day equal or exceed the investment?  Not in my experience.

     Because there’s no getting past our darkside.  You know, the darkside?  The little voice in your head, the feeling in your gut…the thing inside you that laughs at you when you fall, reminds you of every mistake, tells you gleefully before each and every effort that you are doomed to failure before you start, reminds you of everytime you were weak, or careless, or mean, or petty or not good enough?  You know the part that tells you whatever you want isn’t worth the effort, or that the deck is stacked against you or that nobody but you cares? 

     Self-help programs and books seem to promise us that we can eliminate that part of us.

     Here’s a little secret:

     We can’t.  No matter how many affirmations your do, no matter how many times you visualize casting away the negative aspects of yourself and your life, no matter how many times you “release” it…you are going to get up with it every morning.  It’s going to be looking at you in the mirror.  OK, maybe there are days when the dark voices are quiet and you all you hear is the angels singing on your shoulder.

     Those are called good days.  They don’t mean you’ve won.  They don’t mean you can take that bar and raise it to the high-water mark and expect that to be the new standard.

     It means you get a break.  It means you know there can be days like this.  It means you should make the most of it, and that you have something to look back on when things get dark again, and something to look forward to when they’ve been dark for a while.

     And when things go dark, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost.  It doesn’t mean this is it.  It doesn’t mean that you’re going to have to get used to it.  It just means that your human and these things happen.

     Of course we shouldn’t be over-burdened, and we shouldn’t be persistently unhappy, and of course grinding, unrelenting depression and despair are dangerous…but if this is your state, you don’t need affirmations.  You need professional and possibly medical help.

     Otherwise, if you have more good days than bad, if you can look at yourself in the mirror and see someone with strengths and weaknesses, faults and virtues, good and bad, and ugly, but who tries daily to exercise the higher angels of their nature and keep the lower in their place, who wins some and losses some, but always gets up afterwards and tries to win the next one…congratulations, your normal.

     Now go out there and try to get something real done.  You’ll be all the better for it.