Self-help books promise transformation and empowerment but rarely deliver real change. What gives?
Despite what we've been told, no amount of self-help, quick-fixes, or mind-hacks will get uswhere we need to go. We cannot transform our futures through willpower and hard work alone. It's Not (All) Your Fault reveals the ways self-help-though well-meaning-is deeply flawed and keeps us trapped in stagnant cycles.
It makes all of society's problems your problems.
Sharon Podobnik draws on extensive industry and personal experience to offer a fresh perspective on personal development and collective transformation, revealing their inextricable link and demonstrating that well-being depends on solidarity, not self-optimization.
Whether youâre a self-help enthusiast, skeptic, or outspoken activist, this book is essential reading. Through captivating stories and insightful research, Podobnik reorients us to our power, provides radical strategies for growth and change, and brings conscious awareness to what we already know: the future is a collaborative effort.
Self-help books promise transformation and empowerment but rarely deliver real change. What gives?
Despite what we've been told, no amount of self-help, quick-fixes, or mind-hacks will get uswhere we need to go. We cannot transform our futures through willpower and hard work alone. It's Not (All) Your Fault reveals the ways self-help-though well-meaning-is deeply flawed and keeps us trapped in stagnant cycles.
It makes all of society's problems your problems.
Sharon Podobnik draws on extensive industry and personal experience to offer a fresh perspective on personal development and collective transformation, revealing their inextricable link and demonstrating that well-being depends on solidarity, not self-optimization.
Whether youâre a self-help enthusiast, skeptic, or outspoken activist, this book is essential reading. Through captivating stories and insightful research, Podobnik reorients us to our power, provides radical strategies for growth and change, and brings conscious awareness to what we already know: the future is a collaborative effort.
I was six years old the first time I learned I was âno fun.â
It was Thanksgiving, and while my grandma, mom, and
aunts were dutifully preparing our feast of boiled potatoes,
boiled corn, and roasted turkey, the men chatted and the
children played amongst themselves. My uncle was making
fun of me and chased me into the family room while
pinching my ass. It hurt. I didnât like it. I apparently forgot
to smile and laugh it off like Iâd done a million times before.
I remember him being at eye level, scrunching his face into
a mock pout, narrowing his eyes, and saying, âOh⊠youâre
no fun.â
A video exists of me at Christmastime 1987. Iâm just over
two years old, and as one of the earliest grandchildren, Iâm
showered with love, affection, and toys. In the video, Iâm
playing with some of my new stash. I bang on the keys of
my tiny xylophonic piano, scream-singing, âI love you!â I
pour make-believe water from one child-sized plastic pot
into another and direct that same uncle to make corn. âNo!
Coffee!â I say. âWait! Those are the green beans!â
Itâs cute. Iâm cute. The whole thing is so sweet and innocent
it makes you want to gouge your eyes out. It could have, and should have, stayed a sweet little memory of play and
joy and youthful innocence.
But it didnât. Because year after year, every Christmas,
from the age of two until I was bringing partners home to
meet my family in my twenties, the video was played. We
would pack a dozen adults and a dozen children into a room
that could comfortably fit six. Together weâd watch me pound
the keys and pour the coffee and tell my uncle what to do.
Theyâd laugh, and theyâd mock me, and theyâd laugh some
more. Theyâd throw their heads back and cackle âtil they cried
as I curled into my motherâs lap, wanting to die.
Iâd cry, and theyâd see me crying, and theyâd tell me it
was just a joke as they ejected the tape, put it in the rewinder,
and plopped it back into the VCR to watch all over again.
Eventually, Grandma would holler in from the kitchen,
âLeave her alone,â or, âDinnerâs ready!â and I would slink
into my seat at the kidsâ table, sleeves soaked through with
snot and tears.
As children, we are wonderfully observant, astute little
humans. We begin responding to the people around us before
we are even born. A study showed twin fetuses interact and
even reach for and comfort each other while in the womb
(Weaver 2011). We naturally yearn for and seek out social
interaction from our earliest moments. We are completely
dependent on the adults in our lives to provide for our most
basic needs and will do whatever it takes to be seen, noticed,
taken care of, and taken seriously (Miller 1979).
When we donât get what we needâwhether itâs food, attention, loving connection, or otherwiseâwe have an impossible
choice to make (Eisenstein 2013). We can either assume the
people we rely on for every aspect of survival are unable to
meet our needs and, unable to strike out on our own, fall into despair, or we can assume itâs all our fault and change
ourselves in response to the people we rely on.
