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Key points
- It fails to recognize that there are traits that people have in response to stress and through the natural responses of their own biology.
- It invalidates that there are reasons to be unhappy and unfulfilled.
- The mature goal is balanced realism and acceptance for the way things are and efforts in the real world to better or overcome those things.
The concept of “working on yourself” has rung in my ears since I was a teenager in the 2010s. I mostly hear it from people who avoid taking the field of psychology seriously. That term actually does not come out of the field. The most frequent place this concept is seen is on self-help blogs, from spiritual gurus, or for people who don’t actually have a psychiatric illness that causes dysfunction.
This term is problematic for many reasons. I outline why below.
4 Reasons Why Working on Yourself May Not Help
1. “Working on yourself” is directly in conflict with the concept of mental illness. The reason why people encourage others to “work on themselves” is because they believe that with just some education, effort, and daily practice, they can get rid of fundamental traits of cognitive disability.
This is anti-science. It fails to recognize that there are simply irreducible traits that people have in response to stress and through the natural responses of their own biology.
It is true that people can recover to a point where they can prevent mental illness episodes and reduce the number of times those episodes may happen. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that if a person were to experience significant triggers or stress, their response pattern won't go away simply by “working on themselves.”
2. The term, “work on yourself” implies that the responsibility to be fulfilled and happy is completely on the individual. This is misleading for several reasons. Instead of focusing on structural inequalities like rape, violence against women, police brutality, poverty (which adversely affects children and adults by making them prone to health problems later in life), and a lack of accessible health care, the premise behind “working on yourself” implies that life boils down to the individual’s fault of their own reasoning, attitudes, or hard-work ethic.
It invalidates that there are reasons to be unhappy and unfulfilled. It takes away the responsibility of others and fails to hold people accountable who make the world a worse place. It encourages people to make changes internally rather than externally by perhaps confronting abusers for their wrongdoing and working on healing together.
Ultimately, it boils down to victim blaming. There are ways to change your circumstances like switching social circles and having a positive attitude, but this alone will not solve people’s problems. Instead, it might be more accurate to know that the world we live in is shaped by others through our shared communities and that we shouldn't give up teaching and having difficult conversations with others by simply striving for ultimate personal perfection.
3. “Working on yourself” implies a vertical path of personal achievement. Anybody who has ever been to therapy knows that recovery is a nonlinear path. There is the recognition that the trajectory reveals itself to be generally "upward" with enough practice, but the concept implies that humans never have a stopping point for becoming a bigger, better version of themselves.
The fact is, there is only so much that can be done to reach personal achievement. Humans cannot become gods merely by shifting their emotional attitudes. There are no infinite levels of “higher dimensions” that consciousness can be reached to “transcend humanity” into willful manifestations of peace and utopia.
The mature goal is to reach a place of balanced realism and acceptance for the way things are and to make efforts in the real world to better or overcome those things. Addressing problems head-on instead of side-stepping them by focusing on “interdimensional planes of existence” does not produce the results that people think they do. Instead of aspiring “up,” aspire to connect with others and the ground beneath you. The Earth, too, needs healing and acknowledgment.
4. The flaw in “working on yourself” also boils down to the misuse of language. “Working” implies that emotional and mental health is a job. It does involve emotional labor, true, but “working on yourself” is not an activity intended to produce a kind of productivity.
To have a job means you have a specific time and place to go to do that work. Typically, you leave that work in that little box. Emotional fulfillment and mental health are not jobs; they are responsibilities or, in many cases, personal choices. Some people can afford to make that choice while others cannot due to imperfect circumstances. Integration of mental health is more accurate to describe this type of labor, not work, and this may come with more difficulty to people who have to prioritize raising their children and working two jobs to support themselves.
It is true that to heal and recover, one must plan for the unpredictability of their neuroticism. Perhaps this requires "work." But, more accurately, it requires proper intention and smarter choices. Often, I plan hours in my day to have symptoms, worry, and ruminate. It helps honor “negative” coping habits by allowing them space. In that sense, I am not working. I am simply resting and living in the best way that I can. And resting and honoring how I choose to live practices self-respect and non-blaming or shaming.
