Seduced by Self-Help
Today, I want to write about the all-consuming self. (wink wink). We all have one, don’t we?
I have always had a propensity for pursuing growth. Wanting to get better at something. What’s the next project I can propel myself into? Today, all any of us needs to do to find a new pursuit is place our thumb on our phone and the algorithm shows us a litany of options. What shall I tackle next? Who wants my money?
There is a certain seduction in staying self-referential. It’s consuming and compelling.
In early sobriety, it was essential for me to look and focus on myself. I couldn’t ignore my tendencies if I wanted real change. I had to look under the hood of all my unhealthy ways of coping. In doing so, I created a syllabus of sobriety tools that I still cycle through. They all feel good except sometimes even when I do them on my own, it still feels performative.
Sometimes I ping-pong my way through all the tools telling myself well today might call for a long sit in meditation and tomorrow I may need more movement and HIIT. The needing to pull from the planned project wheel is finally catching up with me. Quite frankly, the way I meander through the menu of modalities has, for the most part, just been one fancy way of me avoiding self-intimacy. And because I am becoming very familiar with paradox, all by myself, in solitude, I seem to be running away from myself.
I love shiny new things. I love cracking open a new book that’s going to light me up. My neural pathways love to titrate the dopamine of self-development. Except I start to beat myself up when I realize this book isn’t what I truly need. And off I go to the next one.
I feel silly saying this but I’m just going to say it: I find it really hard to keep my eyes on my own paper in this school of sobriety. I have to resist the urge to copy somebody else’s sobriety test. They must have the answers I seek. Can I just take a peek at what they’re doing, reading, writing about? Actually, I don’t even think this is unique to sobriety.
This is the world we live in now. Conquer thy self. Longevity litany and project manage thyself in perpetuity.
In the end, the real truth of it all is that none of this is a test. There are no right answers. We are not projects to be managed. We don’t need to brand our being.
I really wish people would talk more about what happens when personal development becomes endless developing? What is really happening when we are constantly under construction?
We all want to be our best, but then we glance over at someone else and think, “yeah… just not like that.” We talk nonstop about setting boundaries, only to realize that what we might actually need are a few more bridges.
And somewhere along the way, we’ve started siloing ourselves with all this self‑improvement. As if growth is something we’re supposed to do alone, in a vacuum, instead of in connection with the people we bump into each day.
The truth is simple. The simple self is antithetical to capitalism. If we’re not hungry and consuming, we aren’t feeding the beast. A self at ease with the quiet is someone who doesn’t serve a world built on wanting. Constant craving is the crux of consumerism. Simplicity starves what profits from our restlessness.
Lately I’m more interested in mystery than mastery. That’s where I’d like to focus.
Except it’s hard to stop.
At the end of any given day being me, when I reflect on how I spent my hours, despite the best of intentions, my interior inventory shows the truth. I spent the majority of the day crafting busywork like armor, because motion feels safer than mystery. I think I am finally ready to ask: Am I choosing what’s true, or just outrunning the ache that keeps catching up?
The contradiction waiting for me underneath all of this is that oftentimes seeking peace only pulls me away from it. Sometimes I already know what I need, but I’m too plugged into other’s voices to hear my own.
I’ve grown many tentacles in sobriety. One hand clings to a belief I swear is true, another suctions itself to something that completely contradicts it, and then another reaches for something else I didn’t even know I cared about. It’s messy. It’s confusing. How many truths can I hold at once without breaking? Some days it feels like I’m stretching myself thin. Other days it feels like I am made for all this beautiful complexity.
Maybe we all ought to own the octopus in us. Let the mess mesh with grace. Let our mystical creatures stretch out all the arms and embrace what feels like adventure.
What I believe beyond all the beliefs is that truth requires tension and friction. So, meander I do. Seek I will. And someday, maybe I will hear my own version of it all singing back to me in harmony. I’ll stop and know. This is what I’ve been searching for all along. She’s been with me the whole time.
