Self-help has gone awry

We Gen-Xers are responsible. It's time to reign in our obsessive focus on the self.

There is much written about younger generations — Millennials and Gen Zs — being self-centered and fragile. What’s said less often is that we Gen Xers have set the tone for this excessive self-focus amongst this younger cohort. It’s on us. It’s our fault. We (and I mean women in particular here) were the first self-help generation. And in a fit of irony that has persisted, we said putting focus on ourselves was the selfless thing to do and had to be done. It was better for our children, in fact, if we practiced self-care. Or so we told ourselves. That whole put the oxygen mask on yourself before your children thing took hold — because of us.

We loved self-help books and Oprah. We loved leaning in and questioning who moved our cheese (maybe it wasn’t our cheese to begin with?); we read project memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love which was basically one big self-help indulgence; we therapized ourselves and then therapized our children; we set boundaries which sometimes meant just being a jerk and never being available to others including parents and friends . . . because “boundaries.” Somehow the “emotional labor” of listening to anyone other than our own inner self became too burdensome. And then it not only became burdensome but harmful to have to listen to another’s perspective. And then speech became violence if it challenged our own beliefs and perceptions.

And now, close to half of those under 30 (42%), are open to censorship by the government in favor of national security, compared to those over 65 years old where the percentage is 26%.

Is national security inherently bad? No, of course not. But the idea that our own personal, emotional safety is the highest value — of a higher order than broad societal values like . . . oh I don’t know . . . freedom of speech — is a uniquely NOW problem.

This, of course, lines up with what we’ve seen unfolding on college campuses for the past decade plus. Back in March, a federal judge was shouted down on Stanford campus when law students decided his speech was just too dangerous to be heard.

My own speech advocating for open public schools during covid lockdowns was deemed to be too dangerous by Levi’s employees and random Twitter trolls for me to even be employed.

I was interrogated with are you one of us or one of them types of questions in town hall style meetings, once again illustrating that disagreeable speech by one of them is just too harmful and traumatizing to be heard in the world.

And now, this obsession with the self and “emotional safety” seems to have taken hold of Gen Zers in a way that is making them miserable and fragile and ill-equipped to manage in the world as adults. Is it any surprise? If everything was perceived and labeled as a trauma I’d be miserable too.

42% of Gen Z has received a mental health diagnosis and 60% are on medication to manage their mental health. Gen Zs are more than twice as likely to report mental health conditions than older generations.

Gen Z’s are more medicated and more unhappy than any young generation ever. They drive less and have less sex, they insist on safe spaces where disagreement (which they prefer to call “hate speech”) is disallowed because it’s just too much to handle and they crow that words are violence.

They seem to be — as a generational generality — risk averse, tethered to obsessive safety, self-obsessed and just plain unhappy. On the whole. Of course, there are exceptions so do not at me with those. And, I’m blaming us, the oldsters, for this course we are on. I am not blaming the youngsters.

A brief foray into the notion of self-obsession — and bear with me on this detour. I got into a little Twitter/X “discussion” recently about a not so new version of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. There is a graphic novel version of the book which includes Frank’s teenage musings on her sexual maturation, puberty and interest in boys. Fine. They are her real words. (Here’s a worthwhile analysis of the book from The Atlantic a few years ago when the book came out. Of note, it’s been in the news of late because it’s in the crosshairs of the “book banning” debate otherwise known as what books should be in school libraries and on class syllabi and for what age groups debate.)

At any rate, I don’t believe the book should be banned. But I believe middle schoolers are better served reading the non-graphic novel version in classrooms. I have no issues with graphic novels. My children like them, and one of my children writes/draws them. I’m always happy if my kids are reading.

My perspective on this matter though, which I offered on Twitter/X (why do I do this?) and was roundly criticized for: what Frank’s story uniquely offers to the world is not that of a coming of age/sexual awakening story. Rather it provides a terrifying look inside the horrors of the Holocaust for Frank and her family and all of those who were victims of this mass genocide. Or, from The Atlantic summary:

The argument in favor of the sexy version is: it gives young people something to relate to, to draw them in. Here are some of the excerpts:

As I said, I’m not arguing for the removal of this book from libraries or bookstores or banning it in any way. But I, for one, would prefer that the non-graphic version be read in the classroom.

Why? Because I think young people need to learn to appreciate art and stories and history that they don’t see themselves in. There is value in that. Why do we need to literally see ourselves in a piece of art to relate to it? Why is everything about us, and if it isn’t, it can’t be understood or consumed with the aim of understanding someone or some situation outside of our immediate experience?

With younger generations completely unaware and lacking in knowledge about the Holocaust, maybe let’s just educate them on that? There are plenty of books to read about a teenager’s sexual awakening. Read them. In Health Class. Not History. Or English.

