{"id":9352,"date":"2023-02-27T13:18:20","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T13:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9352"},"modified":"2023-02-27T13:18:22","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T13:18:22","slug":"self-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9352","title":{"rendered":"Self? Help!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Primal scream\/Glamour UK<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How female aspirations have changed! Victorian diaries and books like Little Women<\/em> bear witness to a desire to cultivate virtues such as humility, self-restraint and kindness. These gave way to a more ambitious view of self-improvement that can be summed up in French pharmacist Emile Cou\u00e9\u2019s mantra \u2019Every day, in every way I am getting better and better,\u2019 and now we have the altogether snappier exhortation to \u2018be the best that you can be.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where to start? I\u2019m sure there is a calculation to be done about how many times around the world all the self-help books published since Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People <\/em>would go if laid end to end. Add to that the central contradiction that seems to emerge from these books, taken collectively, and you\u2019re in a real quandary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contradiction is this: when it comes to anger and other strong negative emotions is it best to let them all out whenever they arise through, say, primal screams or GBH to punchbags; or should you focus on building a harmonious and constructive inner landscape to maintain balance and positivity \u2013 if need be by \u2018faking it until you make it\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think we can see all around us evidence of what has become the received wisdom that it\u2019s not good to repress our rage \u2013 if only through the volume of spleen vented down mobile phones. (Everyone is venting: I even overheard a conversation in a pub a few weeks ago in which a three-year-old was described has having \u2018anger management issues\u2019 \u2013 when you\u2019re three, tantrums are your job, for heaven\u2019s sake!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are those who maintain that this approach only serves to reproduce and reinforce these extreme emotions. The solution is planet positivity, where all is calm. The things that drive us to distraction have been reframed as opportunities and challenges. Visualisation and relaxation soothe the savage breast and offer a way forward. You can create your own refuge through guided meditations, though many of them seem to take a white sandy beach as their starting point. I\u2019d like to put in a request for more sofa-based meditations, preferably in front of a roaring fire with a box of chocolates. (And I predict that such carbon-emitting fantasies will become more prevalent in the future.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mrs Overall\/BBC<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Given my dislike of confrontation, I\u2019m firmly on the side of project positivity. But I can\u2019t help thinking that in its current form it\u2019s all a bit, well, un-English \u2013 a bit American, in fact, all pom-pom waving cheerleaders with gleaming white teeth with little spangles coming off them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to make it more relatable? Well, you\u2019ll have heard of Kleinian analysis, Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of needs etc. I think it\u2019s time we had our own school of thought to promote positivity: I give you the Mrs Overall school of positive psychology. Just don your flowered pinnies, fold your arms over your chest, and repeat after me \u2018Mustn\u2019t grumble\u2019!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you’re three, tantrums are your job…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,67,55,307],"tags":[80,505,504],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9358,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9352\/revisions\/9358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}