Our Self-Help Error
Why do we assume this about the exploration of self?
For many of us, the exploration of self is largely an inside job and one to be done privately. We may seek out a therapist or coach to support us in our journey of self-evolution. We might listen to podcasts while working out, or we accumulate a stack of self-help books on our nightstand, with important passages underlined. And we might rely on our trusty phone to help us set goals, build new habits, and achieve change. But at the same time as our collective interest in self-help/self-development/self-growth has expanded, we find record levels of loneliness, as well as depression and other mental health challenges. While the “crisis of mental health” undoubtedly has many attributing factors, what if one of them is the inherent limitations of the self-development model as we currently largely practice it? We take for granted that the journey for self-understanding is a solo one, but I’d like to argue that this assumption is a by-product of circumstance and one worthy of examination.
Why Do We Assume the Self Is a Solo Job?
There is a long history in both the West and the East of thinkers and writers wrestling with what it means to be human. However, the modern field of psychology emerges in the early 20th century, sparked by the theories of Freud, Jung, and their counterparts. As these modern theories of the self and the unconscious begin to take hold, they do so amidst a greater turn in human thinking—the rise of modernism itself. Modernism itself arises on the heels of the Industrial Era, when an increasing number of people left tight-knit communities for work in the cities. Modernism arises in the aftermath of World War I, when humans confronted, for the first time at a global level, the destruction that could be wrought despite, or perhaps because of, the rise of nation states. And modernism arises as growing scientific knowledge debunks some of the belief structures foundational to Western religious traditions.
The modern era begins with a much-needed critique of Western social institutions—their hypocrisy, their corruption, and their failure to check the darker aspects of humanity. However, modernism’s existential questioning of traditional Western collective institutions turbocharges the strands of individualistic thinking that were already present in Western thought, and this extreme preferencing of individualism emerges just as Freud and Jung kick off the modern field of psychology.
Their new theories of what the self is and how to work with it become so interwoven with assumptions of individualism that we have come to think of the study of the self as a solo endeavor.
It didn’t have to be this way. We have long traditions of humans trying to understand ourselves, and how the mind works prior to Freud and Jung. Originally, these questions were largely the domain of either philosophy or religion. (Indeed, William James’ seminal work The Varieties of Religious Experience is widely considered one of the first modern psychology texts, and its title speaks to where the questions of psychology used to reside.) What is distinctive about the pre-modern philosophical and religious approaches to the study of the self is that these disciplines contextualized this study with larger questions of purpose and meaning. And, while modernism brought a needed dose of skepticism to Western social and religious institutions, its critique led to their discredit without honoring that these structures were where the very human questions of purpose and larger meaning were being asked. While we may rightly take issue with how these institutions answered these fundamental questions, it’s important that they at least valued the asking.
We Need to Be Separate and Belong, Simultaneously
As I ask myself and my clients again and again, “what are we really up to,” one tension that arises over and over again and that appears fundamental to the task of being human is our seemingly competing needs for autonomy/separation AND unity/belonging.
We feel within ourselves the pull of individualism in all of its forms—the need to express, the need to feel seen and to be unique, and the need to go after what we want. And, at the same time, we feel a draw towards being part of something larger than ourselves—the feelings of safety, peace, and purpose that come from relaxing into a container larger than the self.
At any given moment, each of us exists somewhere on the continuum between separation and union. We can and do experience these two needs as competing and in tension with one another, but I believe that what we’re really yearning to experience is their reconciliation.1 Throughout my work, one aspirational goal that I hold for myself and my clients is increased capacity to resolve and reconcile what appear, at first, to be opposing ideas (a separate post on this idea to come).2
What Can Happen in a Group
This is why, while I work with many of my clients in a one-on-one setting, I am particularly passionate about the power of group work. When we explore and expand our sense of self in the container of a group, we have an embodied experience of simultaneously being both separate and part of something larger. In other words, group work is inherently catalytic because the practice itself allows us to experience the reconciliation of two fundamentally human needs. When I lead women’s groups, participants learn and practice different tools for self-awareness and self-development in community. I have found that when a participant explores a piece of work for themselves in front of others—that work is rarely, if ever, just their own. Everyone in the group benefits from their exploration, and the group itself benefits as a whole. Similarly, the stronger the bonds of the group itself, the more comfortable individuals feel coming forward to explore who they are as individuals. Group work supports the process of our own individuation, while simultaneously creating a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves.
