“Self-improvement projects are acts of self-aggression. “

I heard someone say this on a podcast this week – and I felt a strong “yes!”

Our culture is so obsessed with self-help and self-improvement.  My social media feeds are full of public figures who are releasing their daily thoughts on how I can be healthier, happier, more beautiful, more spiritual, more, more, more. 

I know full well that most of these social media gurus have the best of intentions.  Sure, there are some that are just trying to make a buck, but I choose to believe that most of them want to make the world a better place and help alleviate suffering. 

But, does it alleviate suffering?  I don’t know about you, but when I’m constantly presented with messages of how I need to change, it creates a low-level anxiety in me.  There is a background voice that says I’m not OK just as I am.  I need to be healthier, happier, more beautiful, more spiritual, and so on.  

I did a little reading on self-aggression.   Mental health professionals say that self-aggression is way out of feeling vulnerable. 

We know our vulnerabilities only too well, our health is fragile and can be taken from us at any time, our happiness is tenuous and comes and goes at a moment’s notice, our beauty is fleeting, our very lives are fleeting.   Sometimes, we just want a way out of that tension.   And for many the “way out” is self-help.   

When we engage in self-help, we finally have an emotional state that we are controlling.  “If I would just work harder, be smarter, lose weight, be happier, make more money, be how my parents want me to be,  etc… I wouldn’t feel this way.”  So we focus on making ourselves a self-improvement project and we crack the whip.  On ourselves.  In an act of self-aggression.

And then we wonder why we feel even worse.