Is LONELY a self-help book?
This may sound like a strange admission, seeing as my book is being marketed partly as self-help, but I’ve never been a real self-help kind of a gal. The best “self help” I’ve ever come across is what I’ve tried to create with LONELY: I love books that help me understand what I’m facing, and that allow me to see myself as less alone with the problems I’m dealing with.
I think this sense of shared experience—which is what LONELY aims to achieve—is a powerful tool, since it lets you put your difficulties in perspective, and allows you to stop viewing yourself as peculiar and different.
I’ve tried self-help with depression, but have never gotten very far with it. I’m bad at quizzes, and I’m terrible at CBT-type exercises (such as countering negative thoughts with positive ones). That’s not to say that self-help doesn’t work – I’m just saying it hasn’t worked for me.
So LONELY isn’t a self-help book. Aside from the UCLA Loneliness Scale, there are no quizzes, no tips, no formulas. LONELY provides a lot of information. It’s a mirror. It’s a vivid cross-section of loneliness. It lets lonely people see themselves as less alone. And this, I hope, will offer help in the best possible way.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 11:23 am and is filed under the category Dealing with Loneliness.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Is LONELY a self-help book?”
ADD A COMMENT
Your name will be published with your comments. If you do not want your name used, simply type in Anonymous or the alias of your choosing. I'm fine with people using made up names. Feel free to be creative!
“Self-help” often suggests sermonizing theorists who seem to suggest that it’s easy to handle whatever problem their book concerns. Your book, being both memoir and research, may be considered self-help only in that those who have read it might fight it helps them, but that’s a really loose interpretation. It’s been incredibly helpful to me in knowing that I’m not alone in this loneliness, and that there is hope. Thanks.