The Language and Images of Self Help

We all have associations with certain names that make us cringe a little.  Maybe it was the name of the kid who teased you in school, or the name of your youngest cousin who seemed to pee in her pants until she was 10.  If you have kids, whenever someone would suggest one of these names when you were in the baby-name market, no matter how nice the name was on the surface, you scrunched up your nose and said "ewww, I could never name my kid that!"

The point is, our experiences give us negative associations with certain names, words, images, songs, smells, etc.  The thing triggers our negative association and we want to avoid that thing no matter how good or beneficial it might be for us.  If you took Psych 101 in college, you know this is purely Pavlovian; our brain irrationally bundles negative emotions with environmental factors.

When it comes to self-help, I think this can keep many people away.  The words, images, and sounds that get used by the self-help community are generally aimed at being welcoming, soothing, inviting, and uplifting.  However, for me, they often make me cringe and make me feel that this stuff just isn't for me.

For instance, when I look at self-help gurus I find that the women often wear a lot of make-up, bleach their long hair, and wear flowy clothing,(and the men often have beards).  Not only is this look SO not me, it gets my back up a little.  When I was in college I had a professor whose name was Betty Jean, but she made us call her Bette Jean with a French accent.  She wore lots of purple and pink-hued makeup and had bleached blond hair. She acted all love and light, but deep down she always seemed a little evil to me and it was really easy for her universal love exterior to crack.  The image of her makes me want to run the other way, yet many for some reason women who are drawn to this type of message and work all want to look like her.  I don't get it, and I have to really move my negative associations aside in order to let myself think about trusting what someone who looks like Doreen Virtue is saying.

Then you throw in language and imagery to create even more aversion opportunities.  I read a book by Carolyn Myss called Entering the Castle.  In theory I should be all over this book and the perspective that Caroline Myss offers.  She comes from a Catholic perspective, is very intellectual, and does not in anyway exhibit the new-agey characteristics or appearance that I just described.  She is almost academic in her approach and looks more like a nun than a "spiritual advisor."  The book (which I do like and highly recommend) is about communicating with God by understanding our soul. The problem for me was that she uses the imagery of a castle as the calm, private place we go to communicate with our soul, or higher selves.  The word and image is so rampant through the book, it is impossible not be be distracted by it if that image just doesn't work for you.  For me, although from a historical perspective I love castles (I even got married in one), it represents wealth to me.  Knowing I have underlying conflicts about money and wealth, the image alone just jerked me out of any type of meditation or contemplation Myss tried to lead me to.

I recently saw a movie called Love Happens with Jennifer Aniston.  It is about a man who is a self-help guru in the area of grief and mourning the loss of loved ones.  He holds workshops for those struggling to come to grips with loss.  One man, a real man's man, comes to one because he lost his son.  However, he is immediately turned off by all the lingo and cheering and feel-good atmosphere.  It is goofy and soft to him and he almost turns away, even though the content would work and help him.  Think of all the millions of people who might use self-help tools but run a mile in the opposite direction because all they see is Stewart Smiley!

I imagine our own experiences with religion - good or bad - can attract or repel us to certain words or images in profound ways.  As a practicing and very faithful Christian, I am very happy to see and use the word God as I dive into these exercises in cognitive restructuring.  However, the constant use of the word universe bugs me and I always feel a little internal jerk when I read or hear that used as an alternative to God.  I know it is exactly the opposite for many others.  As the same book can be published in English, Spanish and French, I almost think they need to be re-written for different types of people in order to get their message across.

Even if the essential message is the same, since we have such strong associations with words, images and sounds, it can be very hard to get past those that don't work for us.  If we care a lot about finding peace, healing our lives, and achieving our goals, we need to be aware of those things that spark our aversions and find away to put them aside to see the kernels of truth the lie beneath.