Why Self-Help Can Make You Feel Like the Problem

The Lulu Essey Podcast · Aug 20, 2026 · 15m

Does self-help leave you feeling like the problem? Like you did the work, followed every step, and your life still did not change, so the failure must be you? If self-improvement is not working for you, I want you to hear this: I reached the same conclusion about myself once, and it took me years to see that the reasoning was broken, not the woman doing the reasoning.

There is a shouty conversation happening in the self-improvement world right now, about what gets promised and what gets sold with the promise. Underneath the noise there is something more important: so many of us are measuring…