The self help industry was worth more than $10.5 billion (yes, with a B) in 2020, with a projected growth of 6% every year, which should put it at around $14 billion by 2025.
Chances are, you’ve found yourself thumbing through the latest pastel covered book on how to ‘Master Your Inner Saboteur’ or purchased a ticket to that virtual ‘get your life together with my secret tool for transcending your worst aspects’ conference. Even the most cynical among us have likely ventured into this labyrinth of advice and platitudes at some point - because hey, life is messy and sometimes we really need someone or something to tell us what to do.
But before you take your next deep dive into that meditation course that promises to rewire your brain or sign up for your next spirit quest journey, you may find it useful to consider the following.
This week and next I'm going to be exploring the way's our Self Help and Spiritual Gurus rope us in, how we can separate that which is of true value from that which isn't, how we can protect ourselves from spending lots of time and money on tools that don't work, and how we can use the self help/spatiality industry to our advantage, instead of being stuck as pawns it's capitalist playbook.
The Modern Guru Formula:
MOST spiritual and self help gurus are selling you THE ANSWER that will solve ALL of your problems, and this is why - for the most part - all of them are selling you absolutely nothing.
The spiritual and self help influencers of today all follow a very specific playbook, and in so doing they expertly tap into our human need to be validated in our experience, to feel connected and ultimately to feel like we have a solution to the problems in our lives that cause us the most pain.
We turn to self help and spirituality because we’re struggling - no one who’s flying high in their careers, health and relationships are scouring the bookstore for ‘how to find success in 20 minutes’ or googling the best home remedies for chronic inflammation. We turn to these ways of solving our problems when ‘conventional’ help doesn’t work or simply isn’t available to us due to our economic or social status.
I personally got into self help early in my life, due to having a pile of physical, mental and emotional pain that no one in my life knew how to deal with. I got in early - back in 2007-ish - and I read everything Martha Beck had ever written, watched Oprah and all of her spiritual gurus like I was attending church service and I practiced yoga like it was going out of style.
Since then, I’ve gotten my certifications in yoga, holistic nutrition and life coaching and have been ‘in the biz’ so to speak for most of my career. With that, I’ve watched as Gurus rose and eventually fell from grace. I’ve watched as trends have come and gone. And I’ve watched how those delivering these self help and spiritual growth tools have shifted.
I’ve watched as social media became the cornerstone for sharing information and how this dramatically altered the spirituality/self help genre from a mostly fringe ‘woo-woo’ industry into what it is now - a space where a group of transcended experts who are perfectly imperfect, deeply vulnerable and just like you - only better - rule the roost. As the ones who had the most success in this field went from being seasoned professionals or people with a LOT of life experience under their belt to being those who we can now refer to as ‘influencers,’ ie. people we feel we can relate to.
Our gurus these days are the transcended, but not too transcended, version of ourselves. They shared with us all their curated imperfections so that we feel like we’re not alone in our struggles and quirks. They make us feel seen and like we’re not alone. But most importantly, the reason we follow them and the reason we buy from them is because they are the people who *used* to have the same issue we have now, but they found *the thing* that fixed it for them. We follow them because they seem to have that perfect life we long to have - one free of our main struggle.
These influencers aren’t meditating all day, and they aren’t asking us to follow strict doctrines. They aren’t preaching a PERFECT life - they’re still human after all - and this is what makes us like them. Their solutions aren’t boring and rife with years of commitment like the gurus of old. They are the realistic idealized version of ourselves. They still have their ‘stuff’, but the BIG things, they’ve dealt with the big things. Their tools are down to earth and can be fit in between our barre class, our oat milk latte work and other social engagements.
They solved their big problems and now live a transcended ‘normal/abundant life.’ And because THEY did it, they can show us how to do it.
With their latest book. Retreat. Certification program. Coaching/mentorship group.
These people have the key - and we know because they show us their lives - and they’re going to sell it to us for only $44.44.
Sounds awesome.
The only problem?
The Never Ending Loop Of Pain To Transcendence And Back
After this launch is over and the buzz has died down, they will go quiet for a while. We may even forget about them for a bit.
Then we will start to get snippets of how they’ve been ‘struggling’.
No mention of the last tool that they sold you.
No mention of the fact that they just spent the last year telling you how they’d ‘fixed’ this problem in their life.
The vulnerable share posts start coming.
Instagram photos of shadowy figures.
Poetry.
I’ve been going through it fam.
But don’t worry.
I’m a spiritual warrior. I’m a guru. I can see the reason for this challenge. This is my calling. I’m on my hero’s journey.
I may have gone down for a while, but it’s not because the old thing didn’t work. We don’t talk about that anymore. It’s not because life is hard and there is no ‘fix’ but only progress. No. I went down because I was born for this. To travel to these dark places so that I could find the answer and then deliver to you, dear followers, the gold that I excavated from my journey.
I may have gone down, but this isn’t a reason to doubt my past work, to doubt what I’m about to sell you - no this is a new reason to TRUST ME.
Because I’m not totally transcended and perfect - I’m just like you, remember? We can relate. I see you. I see you in your struggle. I see you in the fact that even though you came to my last retreat and bought my last book, you’re still struggling. That’s not because I’m not a good teacher. It’s because there’s another level. There’s another thing.
I was lost, but now, I’ve FOUND IT.
Just like that, they’re reborn. Transcended. The idealized version of us - again.
Just in time for my next product to launch.
Round and round it goes.
Have You Seen This Pattern In Your Gurus?
Now, I’m not going to name names here, but I’ve watched one influencer from the start of their career until now, and this has been this person's playbook.