We make the tough, unconscious decision that the adults
in our lives are good, caring people who didnât mean to hurt
us, determine we caused the negative reaction from others,
and act accordingly. For many of us, this results in a special
sensitivity to the needs of others as we turn to people pleasing
in order to win favor with the caretakers in our lives (Miller
1979). We all do our best to fit into whatever scenario we
happen to be born into. We try to be who our caretakers need
and want us to be and do what we have to do to get what we
need from them.
From the people around us, we learn how to navigate
the world we are born into. We learn who we are and how
to belong or, alternatively, how to earn love and acceptance
each time our caretakers praise and punish us. We internalize
what we learn as truth, accepting as fact what we are told:
the sky is blue; youâre being too sensitive; youâre asking for it.
The messages we learn about ourselves and how to be in
the world become our playbook. Unquestioned and unexamined,
they remain the rulebooks we live by for life. We
do what we need to do to fit in, gain love and acceptance, get
and keep a job, and get and keep a partner. When dissonance
arises, as it inevitably does when the way we are feels at odds
with who we are told we should be, we assume that is our
fault too, feel shame for being different, conform as best we
can, and carry on.
Because of course we do. Whatâs the alternative?
To survive, my young mind learned I was wrong to protest
injustices. I internalized that I was no fun. When I then
stopped participating during family gatherings, I was called
out for being too quiet and shy. It wasnât until my therapist issued me the insurance codes âGeneralized Anxiety Disorderâ and âSocial Anxietyâ in my
thirties that I had something other than âshyâ and âquietâ
to call myself.
âYes, youâre too shy and far too sensitive,â the diagnoses
seemed to agree, âbut itâs okay. Itâs not your fault! Your brain
just doesnât work right. We can fix you!â
My therapist explained that everyone experiences nervousness
or anxiety at some point in their lives, but that
mine was pervasive and interfering with daily life. Most of us
experience anxiety in response to specific events like public
speaking, which also motivates us to prepare and practice.
The millions of adults with anxiety disorders in the United
States, on the other hand, display excessive worry about any
number of issues for months.
And I was displaying an excessive amount of worry.
For years, I carried around my diagnoses as a badge of
explanation. I used them to make sense of why Iâd never been
comfortable in any group setting and why I needed to be
nearly black-out drunk to be the bubbly, social person I knew
I could be. I read every Buzzfeed and Psychology Today article
I could find and forwarded my partners listicles to help them
understand me and support me in social situations. I read
books on the prevalence of autism in adults and wondered
if that could explain my awkwardness, too.
The news felt like a jolt of awakeningâa positive revelation
on my journey toward self-understanding. My diagnoses
woke me up from the shame of being a painfully shy person
and helped me to understand what I simply didnât have words
for before. It was, in fact, because I had a faulty brain.
I called it, âIâd rather be at home reading.â My family called
it âshy.â My therapist called it âdebilitating social anxiety.â Without the
expertise my therapist offered, I would have
continued to feel the shame of feeling like an outsider everywhere
I went, with no explanation why. My therapist helped
me understand that it wasnât a personality flaw, per se, my
brain just didnât work the way normal peopleâs brains did. It
wasnât my fault, but the problem was still me.
As we grow and evolve, we move from taking our cues
about ourselves and the world around us from our parents
and begin to take them from the other trusted folks in our
livesâour friends, teachers, and trusted professionals, like
my therapist. We rely on others to be our mirrors and reflect
back to us who they see. As they do, we develop new theories
about how and why things are the way they are and add to
our ever more complex self-concept.
Over time, this becomes a complicated web of other peopleâs
opinions floating around in our brainsâoften to the
point where we hear their voices in our heads and mistake
them for our own, subverting how we would otherwise feel.
The first expensive winter coat I ever purchased was a
luxurious, down-filled black coat that went to my knees. It
didnât just zip up the front, it had Michael Kors emblazoned
buttons adorning a lapel that closed across my torso for extra
protection from blistering winter winds. When I popped
the hood up over my head, faux fur hung just over my eyes.
It fit perfectly, flattered my frame, and kept me warm, cozy,
and dry in the brutal winters in Pittsburgh and DC. At sixty
dollars, it was the most money Iâd ever spent on a single item
of clothing.
For a while, I felt like a fool wearing it. It felt too fancy for
me. What would my family think of the stupid faux fur? Who
did I think I was anyway? Eventually, I got used to it simply
by wearing it enough. The coat made me feel like a queen. In reality, I
could make it through the snow-filled streets of
campus feeling toasty and warm, and that was enough for
me. I wore it through most of my classesâa fully acceptable
comfort blanket.
