Helping You Help Yourself: Some Guides to Modern Living

We confess, self-help is not a genre we've given a lot of attention to. We're more of the mindset of Sarah Bennett, co-author of  F*ck Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems, who has said:

The first step is accepting what you can't control. So many people who come to my father [psychiatrist and co-author Michael Bennett]—they want something they can't have. They want a happy relationship that’s never going to be happy, or they want opportunities that are not easy to come by. So it's going into accepting what you can't control, the factors that are out of your hands, and seeing what you can do with what you can control. And learning to be proud of yourself not just for accomplishing what you can, and not beating yourself up for what you can't. Not seeing yourself as a failure, when you haven’t really failed because it’s not something that you could have controlled in the first place. And admiring your ability to withstand a feeling of rejection, and the frustration and the pain, and keep going on towards a more reasonable goal while being a good person. That’s also what’s emphasized so heavily. Figuring out your own values and sticking to them.

That said, we have a lot of admiration for people who have faced adversity, have worked on their personal problem using creative means, who are "able to laugh at how much life sucks."  And we are not totally averse to dipping into self-help - Dear Abby might be a bridge too far, but we have certainly perused the occasional Ask Polly column and taken in the Dear Sugar podcast now and then, and like the So Sad Today twitter feed, sometimes we feel like we'd like to "borrow some dopamine", and reading that someone else has "same anxiety different day" is oddly comforting. Sometimes succor comes from unusual sources; sometimes from just feeling seen and feeling understood.

The modern world has its own set of manners and mysteries, pratfalls and perils; we've collected some books that might serve as guideposts along your way or to make you feel like one of the gang, even if, like Groucho Marx, you would "refuse to join any club that would have [you] as a member."

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice On Love and Life From Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

How to Be a Person In the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life by Heather Havrilesky

So Sad Today: Personal Essays by Melissa Broder 

Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett 

This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More-- For Young and Old Alike by Augusten Burroughs 

Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker 

Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman by Lindy West 

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson  

Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons From a Small-Town Obituary Writer by Heather Lende

Beautiful Uncertainty: Singleness, Surrender, and Stepping Out On Faith by Mandy Hale

Strangers Drowning: Grappling With Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help by Larisa MacFarquhar

I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves by Ryan O'Connell

Promise Land: My Journey Through America's Self-Help Culture by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro

Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Twelve Self-Help Programs, One Whirlwind Year of Improvement by Beth Lisick