TOOLS

In working on healing, I’ve read a lot of what the publishing industry calls self-help books (and as a side note, I’m not the first person to take issue with the name, especially when it gets applied to books written by non-male writers more than it does to male authors). This is not a flex, because I sense that some of my pull toward this genre was motivated by a feeling of not being enough, or being broken, and looking for the next “thing” that would catapult me forward. In fact, I’d almost go as far as to say that it supported my belief that someone else’s solutions could save me, that the experts would have the answers I was seeking, rather than trusting myself and my own internal wisdom. While it’s admirable to learn new skills or seek out knowledge, what I’m not in love with is how this is marketed to women, that it plays on a pattern of dependence on other people, scarcity mindset, and external resources rather than looking within ourselves.

But what really gets to me about so many books categorized as self-help, and other non-fiction books that offer up a solution to any given business or life problem, is that they all seem to suggest that if you follow the advice in the book, no matter what that advice is actually about, you will also lose weight, get rich, and be more desirable. It feels like what everyone is not-so-secretly looking for is the recipe for how to engage with sex, food, and money to the greatest benefit.

There’s a tension in this that I’ve been trying to tease out. On the one hand, I honor the parts of myself and anyone else that wants to heal their relationship with all three of those things, because that is important work. Food, money, and sex are all inherently neutral and necessary parts of life; we simply assign value and beliefs to them that are worthy of examination when they become painful and unhealthy – deficient or excessive. But at the root of needing to heal or re-evaluate what we believe about them in the first place is the fact that we live in a culture that tells us we – or at least those whose gender, race, sexuality, body type, religion, or economic position are othered – should be ashamed of our very most basic needs, and that it is most acceptable to meet them through sacrifice (hard work) or the altruism of others. Food is necessary for individual survival, money is necessary to buy food and shelter among other essentials, and sex – and more deeply, pleasure – is vital for the survival of the human species. These aren’t choices. They are necessities. Our bodies are tuned to meet our needs, and trying to set rules or create systems that encourage denial or overconsumption isn’t sustainable, even if it is effective at giving certain bodies control over other bodies.

For me personally, I spent a lot of my past looking for ways to restrict my needs for sex, money, and food – and consequently, joy, pleasure, and vitality. Needing less of them was a type of power, a sense of independence and belonging. I also got praise and external validation for following the rules and policing myself. But restriction is balanced by craving, and I reached a point where self-denial was causing harm because there was no way to ever be satisfied. It felt like an internal shriveling, a curling into myself, endless fatigue, a type of exhaustion that sleep and rest alone couldn’t cure. And at the heart of trying to figure out what a healthy relationship with desire and self-care looked like, I had find a way to accept that I even had a right to need anything in the first place.

What feels helpful is locating a sense of balance and contentment, accessed within myself by trusting that I know what feels healthy and free. And that is a type of freedom that every human deserves. I love finding new tools, and I’ll probably continue to seek them out (and especially from humans who have been othered, because they are often the ones who hold up mirrors that offer the clearest reflections and shine the light on systems of oppression and control). But every tool can be used to heal or to harm, to make the world more sustainable and accessible or to create systems of oppression. I can make photos that objectify human bodies or photos that give people visible evidence that they are worthy of and get to experience love. I can teach yoga in a way that excludes or shames certain types of bodies, or I can use it to help people connect to their innermost selves. I can write content that shames people for their choices or tells them they are not enough or that encourages full self-expression and the power of choice.

May we all find ways to release the beliefs and untangle the stories that keep us from knowing our human-ness and being free.