Every one of their books have been centered around the fact that they were struggling - just like YOU struggle, super vulnerable and 'real' is always how these things are presented. Their material is always super raw and contains a TONE of deeply personal stories that are great at drawing you in, captivating your empathy and making you feel like your life is being spelled out on the pages in your hand.
They then explain how they found some secret 'key' which saved them, and now they’re an expert on that thing and you can buy their book and course and be saved like they were.
Then they come back with another 'vulnerable' share a few months or years later, back in a dark place - different dark, but similar dark - but don't worry because this NEW thing I found is THE ANSWER.
Low and behold I also happen to be certified by the best of the best in this new tool, and you can join my course and I'll teach you.
Over and over again.
Always trending.
Always what's popular.
Always what the new age community wants to hear most.
They know their audience, and they know exactly how to speak to them. They have the jargon down. The look down. The presence down. There are literally HUNDREDS of this person on social media to follow, and that’s the point - it’s a perfect formula that works every.single.time.
This person's first book was based on finding A Course In Miracles that got them out of addiction.
Then it was Kundalini yoga that got them out of anxiety.
Then it was prayer and manifestation that got them out of infertility.
Then it was IFS and inner child work that saved them from her overworking and revealed traumatic memories.
Their issues again are always presented as being SUPER relatable, and they position themselves as being someone who was privileged to find the answer, and now it's their act of service to share with everyone else. And again, it's ALWAYS what's on trend - funnily enough.
They Can't Find The Thing They Say They Are Selling:
With this, I’ve realized that the influencer can never actually find 'THE THING' - because that’s not how capitalism works.
If they were to have ONE THING, and then continue to try to sell that - eventually the market is going to dry up.
Because we want AN ANSWER as humans - and at the end of the day, the reality is there isn’t an answer. There isn’t an easy fix to most of the issues that all of us struggle with. I know this personally as someone with chronic illness and neuro-divergence. I struggled forever to make yoga, life coaching, new age spirituality work - and my biggest realization that led to some modicum of freedom was that there are only tools. There are steps. There are small answers that we add up over time. The idea of steps and progress is complicated. It’s messy. It’s not relief right now and it’s not transcendence.
So that doesn’t sell.
The spiritual and self help guru HAVE to sell THE answer because that’s what people want. The only problem is, this one answer doesn’t exist. They can pitch it all they want and we can buy it to our hearts content, but nothing is ever going to work like that, and thus we’re always going to end up needing something else.
This is where they capitalize on our inability to embrace complexity.
Rather than explaining to us that the tool they sold us is just a part of the puzzle, or helping us to understand that not all tools work for all people at all times or helping us see that sometimes we DO just need real therapy, social reform to make base needs more accessible, structural reform to make life actually livable or a whole host of tools that we apply over the long term in order to see change, they look at our NEED to feel better RIGHT NOW and say - so long as you’re here, I’ll keep selling you the thing. The one answer. Over and over again. They tell us our power is truly ALL in our hands, and if we just find the RIGHT THING and do it the RIGHT WAY - it HAS to solve everything for us. Then when it doesn’t we don’t doubt the SYSTEM, we just come back for the new tool. They also can’t sell to us the WHOLE of any one tool, because that would bee too time consuming and complicated. What they offer is always a snippet of the real deal so that it can fit into a post, a photo and a neat little soundbite. So that we can easily digest it without getting confused and so they don’t have to dive deep into anything they’re sharing - because capitalism waits for no man.
We keep believing them because we want to.
And they keep selling it because that's what makes money.
They make it sound so simple, and we want it to be simple.
We need it to be simple.
So they put their finger on the pulse of our pain, figure out what’s trending, take that tool and weave it into a personal narrative, water down any actually useful tools into something bite sized and ‘shareable’ and then use that to sell you on the fact that this new thing is the only answer you’ll ever need.
This is exactly what our friend spiritual guru that I was talking about previously is doing.
Right now inner child/parts/trauma work is the THING. In its legitimate forms these therapy techniques are incredibly valuable and much closer to being something that may have a chance of improving people's lives when compared to what they’ve shared in the past. But the reality of these techniques is that they don’t work for everything, they often require that we are working with a trained therapist who can safely open and close trauma wounds with us, that we practice these tools long term and that there is a high degree of proficiency in how these tools are implemented so that we don’t end up wounding ourselves further. On top of that, these tools are complex because each person and their history is complex. There’s no one size fits all way to work with parts, inner children or trauma. Finally, these techniques on their own DON’T acknowledge social issues, economic factors and they don’t get into the complex web of what may be causing someone to feel out of touch with themselves or what may be causing them to have pain they can’t fix.
These tools aren’t simple and they aren’t one size fits all - which means they aren’t really suited to the whole influencer schtick.
These tools are really important but we DON'T want to open trauma wounds when we're not trained or in a position to carry someone THROUGH to true closure and not just shut down on the other side - which none of these influencers are for the most part. A book that walks you through these techniques can only go so far, and it needs to be stated that this is the case. It’s not safe to open these wounds without the proper care or without really knowing how to walk ourselves through these trauma revisiting sessions - and when done without this we can absolutely cause more damage. We can’t over simplify healing and we can’t market it. That’s the thing. It’s not enough to just talk to parts. It’s not enough to discover root causes of behaviors. There’s so much more here - which is why those who really know what they’re talking about with any one of these techniques aren’t influencers. They are people who have found this tool, and have gone DEEP with it. This is the one thing they offer - and they don’t offer it as a panacea.
The true healers aren’t making it big on insta because they can’t follow the formula.
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Let's take a break here for the day, and come back to this again next week!
<3