Over the years, I wore that jacket so muchâit was the
only winter jacket I ownedâfriends and colleagues joked I
slept in it. They werenât far off.
After a while, she began to age. Her hair grayed and frayed.
Her shiny black exterior dulled and her insides came apart at
the seams. I paid to have her stitched and fixed and prettied
up so I could have more time with her.
One crisp fall day, twelve years into our relationship, I
caught a gust of wind and shivered. I went to zip her up, but
the zipper wouldnât budge. I sucked in and contorted my
body and pulled the zipper up over my hips to try again.
No avail: it wasnât zipping. I made a mental note to lose ten
pounds, crossed my arms for warmth, and picked up the
pace to generate some heat. Heat and calorie burn! Double
win, ya dumb bitch! Maybe letâs skip dinner tonight, shall we?
I spent that entire winter cold. I doubled up my bottoms,
layering leggings and jeans, and tripled up my tops, layering
knits, scarves, and hoodies under a coat that would not
close. Each time I added the final layer, I condemned myself,
shaming myself and reminding myself Iâm not simply fat,
Iâm fat and lazy and poor. It wasnât just that the jacket didnât
fit, it was also that I wasnât prioritizing going to the gym,
getting a new coat, or eating better. It was that even if I did,
it wouldnât matter because I was a shy, anxious, failure of a
human, and no coat could cover that up. And even if I could
find a coat big enough for my bloated body, it would be ugly
and shapeless like me and far too expensive for my failing
entrepreneurial self anyway. My wardrobe malfunction symbolized
everything that was wrong in my world.
I spent whatever energy I had convincing myself it wasnât
so bad: Seattleâs winters were more temperate than those in
my hometown of Pittsburgh or DC, where Iâd spent many
years. Iâd probably lose weight over the summer and fit into it
next year. And hey! If Iâve got enough fat for the coat not to fit,
itâs surely enough to keep me warm! I downplayed my misery
and shoved off my shivers and found excuses to stay inside.
I hung on to that coat two years too long. I refused to
admit Iâd outgrown her, despite every ounce of evidence
proving it time and time again. Iâve always been a believer
in potential, and I reasoned I could totally make her work.
Iâm resilient, damn it! Determined! Stubborn.
Over time, my beloved coat has come to serve as a metaphor
in my coaching practice for all the things we put up
with, all the things we tolerate and make excuses for that we
know weâve outgrown, even if weâre not yet willing to admit it.
Just like I kept my coat even though it no longer fit, I kept
going to Grandmaâs year after year, holiday after holiday. I
tried so hard to be a good daughter, sister, niece, cousin, and
granddaughter, smiling and laughing along and hugging every
adult around the dinner table, even when my body recoiled
and even after I realized years of freezing and fawning had
left me numb and empty in these situations.
In my coaching practice, Iâve come to recognize a familiar
pattern: Itâs not until we let ourselves feel how small a coat,
person, relationship, job, or situation feels that we will also
allow ourselves to fully feel and accept the deep pull to make
a change. Until then, we find reasons to explain these things
away, to rationalize how they didnât mean it like that, or itâs
not really so bad. We dismiss our own complaints as being too sensitive, or reading too much into something, or not
worth it. We ask ourselves to be far, far too resilient.
When we stop making excuses for ourselves and others
and quit criticizing ourselves for the discomfort weâre feeling,
we get to feel and truly recognize what our bodies and brains
have been telling us all along: âThis shit ainât right.â
In my experience, when we allow ourselves to embrace,
embody, and fully feel just how bad something isâwhatever
weâre rationalizingâwe can move from shaming ourselves
about our own discomfort into asking questions. Once we
build the awareness weâre dismissing ourselves, we can remove
the self-judgment and censure long enough to make the situation
neutral, determine what that discomfort is trying to
tell us, and decide what to do about it.
In April of 2015, two years before I began my official foray
into the self-help world, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu traveled
to Dharamsala, India, for the occasion of His Holiness,
the Dalai Lamaâs eightieth birthday. The two menâeach
sacred, spiritual leadersâgathered together to celebrate their
friendship, reflect on their long, joyful, and challenging lives,
and to answer a question that would become the foundation
for their book, The Book of Joy (Dalai Lama and Tutu 2016).
