Why No Self-help Book Will Fix Your Emotions
By Melody Song
Melody Song is a writer who enjoys all forms of playing and exploring, both outward and inward. Follow her on X at @melodaysong.
Mel is a writer who enjoys all forms of playing and exploring, both outward and inward. Follow her on X at @melodaysong. In this essay, she argues that the self-help industry promises to help quell your anxiety, euthanize your depression, and overcome your fear. Here’s why that never works.
There is this bright open space I sometimes stumble upon, where everything around me and in me is arising and buzzing and unfolding all at once. It’s the feeling of being drenched in aliveness, of being pressed right up close to reality.
Moments like these, however, are rare. More often, I find myself leaning back from life: an unconscious, deeply-conditioned flinching away. I wake up and dive headfirst into a sea of Zoom meetings, emails, notifications. I pack my calendar with trips, events, get-togethers with friends. Any other white space gets filled up with screen time.
For a long time, I believed that everyday life was incompatible with feeling deeply. I believed that in order to participate in the modern world, to be ambitious and successful, I had to leave myself and my emotions behind. Inner work was a luxury for when I had the space and time.
Indeed, most people dismiss emotions in the context of everyday life, thinking that they are these ineffable, volatile things meant to be held back. We were never taught how to navigate their complexity, and so they are avoided, suppressed, dismissed.
But when we ignore our emotions, we ignore ourselves. Just as our five senses guide us through the physical world, our senses of grief, anger, and joy are there for a reason. They arise to be experienced, embraced. They are there as inner resources and guides to help us survive and thrive within complexity.
I would argue, in fact, that our collective avoidance and dismissal of emotions is the single biggest driver of the widespread and growing mental health crisis. We have lost touch with our purpose and our meaning because we have lost touch with ourselves. Emotions are the language of the soul.
Unfortunately, “listening to our emotions” has acquired a deeply unglamorous reputation. In particular, feeling “negative” emotions like grief, anger, and fear is seen as an experience on par with getting your teeth pulled—necessary on some level, but painful and to be avoided if at all possible.
And when we do “get our teeth pulled,” there is a pervading sense of shame that comes with it. An unspoken belief in modern times is that those who are suffering must somehow have deserved it or be deeply broken. It is “their fault” and they must “be fixed” by going to therapy.
The resulting internal dialogue for many people often goes something like:
I am struggling
I am struggling and it is my fault
I am struggling and it is my fault, therefore I must figure it out on my own
I will isolate myself until I am presentable to other humans
Even within the therapy and self-help industry—particularly so, in fact—feelings tend to be seen as inconveniences. We medicalize our anxiety, demonize our anger, and euthanize our depression. Fear is seen as something to be overcome rather than welcomed and honored. Grief is acceptable at times, in small and controlled amounts.
Indeed, Western society has co-opted ancient traditions and Eastern spiritual approaches—from breathwork to Tibetan Buddhism to yoga—and forced them into the Western paradigm of hyper-individualism and shame-driven improvement.
We do breathwork to avoid feeling overwhelmed. We meditate to be more productive (and avoid feeling not good enough). We do yoga to get rid of our stress. For so many young people, myself included, our seemingly inexhaustible search for purpose and meaning is driven by a desire to avoid feeling uncertain and existentially confused.
Rarely do we stop to wonder why these feelings keep coming up in the first place. Rarely do we appreciate or thank them for pointing us to the fact that something is hurting us, is not serving us. For many people, the kneejerk reaction is to figure out how to apply some patchwork of techniques and tools to resolve the flare-up as efficiently as possible, so they can go back to work.
The answer is not a retreat in the woods
A familiar story is spreading: You must retreat to find yourself. You must escape the demands of modern life. You must go away for several months into the mountains, the desert, or some foreign land to rediscover who you are.
Indeed, an entire industry has formed around the "mental health retreat" model—nature and Self is being commodified, packaged, and sold back to us as a "cure" for the modern condition. We are told the story that we are not enough as we are, where we are. They promise that that missing thing, that final fix, is Out There.
