My first thought was that we try to fix ourselves. Read about it, learn about it. Saturate our very beings with all the words and information. How easy it is to dismiss the help from someone else even if it is a professional. After all, you are on a mission. A mission to fix ourselves, find the answers. Over time the urgency begins to wain. You become less self-absorbed. You learn it is not about fixing yourself but about learning to cope in the real world. A good therapist can help you with the tools you need in life. Of course, we have access to this sounding board. So beneficial to so many.

good thoughts, jazzylady. thank you. for sure, fixing myself was my goal in reading all those self-help books. in my own formal therapy, the problem arose in the random mixes of conflicting theories and conclusions. experts are not famous for agreeing with one another and the unguided, haphazard approach was creating new problems to untangle.

i have hearing issues and the new normal of masking, teleconferencing, etc., is brutally callous toward those issues. resuming that old addiction might be the only option available at this time.

Given my personality, my growth has been accepting my addictions and exchanging one for another better one for me. For example, when I gave up my 2 pack a day cigarette habit, I turned to hard candy as a substitute. Just as I'd been with cigarettes, so I was with hard candy to the point that chomping on it I broke a molar. But molars can be fixed, and nobody ever died of a broken molar like they do of lung cancer. So it was an improvement addiction for me.

hm-m-m-m. . . i hadn't thought to compare it to my physical addictions, but? ? ?

here goes.
when i gave up my self-help addiction, i took up support group meetings and pro therapy. i had dabbled with both during the years i ingested those uncounted and mostly unremembered self-help books, i never took either very seriously until i gave them priority over yet another self-help and/or psychology book. i believe that can qualify as an improved addiction.

i didn't **choose** to give up the live therapy. perhaps it was just another addiction, but i'm not sure the covidic isolation which replaced it is an improved addiction.

chew, chew. . .

for sure, the guidance by which i declared self-help books to be a strictly personal addiction was a very long time ago. my healing journey has passed many mile markers since then. a review seems in order. i don't believe i've read a single one of the 21st century authors.

Me, neither, arfie. Since the 21st century began, I don't know why but I quit browsing the self help section of the bookstores, too. I got busy with other things. I don't regret what I learned from those 20th C books, but after a while they began repeating themselves, so it was time just to get out there and give their advice a try.

i was like an alcoholic scurrying past the liquor department of a store for a very long time when i first started to "kick the habit." by the turn of the millennium i scarcely noticed the self-help section any more, but being covidically isolated with the grief and foster family drama has taken its toll. help remains masked and socially distant. the self-help aisle is what's currently available.