As I listened to the men banter back and forth via audiobook,
I was struck by the way the two carried on. They
reminded me of eight-year-olds with the hard-earned wisdom
of eighty-year-olds. They reflected on the great challenges and
difficulties of their lives in prison and in exile with reverence
and an unmistakable lightnessâa peace and acceptance.
Every word landed like a prayer on my ears. But whatâs
most fascinating is the lesson that stuck with me. It wasnât
how to find joy in the hardest of times or to believe in the
good of humanity in the face of oppression, though they talked about
that, too. What stuck with me was their gentle,
insistent teasing. The two verbally poked and prodded and
giggled like schoolboys. It was just so damn clear how much
love there was between them and how beautifully it played
out as playfulness and joy.
âYou know, there are cameras on us,â the Dalai Lama
smiled and said. âTry to act like a holy manâ (Dalai Lama
and Tutu 2016).
I was most struck by what felt like an offhand comment
by the Dalai Lama about their playfulness. âTo tease someone
is a sign of intimacy and friendship,â he said, âto know that
there is a reservoir of affection from which we all drink as
funny and flawed humans.â
I replayed the idea over and over in my mindâa reservoir
of affection. Thatâs what felt wholesome about their playfulness.
There was a preestablished measure of mutual love
and respect. It was not simply understood but also explicitly
announced and concretely demonstrated. There was love,
compassion, and caring between the two men, which enabled
the playful jabbing and lighthearted teasing.
Itâs exactly what was missing from my lifetime of teasing.
It was never mutual, which meant it never felt playful.
There was no world in which I felt it would be safe or appropriate
for me to respond in kindâto go around pinching my
unclesâ asses or to play embarrassing videos of them during
the holidays. It simply wasnât an option without ridicule,
reprimand, or judgment, so for me, it wasnât an option.
Teasing is only teasing when itâs conducted similarly
to the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutuâsâin a lighthearted,
playful way, reciprocal in nature, wherein both partners
give and take and do so in an attempt to make both parties
laugh with no intention to harm. When a line is accidentally crossed,
or one party objects or becomes upset, the behavior
immediately stops and reparations are made (Coloroso 2003).
When the teasing is one-sided, it becomes taunting.
The person being laughed at feels demeaned, embarrassed,
and ridiculed. The behavior is often delivered with sarcasm,
eye rolls, and directions to âlighten up, itâs just a joke.â The
unwillingness to stop and make amends is an indication of
the seriousness and one-sidedness rather than lighthearted,
reciprocal playfulness.
When any kind of power dynamic comes into play, such
as physical size difference, control over oneâs career or sense of
belonging, or when the offender refuses to stop the behavior
despite having clear indications of the harm being caused
such as crying or verbal objectionsâitâs bullying. Bullying
doesnât come from a reservoir of loveâit comes from the
satisfaction of having the power to harm someone else.
Only after listening to the playful jabs between the two
holy men and being curious and angry and confused did I
realize at the ripe old age of thirty-five that what Iâd experienced
every Christmas was my annual family bullying.
This realization was a wake-up call for me and enabled
me to get curious about all the other ways bullying and power
dynamics showed up in family affairs. I remembered the aunt
who was âteasedâ for being the baby, the youngest of seven
children. The sister whose name was âteasinglyâ followed by
a pig call. One niece who was made fun of for being a âditzâ
and another a âsnob.â Quickly and easily, dozens of memories
of men bullying women under the guise of joking flooded
my system. I could not think of one instance of a woman
attempting this in return.
In situations of bullying, the victim, feeling powerless,
does what their coping mechanisms allow them to do. They often
experience extreme stress that leads to a lack of interest
in school, family, and friends, as well as a reluctance to be
in public and groups for fear of bullies in other spaces. Victims
suffer from stress illnesses, depression, loneliness, low
self-esteem, and anxiety (Coloroso 2003).
Suddenly, it made sense why I might be silent and chronically,
debilitatingly anxious. I lived in a family with a culture
of bullying. It was the air I breathed. It was the water I swam
in. It was the life I went to sleep in and woke up to every day.
I called it ânormal.â
All of us live and work in cultures of bullying. We call
it ânormal.â
While bullies and assholes come in all shapes and sizes,
more often than not, we expect them to look like the bullies
we see in movies, Regina Georges or Draco Malfoys, ruthless
in their scrutiny. The reality is, they also come in the form
of grandparents, aunts, uncles, mothers- and fathers-in-law,
cousins, parents, teachers, bosses, neighbors, friends, partners,
and more. And whether we experience taunting, bullying,
harassment, or straight-up oppression, we, especially
us women, tend to look for reasons the offending behavior
was justified.