And FYI - it isn’t just younger generations who seem to know very little about the Holocaust and World War II. The recent dust-up in the Canadian Parliament serves as evidence here. In case you missed it, last week Ukrainian President Zelensky delivered an address in the Canadian House of Commons, and then Canadian lawmakers gave special invitee 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka a standing ovation when Speaker Anthony Rota (who has since resigned) drew attention to him. Rota introduced Hunka as a war hero who fought for the First Ukrainian Division, against the Russians in WWII. The First Ukrainian Division was also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a unit under the command of the Nazis. Any cursory understanding of WWII and one would know that the Russians fought on the side of the United States and the British. So if Ukraine fought against Russia they fought for Nazis.

But in our today/me-centric world the Russians are bad and so anyone who fought against the Russians — ever — is good. Wrong.

Anyway, all of Canadian Parliament got it wrong. And so did Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau. Trudeau kind of not really apologized but mostly blamed Russian disinformation for the error.

All Canadian lawmakers had to do was google “WWII Ukraine” before the session. But to do that they would have had to acknowledge they weren’t so sure about what had happened in WWII and that their current worldview — which paints all Russians as bad therefore anyone against Russians is good — is limited. At best.

Back to Anne Frank . . . maybe just maybe it would be good for young people (and all of us) to read about events that take them (and us) outside of themselves. To learn about the world. To learn about historical events so as not to repeat them. I’d argue that the fact that Anne Frank got her period and kissed a boy are the least interesting and least remarkable things about her and her story; and the least important, if we want to truly understand history. (Canadian Parliament might take a lesson here.)

If a young person can’t get through a book without there being some tidbit that indicates Hey we’re the same then we are in for big trouble. True empathy comes in understanding those who are not the same as us, who experience different life circumstances.

We aren’t the only people in the world who matter. Our everyday experience is not universal.

Case in point, my advocacy for open public schools during lockdowns was met with you’re a selfish wine mom who wants to go to pilates! I don’t drink wine and I don’t do pilates. And my kids were relatively unscathed by closures because they are lucky enough to have a stay-at-home parent, strong wifi and all the advantages that come from having a parent who makes plenty of money. Maybe, just maybe, my advocacy wasn’t solely about me and my kids? Is that so hard to fathom? Maybe it was about kids like those I’ve met in the past year or so while making a documentary about the impact of prolonged school closures.

Maybe it was about young people like Lezly Martinez of Greeley, Colorado who was left at home at 13-years-old to care for her younger siblings while her mom worked the graveyard shift. In an interview for the film, she told me:

“I had to do a lot of things on my own, [it was] especially [difficult] still being young and still being a child myself. It was very abusive. Everything was more behind closed doors. Everything would happen inside our home. It was very traumatizing. I really wasn't safe. I didn't have nobody to talk to. It was really just me. It was really just me trying to do as much as I could for my siblings.”

It seems outside of the imagination of an enthusiastic pro-lockdowner that a person — me — might advocate for open schools for the benefit and opportunity of others. And for a higher societal value — access to an equal education for all — than my own personal safety and comfort.

We Gen X-ers need to own it. We did this. Gen X women in particular, became obsessed with self-help, self-care, self everything. The therapy-speak of boundary setting and self-care made us self-obsessed. And now we need to step outside ourselves. Read books that aren’t memoirs (I realize I’ve written two). Volunteer. Run for school board. Stop thinking about ourselves and do something more than enacting performative gestures of caring like putting In this house we believe yard signs out on our lawns. We need to set a better example.

We need to encourage younger generations to step outside of themselves. Encourage our children to read books not about them. Join Teach for America. Go to church or temple. Put down their phones. Stop looking at TikTok. Stop worrying. Start doing. Touch grass, in the parlance of the day.

I am not an anxious person but I can lean toward pessimism and negativity. My husband is the opposite. He’s an optimist. He enjoys every moment, is grateful for all of the little things that make a life worthwhile — watching our kids play soccer, family rituals as simple as a lunch together or as significant as a trip to Israel. He’s always encouraging me to think about how good we have it, rather than wallow in what may or may not have not gone our way. And he’s right.

And when I feel the most positive, the least negative and pessimistic, is when I’m not thinking about myself. When I engage in my community, when I help and mentor young people who reach out about all manner of things from how do I build a career in marketing to how do I write a book to will you speak to my class about standing up for what you believe in. The proudest moments of my career have been when I mentored others to help them build careers rather than focusing on my own climb up the ladder.

We may be getting older but we are not yet retired nor should we be resigned to not making a difference in the world. And I’m convinced, now more than ever, that we have a responsibility to be the change we want to see in the world. Less self-help, more helping others and more seeking to understand the world beyond our narrow view is the way forward.

We (my fellow Gen Xers) got us into this mess. And it’s on us to get us out.