Nothing but Good Vibes

The rise of Self Help Books

You are a badass. No seriously, even success guru Jen Sincero says it in her international best seller You Are A Badass, and with three million copies sold worldwide, I think Sincero knows what she is talking about.

Overcoming self-doubt, taking full control of your thoughts and embracing your flaws: the traditional and stereotypical jargon that comes with the latest self-help reads taking over book shops and our bookshelves. The associated reader of mindfulness manuals today is the clean-eating twenty-something who has planned to reboot and rewire their entire belief system over night in the name of entering a new ‘era’- but this isn’t the case. Coming in all shapes and sizes, self-help bibles have been read by individuals from all areas of life and aesthetics for years, and the hype-girl best friend sense of voice that comes with them today is just a new wave of such. Introducing new angles of thought processing and signalling new horizons, self-help books are so much more than aesthetically pleasing ornaments that make for pretty coffee table decorations. Credited in getting rid of people’s deep-rooted trauma and setting up an entire new belief system, these books make for beneficial reading – and look good whilst doing so.

There are times in life when you may find yourself stumped. You didn’t get the job promotion you had been waiting for, or something that you are proud of gets ridiculed by someone else, and you end up falling out with your best friend. The solution to these everyday life challenges can be found in your local bookstore in the form of a literature therapist that is completely focused on making you feel good, offering you new ways of thinking that you may not come up with on your own. As humans, no one of us is the same when it comes to our thought patterns: you may be insecure about your height and someone else may be insecure about their third toe. One of the most joyous elements of self-help books is how they acknowledge the diversity and difference of human thought. If you want to be successful, then Dr Julie Smith’s Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? is the one for you; if you are struggling with loneliness then How to Be Alone by Lane Moore is right up your street. Let’s be real here, therapy is expensive, but finding a book that relates to how your brain works entirely can be a much cheaper alternative and can be started and put down whenever you feel like it.

The self-help market boomed during the pandemic as individuals became prisoners of their own mind due to an influx of newfound free time. Yet over time, as we escaped the socially distanced safety of our homes, we left our self-help books in the corners of our rooms, their reassuring words and healing properties left to gather dust just like their impact within our minds. By just touching the glossy and eye-catching covers of therapeutic reads in Waterstones we will not be immediately transformed into a constant state of peace. When wanting to help yourself, you need to dedicate time and energy to these mindfulness manuals, otherwise you will just end up having a book that looks nice laying around until you stumble across it again one day and say to yourself ‘I must get round to reading this sometime!’. Unlike a normal book, self-help books turn the readers into the active characters - essentially, you are the main character in every self-help book. Therefore, this means that they require thorough reflection and thought and cannot be expected to just be read and for you to be transformed – the self-help book is the Mrs High Maintenance of the literature world after all, and she demands your full time and energy.

It is estimated that one in eight young people will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year in the United Kingdom, and when helping individuals who are suffering, doctors and therapists are now recommending bibliotherapy and therapy through the reading of self-help books and words. This has been found to alleviate stress, relax the body and clear the mind. Finding yourself at your wits end and turning to a paperback in the name of quelling your wild and untamed insecurities is getting increasingly more popular as more and more people want to know why their brains are working in certain ways and how they can turn this around. Written by doctors, therapists and scientists for the perfectionist, the over-thinker, the imposter syndrome victim, these books set up a relationship through words and provide professional advice and strategies. When experiencing the everyday stresses of society today, go to your nearest book shop and walk yourself to the self-help section: here you may find a therapist for life deep within the pages of a book that was waiting for you the entire time.

Words by: Lucy Matthews

Design by: Molly Openshaw