In which I hate most self-help books

On my shelf there is a copy of 'Eat Pray Love' embarrassingly shoved among a collection of Baby Sitter's club books. It is oil stained, gathering dust and I'm hoping a termite infection will spontaneously grows within it's pages over the years because it's not even worth the effort of throwing away. I bought it because I saw it outside in a bargain bin on a street that was hurling rubbish and homeless people at my face. It was $2, and I was going through period of brutal self-actualization, an existential crisis to Bush-invading-Iraq proportions (in other words I was bored, had just re-watched Fight Club, and not much was going on in my life). The gleaming reviews of how this book was 'empowering and inspiring to all woman' made me think that it would help with the disorientation.

If you haven't read or heard of the book I'll summarise. Imagine a run-of-the-mill story of a bored, over-privileged, narcissistic suburbian mother with little understanding of anything outside her own bubbled reality who decides to take a magical overseas journey of self-discovery in a sweeping Hollywood-esque fashion because she's got too many points on her frequent flyers card. It's basically one of those novels. Those self-indulgent, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, self-help and novels that spans an entire book too long, chock full of diatribe babble and cringe-worthy 'power' words and wisdom the equivalent of an expired pencil case. In many ways it's like this blog, only that most of these books make a shitload of money.

From the selective few self-help books I've read, most of them are full of shit and so hard to swallow. I'm not talking about books which are targeted at specific forms of mental illness written by professionals and based on research. I'm talking about those tacky, opportunistic, pyschobabble books written by motivational speakers or people who've 'gone on a journey', where 'HAPPINESS NOW' or 'BE A BETTER YOU' or 'YOU HAVE THE POWER' as the name. The ones that tell you how to live a 'fuller' life when you've been bogged down by post-modern ennui , coupled with some whimsical but all round boring anecdotes. 

If it works for you, that's fine, go for it, but a part of me can't help but think that there is something disingenuous about creating happiness by molding your lifestyle to a set of standards created by a book instead of finding individualistic solace. Or when you need to constantly 'positively reinforce' yourself to remind yourself that you are the shit.

Sounds more like a coping mechanism.