I’m sorry if the title offends.
For years I have battled with conflicting ideas if myself, out of which often the inevitable path of seemingly least resistant (from alcoholism to listening to the same old albums) becomes the only solution I can.
I am a lonely person, I only have the nagging concerns of my parents to guilt me into not taking impulsive thoughts too far. I’ve never really connected to anyone, not properly. Never has my world been reduced to the beauty of one Other.
I really struggle with self help culture when I add an estranged friend on Facebook who id thought had come through their alcoholism, only to see (from their posts) that the hell has only grown
I really struggle with self help culture when I found out, a year late, that somebody I went to college with, an alcoholic with more than alcohol as his problems, but whom found “god’, nonetheless killed himself last year.
I’ve grown up in a traumatised town. If I said that out loud in my home town, it wouldn’t go down well. But it is so. And this means that the common response to trauma is thick skins and tough love.
To my best ability I have never been able to do this. I love my home town, but I still feel like I’m an alien lost with my assumptions about how life is supposed to be like.
Self help can often hurt, without any positives.
Self.help is only positive. YOU CAN change.
But for many, there is a flip side to this coin, that blames them for their suffering, and tells them they are to all intents and purposes bad people for not “being better’.
John B Ledger 