Top self-help authors such as John Bradshaw, Wayne Dyer, and Robert Glover have become famous and wealthy writing books about how to ?heal the shame that binds?, uncover ?your erroneous zones?, and ?reclaim your masculinity.?
Others love to talk about feeling good, finding ?flow?, and embracing self-esteem while purging your inner demons so you can learn to love yourself and discover inner peace.
I only have one question?
Does anyone have a spare bucket?
Because writing about this ?Happy Clappy Positivity? (as one poster in a social anxiety forum termed it recently) makes my lunch rise from my stomach. Click here for a social anxiety program with ZERO ?Happy Clappy Positivity.?
There was a time I felt differently. It was during my own self-help phase.
Tony Robbins got me started down this endless road that leads nowhere.
It wasn?t all bad. There were nuggets of good advice? hidden in a sea of overblown hype and impossible promises.
Then came others. Maxwell Maltz. Robert Anthony. Norman Vincent Peale. Les Brown. Brian Tracy. Robert Bly. David Burns. M. Scott Peck. Nathaniel Branden. Leo Buscaglia.
Seriously, I spent years reading this mindless fluff until I discovered the best motivation to cure my social anxiety, my fear of success, and my depression?
Stop reading these books and DO things!
Or, in other words, take ACTION.
It wasn?t until I decided to DO things instead of just think things that my social anxiety really started to melt away.
With that in mind, I want you to immediately put down? and RUN AWAY from? any self-help book that you find containing the following claptrap:
?Learn to love yourself?
Blecch.
Some people buy this concept hook, line, and sinker. They spend years chanting to themselves how much they love themselves. But they stay depressed because they really DON?T love themselves and no amount of repeating it over and over will change that.
Instead, why not direct your love OUTWARD? Learn to love:
a) Life
b) The world around you in all its beauty
c) Everything that others have to offer
The more you take your focus AWAY from yourself and put it onto others and the world around you? with heavy doses of CURIOSITY and INTEREST, the more you will forget about your problems, including social anxiety.
And the more people will love you for being so into life? and when people love you, you?ll feel worthy of love and? boom!? just like that, you?ll love yourself without even trying.
?Reclaim your inner child?
Ugh. Not this one again.
Forget your inner child. Your childhood is over. You can?t get it back.
Deal with it!
Sorry, I don?t mean to be a spoil-sport here but somebody needs to get a little tough with you. Plus, I?m sick of watching FIFTY-something adults whining about how their parents treated them.
Get over it!?It was thirty years ago, for Pete?s sake.
Okay, maybe you really DID have a bad childhood. Maybe it was the WORST childhood anyone could have ever experienced? ever!
In that case, my heart goes out to you. I?m sorry you had to endure that. That does indeed suck? bigtime!
However, it?s time to leave it behind you. It?s time to become a rational adult and SLAM THE DOOR SHUT on the pain. Because if you spend your entire life trying to figure out how your childhood messed you up, then you?re going to wake up one morning eighty years old.
Whoops, too late!
Patricia Farrell, the author of How To Be Your Own Therapist (a good solid no-nonsense book) wrote:
Fire your parents!?
Great advice. Whether they were good or bad, rich or poor, loving or hateful, stop blaming them. Stop blaming anybody? including yourself!
For years, I blamed my mother for loving me TOO much? for coddling me and overprotecting me. It wasn?t until I stopped blaming her or anybody else? INCLUDING myself? that I was truly able to work on my social anxiety.
A much better way to look at your problems is:
It is what it is.
You have social anxiety. It is what it is.
Now forget about how you got it.
Just shut up and fix it!
?Find inner peace?
This one is pure B.S.
Supposedly, if we sit and meditate long enough while ?opening the spiritual floodgates? in a ?state of mindfulness?, then ?peace and serenity? will descend upon us like an angel floating down from the clouds.
Yeah, right.
There is no inner peace. Life?s a bitch.
Or as the Buddha said, ?Life is suffering.? Same thing.
Again?
Get over it!
Stop expecting everything to be magically wonderful. Once you do accept life?s harsh reality, then you will actually be more open to enjoying all the good things in life? no inner peace required.
?Heal your toxic shame?
Pffffft.
Another path to lunacy. Look, maybe you DO have toxic shame. Heck, maybe I do. Maybe we ALL do.
But in the end?
Who cares?
You still only have mere SECONDS left to live. Are you going to waste those precious few moments whining about the toxic shame that was instilled in you years ago by the people and events of that time?
Just forget about it and MOVE ON!
If you foolishly attempt to face and dismantle every shameful event of your life through ?self-analysis? and ?personal discovery?, then you?re going to waste years that you can actually use for a fun and fulfilled life.
Forget the past. Slam the door shut.
?Boost your self-esteem?, ?Boost your self-confidence?, ?Boost your self-image? and ?Discover yourself?
Self. Self. Self. Self. Self.
Me.Me.Me.Me.Me.
These idiotic concepts scream??It?s all about ME!?
And that?s the problem with them.
I say?
Get Over Yourself!
Sorry. It?s NOT all about you. Overcoming social anxiety is more about taking the focus AWAY from yourself and putting it on the world around you.
The more you waste time trying to boost yourself up, the emptier you will feel inside. You will get sucked into a ?self-vortex? in which everything you do is focused on the ?self-whatever? you think you?re going to receive.
Instead of trying to boost yourself up, how about trying to boost somebody ELSE up? GIVE in order to get.
It?s a strange paradox, I know. But when you become an inspiration to others, you become an inspiration to yourself too.
?But I don?t have anything to give to anyone else! How can I give to others if I have no self-esteem, self-confidence, self-love, or positive self-image??
My answer to that is a quote from Nike?
Just DO it!
Dive in. Fake it if you need to. Act like an inspirational person who loves himself or herself and boosts others up. You?ll be surprised at how quickly you actually BECOME this person.
?You?re crazy, Travis. I had no role models to teach me how to boost anyone up. I?ve been beaten down and trod upon my entire life. Plus, I?m depressed!?
I say?
Do it anyway!
Trust me, you?ll feel way better about yourself when you turn the tables around and face OUTWARD instead of inward. The rewards you will experience are IMMENSE!
The bottom line is?
If you focus on problems, then you?ll get more problems.
Problems are what these self-help concepts focus on. Stop focusing on your problems, their causes, and their triggers. Forget the past. Stop turning inward.
If you focus on solutions, then you?ll get more solutions.
Solutions are what cure your social anxiety. The more you focus on things you can DO, the more you?ll overcome your fears.
And solutions require ACTION!
It?s the ACTIONS you take that help you overcome social anxiety? not the feel good self-help B.S. that makes overblown promises it can never deliver.
Source: http://www.socialanxietycures.org/best-self-help-self-improvement-myths-blown-to-bits
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