Self help is bad for us!

https://www.salon.com/2014/02/16/youre_making_your_depression_worse_self_help_is_bringing_us_down/

“Given our natural reliance on and our confidence in thought, the urge to repetitively think about the causes and consequences of low mood can harden into a habit. Researchers label this habit of thought rumination. Some people enter a ruminative mode even when facing minor troubles, or even when their environment is benevolent. A consistent body of data—much of it collected by the late psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema—shows that this is a dangerous habit. People who report a greater tendency to ruminate on a short questionnaire have longer periods of depressed mood in everyday life, are more pessimistic about the future, and have a harder time recovering from the effects of stressors such as a natural disaster or a recent bereavement.

The human meaning-making machine is so good at what it does that it can generate interminable interpretations. When persistent thinking gets stuck, it does not arrive at a stable theory of the problem, does not solve it, and cannot come to terms with it. Far from engaging in active problem solving, a person may simply perseverate on the fact of the problem (or problems) for months on end.”