what the self help industry has wrong about...everything

research updates from the writing desk of Jamila Bradley

Hey Substack, it’s been awhile! I’m back with more thoughts, and a very imperfect audio reading for folks who prefer to listen!

Over the course of my research for writing In Kinship (and surviving a breakup), I’ve read (devoured) almost a dozen books, hundreds of articles and studies, and listened to countless hours of video and audio content on relationships, belonging, estrangement, and connection.

In that time, I’ve noticed some patterns in how relational work is positioned on social media and within the self-help world. Too often, what’s presented as “healing” or “growth” leans heavily on ideas of individualism and self-sufficiency, even when the topic is supposedly about building connection. There’s a lot of talk about boundaries, cutting ties, and putting yourself first—but very little about the mystical balance of staying near to others while staying near to ourself, even when it’s messy or difficult.

These trends don’t just influence how we think about our personal growth; they shape how we see each other, our aspirations, and how we experience and cultivate community. I’d like to share some of these observations, along with some questions that have come up for me along the way, that I hope will help serve as North Star in terms of whether the media we’re consuming is actually helping us “do the work” or…to put it frankly, bullshit.

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✨ Self-Help or Repackaged Individualism?

Over the last several months of full media immersion, I’ve come to learn that much of the self-help and personal development world is just repackaging individualism as healing, relational work, and growth. It’s sold to us as empowerment, but a lot of it looks more like isolation. Let’s unpack what they’re selling, and if we’re buying. (We’re not.)

The Illusion of Empowerment

A lot of self-help advice frames empowerment as something you achieve by detaching from others—cutting people off, setting rigid boundaries, and becoming ultra-self-sufficient. But what if this isn’t empowerment at all? What if it's just another form of isolation, repackaged to make you feel like it's a personal victory?

Discernment isn’t about ensuring safety and wellness by battening down the hatches, and shutting down threat. True discernment comes when we’re able to effectively evaluate our own thoughts, behaviors, and reactions in relation to our environment, while continuing to make the next right choice with the information available to us. It’s a lot of work. A car alarm will sound for a break in, a bird, a strong gust of wind, even a passerby’s jacket brushing too close. While that certainly ensures the alarm system works, and the car stays secure, it must be a very exhausting life for that alarm system. When we enter a threat response, our ability to hold and process nuance goes to hell. I would not be inclined to call that state an empowered one, however effective in keeping us temporarily safe.

Real empowerment isn’t about how many people you can keep out; it’s about how many meaningful connections you can sustain while honoring yourself at the same time.

Real empowerment is characterized by the ability to choose.

🌱 It’s Rare to See Advice That Facilitates Connection as The End Goal

There’s a lot of talk about boundaries, self-care, and cutting people off. But where’s the advice on what comes next? Once our cut off game is strong, once we’re proud and clear expressers of our needs, wants, and desires— where do we go to belong? As popular as movements around developing boundaries are, we’re not often given tools for bridging the gap, just more reasons to pull away, with very little sense of direction on where to go next to seek relationships and connection that can actually nourish us.

The Problem with “Boundaries” as a Catch-All Solution

Boundaries are essential (read that again.) and they’re also too often misused as a blunt tool for avoiding discomfort rather than a means to foster healthier, more honest relationships. Even a shoe can serve as a hammer in a pinch. At their most misappropriated, the language of boundaries can be used as a means to control the actions and behaviors of others, or coerce “good behavior.” If the advice around boundaries always leads to cutting people off, shutting down, or keeping everyone at arm's length, that’s not healing—it’s rugged self-preservation disguised as growth. And as important as survival mode is in terms of keeping us alive, it is not an abundant space for healing, connecting, and expanding.

Living life as a person with no boundaries, disappearing ones own dignity, integrity and personhood is already a lonely way to live. It demands dishonest harmony, over honest conflict and deep meaningful connection, robbing the person themselves of the gift of arriving as their true self, and the people around them the opportunity of truly seeing and knowing them. It foments resentment, self betrayal, rage, and a sense of emotional enslavement. This makes it all the more important that boundaries exist as an amplifier of connection and belonging.

Boundaries should serve to express our deep belief in loving connection by creating the conditions for it to exist and flourish. When we begin to see boundaries this way, they stop being walls and start becoming bridges—ways to navigate the complexities that come part and parcel with authentic relationships, without losing the parts of ourselves that matter most.

A boundary that isolates isn’t a boundary; it’s a wall. When boundaries are rooted in authenticity, they invite others to do the same, ultimately allowing us to give freely, rather than out of obligation, which makes every interaction more genuine.

❗ How Individualism Disguises Itself as Healing and Creates a Captive Market

• “If your boundaries push others away, you know you’re on the right track.”

• “If people don’t respect your growth, they don’t belong in your life.”

• “You should be able to handle everything on your own, and that’s how you know you’re healed.”

These ideas frame alienation, estrangement and disbelonging as progress.