Indeed, the approach of religious institutions to the question of what it means to be human is notable in that this examination has nearly always been conducted in community. Modern Bible study groups are the descendants of early Christian communities, whose antecedents can be traced to communal study by practitioners of Greek philosophy. The word “congregation” comes from the Latin roots “together” and “flock,” and is distinct from the words “group” and “community” because it uniquely connotes the creation of a unified whole. Meanwhile, in Eastern tradition, one of the “three jewels of Buddhism,” or the three ingredients considered to be essential on the path of enlightenment, is the “sangha,” the community of like-minded people with whom one studies and practices.
Questions of purpose and meaning are baked into our Western religious traditions and often explicitly addressed in sermon and study. Christian theologian Paul Tillich defined religion, in its broadest sense, as the process through which humans engage with these fundamental questions itself:
“Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt. Such an idea of religion makes religion universally human, but it certainly differs from what is usually called religion. It does not describe religion as the belief in the existence of gods or one God, and as a set of activities and institutions for the sake of relating oneself to these beings in thought, devotion and obedience. No one can deny that the religions which have appeared in history are religions in this sense. Nevertheless, religion in its innermost nature is more than religion in this narrower sense. It is the state of being concerned about one’s own being and being universally.”
What We’re Missing
When we relegated the modern examination of the self to private, one-on-one, clinical settings, we lost the braiding of the question of who we are as an individual—with the question of who and why we are as a species. Due to the emergence of modern psychological theory at the precise time in history when Western culture was also questioning the integrity, validity, and power of its traditional government and religious institutions, we came to divorce the study of the self from our examination of larger questions of purpose and meaning. We might even say that the modern inquiry into the nature of the self was considered necessary because faith in the answers provided by Western religious institutions to these larger questions was so severely damaged by the events of World War I. And, while the religious skepticism of the early modern era may have brought a needed corrective to Western religion’s authority and certainty of belief, we lost something precious when we stopped nesting our inquiry into the nature of self within a larger context of unity, belonging, and meaning.
The ultimate question of faith—whether I am part of something larger than myself—is perhaps unknowable. But, when we have an embodied experience of that belonging, our doubts are momentarily quieted.
While I am not an advocate for us returning to the flawed institutional strictures of traditional Western religious practice, I do believe that the modern crisis of loneliness, depression, and anxiety is a symptom of our forgetting. We have forgotten that humans have been trying to evolve and understand ourselves for quite some time. We have forgotten that the question of how to individuate and develop as a person, and the question of how to feel part of something larger than ourselves, are two halves of the same coin—and that the two questions are meant to be engaged with simultaneously. And we have forgotten that there is a reason humans have historically engaged with these two questions while in community. As of 2023, 22% of Americans described themselves as “spiritual but not religious”. However, because we have yet to reconcile our desire for larger purpose and meaning with the institutional religious skepticism of the 20th century, many of us are trying to answer spiritual questions largely on our own.
How We Might Find What We’re Looking For
I’d like to argue that at least part of what we’re looking for can be found in the experience of asking. I’m grateful we have evolved the modern practice of a human meeting solo with a clinical expert to understand who a person is. I learned a lot from my years of receiving private psychoanalytic therapy in New York City, and I believe in the power of my private work with clients to change their lives. At the same time, I’d like to see us expand beyond this model so that group therapy becomes more widely practiced—not as a modality primarily used to address addiction and acute, often death-related experiences—but as one that can help all of us grow as individuals while simultaneously exploring questions, as Tillich describes, of our ultimate concern.
While much has been written about the need for more connectivity and community to combat the crisis of loneliness, what I see us truly longing for is a modern, updated version of the sangha: community with a shared purpose. The time has come for us to reconcile the 20th century’s needed critique of traditional institutions and its preferencing of the individual with a return to contextualizing our personal journeys within a collective one.
While this post does not explicitly reference the Enneagram, what I am writing about here is the key issues for type 9, the peacemaker: What does it mean to sense myself as both separate and part of something greater? The placement of type 9 at the top of the symbol of the Enneagram itself is emblematic that all humans, at some level, experience and feel the need to resolve this tension. However, the question is primary and foundational for type 9 in particular.
This is a core tenet of my practice and work (one might even say it’s one of the foundational things that “I’m really up to”). But for now, I’ll just note here that the generative power of reconciling two competing ideas or forces is also a core teaching of early Enneagram pioneer George Gurdjieff, and encapsulated in the symbol of the Enneagram itself. Gurdjieff’s theory of “the law of three” has its roots in early Greek philosophy and is fundamental to the practice of Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, and where Gurdjieff likely first encountered the idea. The Hegelian concept of “thesis, antithesis, and synthesis” can be considered a narrow extension or application of the theory as well.