But like my familyâs justification that âIt was just a joke,
Sharon,â we explain away the pain while still experiencing
the very real shame of public humiliation.
âIt must be my fault,â weâre primed and then encouraged to
think. âI shouldnât have been so foolish. If I werenât so dumb/
fat/frivolous/smart/stupid/old/young/slutty/prudish/loud/
quiet/ambitious/lazy/kind, I couldâve avoided this treatment/
situation/pain.â
Before we have the skills and awareness to fully recognize
the harm we do to ourselves and each other in this line of thinking,
we function from a sort of unconscious sleep
state. We do what we have to do and find ways to survive in
whatever culture weâre born into, whether thatâs a penthouse
on Madison Avenue or a farmhouse outside of Madison,
Wisconsin. We conform, consciously and unconsciously,
changing ourselves to fit in.
In our efforts to feel better and fit in better, many of us
turn to supports like self-help. Sometimes, they are helpful.
Often, they reinforce the idea that the crappy way weâre feeling
is justified, that the treatment we received was justified, and
give us their personal strategy for dealing with it in the future.
âYes, of course youâre feeling that way,â self-help books
seem to say. âAnd yes, it is your fault. But we can help you.â
âYes, obviously men are going to be dicks sometimes.
Thatâs just boys being boys! Hereâs what you can do to avoid
their wrath while trying to get ahead in the male-dominated
workplace!â
âYes. You are absolutely too fat. Letâs get you some willpower,
shall we?â
âYes, I can see youâre stressed. Letâs get you some meditation
techniques to help you temporarily forget how stressed
you are so you can get back to work.â
âYes! Your lack of confidence is holding you back! Hereâs
how I got my confidence back while juggling my full-time
modeling career, and you can, too!â
Books like this keep us asleep to the real injustices and
travesties being perpetrated. Instead, they offer us more and
more ways to, as BrenĂ© Brown would say, âhustle for our
worthinessâ (2012). Eventually, we again get that nudge, that
inkling in our gut that says, âSomethingâs not right here.â
We finish our twelfth fad diet, gain all the weight back, yet
again, and finally realize our degrees and work ethics and the fact weâve
not yet killed our bosses, children, or spouses are
more than enough evidence to prove weâve got willpower in
spades. Maybe the fact these strategies havenât been working
isnât actually (all) our fault.
Or we attend our sixteenth webinar on confidence and
imposter syndrome, dutifully list out all of our accomplishments,
recite our affirmations in the most powerful of power
poses, only for Jim or John or Chad to cut us off midsentence
yet again, and finally think, âMaybe this lack of confidence
thing isnât (all) my fault to begin with.â
And maybe, we take a look at our social anxiety, years of
fear and hypervigilance and silence, and think⊠yeah, noâŠ
maybe itâs just not my fault at all.
So, whose fault is it?
It's Not (All) Your Fault by Sharon Podobnik is a really interesting book as it shakes up the meaning of self help books. She sets out to de-stabilise our preconceived notions of social norms, their place in forming our identities and creating personality disorders and low self confidence. It also discusses where we typically seek to gain our self respect and why this doesnât work to make us happy.
Podobnick sets out this book in a series of 5 sections - asleep, awareness, analysis, action and accountability and allyship. In these sections she uses her own experience, reflecting on moments in her own life to demonstrate how society sets negative mechanisms for creating a sense of self. She goes on to then discuss how traditional self help books embed this by defining any problem a person has as theirs which can be fixed.Â
Podobnik throughout this book challenges this belief by saying that the problem is actually societies.Â
âSelf-help gives us ways to fit ourselves into a society that wasnât built for us. It is a capitalist religion that helps us to navigate and participate in our own oppression.â She continues, âBooks like this keep us asleep to the real injustices and travesties being perpetrated. â
Her chapter "The Paradox of Hope" really resonated with me, as someone who continually sets goals and plans for the future and never fully lives in the present. âWhen we believe life will be better someday, even when our conditions are met, we have set ourselves up for disappointment.â
Itâs not all doom and gloom though as she goes on to talk about societies which prioritise happiness and compassion such as Bhutan, as ones which are where people feel safety, security and high levels of wellbeing.Â
I really recommend this book if youâre someone drawn to self help books. Youâll soon realise youâre not the problem, and you donât need to change you to be happy.Â