When the advice leads to isolation, it creates a problem it can keep selling solutions for. You end up feeling disconnected, and the only place left to find connection is with the gurus and relationship experts peddling more books, more courses, more retreats. They tell you to cut ties, then sell you the ropes. Rinse, repeat.

Enter: The Commodification of [Intimacy/Kinship/Healing/Etc]

When health becomes an ideology, the failure to conform becomes a stigma.

-"The Wellness Syndrome" by Carl Cederström and André Spicer

Self-Help as a Captive Market

When self-help culture tells you that your healing journey is about distance, it’s setting you up to come back for more. When every piece of advice, infographic, life coach session leads you to an ever shrinking community, it creates a cycle disguised as the natural stages of healing. You start to rely on the next book, the next course, the next retreat to find connection, but the solution never really comes. Instead, the cycle repeats: more isolation, more advice, more purchases.

Self-help has built a massive industry around the promise of personal transformation. But this industry thrives on a specific kind of isolation, one that isn’t just about physical distance or personal, or relational struggles. It’s about the gap between those who are trying to heal in ways that challenge the norms of their culture, class, race, or environment, and the communities they come from.

For so many of us, the message that healing equals loneliness is so believable because we have experienced it in real time. Whether you’re a generational curse breaker, or deconstructing belief systems like patriarchy and white supremacy, you understand acutely that healing doesn’t just mean self-improvement—it means trying to navigate a world that doesn’t understand, value, or support the kind of change you’re pursuing. It often means a deep and intentional process of healing is met with invalidation or dismissal at best, if not outright hostility or violence at worst. which means for some people, healing is a liability. When you’re healing alone, self-help becomes the only space where you feel understood, but it also keeps you returning to that same space for validation. This is predation at its finest.

The less connected you feel, the more you lean on the voices that promise relief—and those voices profit from your disconnection. The best kind of healing doesn’t ask you to reject where you come from—it helps you find ways to bridge the gap between who you are and where you belong.

🚩 Red Flags to Watch For in Relational Advice

• Pathologizing attachment theory: framing normal, healthy attachment as a problem to be fixed.

• Encouraging you to diagnose people in your life: turning your relationships into a list of symptoms.

• Framing distance as success: if the advice tells you to retreat instead of engage, that’s a sign to look closer.

Beware: The Language of Pathology

So much of the language in self-help pathologizes normal behaviors. Attachment styles, for instance, are often talked about as “secure” vs. “insecure,” with the implication that insecurity is a failing. But this ignores the context of trauma, upbringing, and complex human experiences. When self-help encourages you to diagnose people around you, it’s turning your relationships into a checklist of disorders, rather than encouraging empathy and connection. It also places you in the role to arbitrate another person’s mental health status and emotional reality. Even if you are a licensed mental healthcare professional, I doubt this is the role your friends and loved ones want you to play within your relationships, and it largely serves to objectify others at the expense of meaningful connection. It’s also just frankly rude.

Pathologizing attachment creates a transactional view of relationships, where closeness is reduced to a series of acceptable or unacceptable behaviors determined by one party cosplaying objectivity.

🤔 Critical Questions to Engage With Self Help Content

• Is this advice actually about fostering connection, or is it just promoting more hyper-independence and hyper-vigilance?

• Does it help you to stay near to yourself and others, or does it create more distance?

• Does it encourage understanding and empathy, or just self-preservation?

• Does it create more space in my life and emotional experience to better understand myself and others?

• Who benefits when the advice leads to disconnection?

• Do I feel more alienated, lonely, or ashamed after I consume the content?

Additional Questions to Identify the Intent Behind Advice

• Does this advice make room for vulnerability, or is it pushing you to toughen up and detach?

• Is it telling you that true healing requires solitude, or does it acknowledge that community and connection are part of the process?

• Who is this advice asking you to become: more open, understanding, and empathetic, or more guarded, wary, assumptive, and self-reliant?

🌿 Healing Should Foster Belonging

Real growth isn’t about pushing people away or finding all your answers alone. We also shouldn’t be trusting any source that claims to have ( for a low low price!) all the answers for us. True relational healing helps you stay closer to yourself and others. It builds bridges, not walls.

What Real Healing Looks Like

True healing is messy, and it’s rarely a straight line. It doesn’t fit neatly into a 5-step framework or a 30-day plan. It’s about navigating conflicts, building understanding, and sometimes, making space for ourselves to grieve and exist within imperfection. Real growth happens when we learn to stay close, to communicate, and to remain present, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Healing that leads to connection, empathy, and belonging can’t be sold as easily, because it requires patience, discomfort, and a willingness to learn when and how to stick around, rather than walk away. And of course, the wisdom to know the difference.

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Thank you so much for being with me on my journey. Last week we celebrated hitting my 10k goal on GoFundMe to support my health journey and writing sabbatical, and this marvelous community has asked me to keep the fundraiser open as a space to for continued donations, and to express support and encouragement.

This process has truly changed my life. Every single day I watch my writing get sharper, clearer; my voice and point of view more focused. I wouldn’t be here without you, all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

in kinship,

jamila