The allure of this message is understandable. Many of us were raised in environments where our emotions, once so fluid as children, were admonished as “too much” or inconvenient. In schools, workplaces, and public spaces, there is an unspoken expectation to keep composure. Crying is seen as weakness, unbridled enthusiasm as immaturity. We are told to bottle it up, go to our rooms, go do it somewhere where you will not be seen, where you will not embarrass us.
No wonder we think that retreating is the answer. We have been conditioned that hiding ourselves away from life is the only safe place to allow our depths - to become whole again.
Now, there is nothing wrong with taking space, slowing down, finding rest. But taken to its extreme, the fantasy of retreat is just another form of leaning back from reality.
Eventually, we all must return to life. And when that happens, there is only one thing left to do.
How to train your emotional agility
“Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke.
To be drenched in aliveness, to be in the buzzing and unfolding, one must allow everything to happen. To deeply feel wonder, joy, and beauty, one must deeply feel anger, grief, and terror.
There is no playing field more fruitful than modern life. So many experiences we deem as bad or wrong can be transformed into an invitation to feel, deeply and widely, without exception. This task is simple, but not easy. One must be willing (and have the capacity) to hold intensity, the gumption to do so, and the unwavering belief that this is the only way to truly live.
The capacity, like a muscle, can be built up over time and supplied by a well-trained coach, teacher, or therapist. The latter two, for me, only developed after (1) prolonged, intense periods of suffering due to suppressing my emotions, and (2) discovering, again and again, the exquisite buzzing joy that naturally unfolded when I allowed myself to simply feel them.
“Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions. She won't come into your house if her children are not welcome.” – Joe Hudson
There are a few organizations I have come across who do this incredibly—next-generation therapeutic and coaching modalities that emphasize discovery over improvement: the Art of Accomplishment, Aletheia Coaching, and Internal Family Systems.
Their respective maps of this territory have been indispensable. And their philosophies, at their essence, are different expressions of the same tenet: Our emotions are sacred and wise, to be explored and welcomed rather than exploited, stamped out, or even intellectualized.
With guidance from these teachers, I have learned to become intimate with my emotions, to set aside my desire to change or fix them, and to be with them with the wonder and reverence of a child. When I do that, whole worlds unfold.
I have discovered, for example, that when I stop shaming the gray nothingness of my depression, it may tell me that it is actually cloaking a seething, frothing anger—a pacing tiger that has been told its entire life that it is destructive and terrifying and wrong.
So then I sit with that angry, frothing tiger, a burning fire that rises from my gut into the crown of my head and clarifies everything in between. It is a wildfire of the soul, setting all that does not serve me ablaze, drawing an unmistakably clear line of what is mine and isn’t mine. What I will not put up with. Haku Zynkyoku: “A person of love is also a destroyer. This is absolutely the essence of the universe.”
What will emerge from those ashes could be anything. Often, it is a deep and seemingly endless ocean of grief that rises in my throat, spread through my chest, and breaks my heart open. l wade into that ocean, slowly and gently, feeling the waves lap at my ankles, my knees, my waist. I swim in it until my fingers raisin, until I realize that this ocean isn’t grief at all, but an all-consuming love.
What I am trying to say is this: exquisite aliveness awaits in every emotion, every moment, every place. It is there in the bland 2-hour Zoom meeting, at the height of Friday rush hour traffic, in the chaotic, stressful, mundanity of everyday life.
This is not always a comfortable, easy, or glamorous process. It will not always feel good. You will probably continue to make mistakes, resist your emotions, make them wrong. It is a lifelong journey.
The good news? It is a lifelong journey that never ends. And over time, you will begin to notice that you feel more alive than you have for perhaps a long, long time. Even in the trying, the failing, the resistance, the frustration – there is pleasure and welcoming and okayness.
One day, you may look up, and realize: You have always been part of this raucous, exploding symphony of things. You are woven into the very tapestry of a wild and unruly process that never stops. Your reflex to shrink away from the suffering, fear, and confusion of life is well-meaning, but ineffective.
And when you can allow those things to simply be as they are, you may discover: Confusion is the essence of magic, terror is aliveness, and gorgeous chaos is written into your DNA.