Self Help

You can find self help books and therapy basically anywhere you look, but sorting through it can be tricky. after all, not All of it is helpful. Recently, I needed some self esteem help. I was suffering from a horrible crisis of self confidence following a bad break. My girlfriend had said some very hurtful things when we broke up – things that really spoke to some of my deepest held insecurities.

Rather than deal with it in a constructive way, I actually sort of closed down. I became unable to deal with people socially. I was becoming a hermit, and really suffering. My social life was almost nonexistent and my love life truly was. That is when I realized that I needed some self help.

I went down to the local bookstore and looked around. It was kind of a New Age sort of bookstore, one that specialized in self help books and the like. Nonetheless, the first two books that I found were not very good. They mostly specialized in commonplaces – ideas that everyone held and everyone spoke about. They told me the truth, but they put it in such a general way that I was unable to devise any use from it. It doesn't really help to be told to let go of your anger or to move on or to be honest with yourself. I already knew these things. The question was how to do it.

I had had some self help success over the Internet before. When I was having a lot of trouble making ends meet, I had gotten financial advice from an online guru and had really Learned how to make some money. I figured that online self help was a way to go since the books I was finding were not really helping me. I looked at some advice pages and discussion boards, and some bulletin. I found all kinds of answers, and none of them seemed to agree. Fortunately, through picking and choosing, I finally came up with some words of advice that helped me.

The key was to sort through things and freely discard when I didn't need. Just because a word of advice is useful for one person doesn't mean it is useful for everyone. Fortunately, I met some very wise people online who showed me how to move on. A few of them had been through breakups that were quite similar to mine, and knew all about how to deal with the insecurities that I was dealing with. Nowadays, I am happy to say that I have moved on.