from self-help to group care
self-help is a lonely road
i find that self-help & self-discovery are very fragmented pursuits.
the winding path to 'know thyself', and deal with our problems, can feel like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from completely different sets, all on our own. we meditate with an app that promises inner calm. we have a transcendent moment listening to music at a concert, or ruminate during a quiet walk along the river. we take an online course. sign up for a three-month program. read a self-help book (or five, guilty). perhaps have one of those perspective-altering talks with an old friend.
our sense of meaning becomes a kind of patchwork quilt stitched from these random things we do (with varying degrees of intentionality), and from the places we absorb information from – whether tiktok philosophers or the ideological groups we inhabit.
these are all valid routes to self-knowing – i’m not discounting them as valuable ways of understanding ourselves and the world. each can be a meaningful chapter in our self-discovery story.
but the question that comes up for me: what holds all of these pieces together? fragmented self-help lacks a sense of integrality. we’re often left feeling alone, trying to make this puzzle of diverse perspectives make sense. our sense of isolation arises from the fact that pure meaning-making is usually done in solitude.
a classic example? taking an online course. it’s easy to feel inspired and motivated while you're enrolled, but integrating it into daily life is a whole other matter. i’ve experienced this firsthand a few times. back in 2021, i took a semester off university after some covid-burnout and yearning to learn something completely left-field from my studies. i wanted to get better at relationships, at feeling my emotions, and at living more consciously, so i took a course at the hendrick's institute.
in many ways, the content was life changing. yet, while there was a lightly facilitated forum to keep in touch and share progress, grounding the practices i had learned into my life and relationships was hard. i suspect it's because a course, by nature, just isn’t the ideal format for lasting transformation. it has a clear start and end, and once it’s over, the ball is in our court to figure out the next steps. i don't know about you, but i'm never quite sure what to do with the ball!
the 'self' that needs improving aint fit for making the improvements
zooming out some more, the very idea of self-help seems inherently flawed. it assumes we’re neatly bounded systems – containers of habits, contradictions, behavior patterns etc – that can simply download a new software update. i guess we're still pretty caught up in the story of the 'individual' as a useful unit of analysis, especially in western philosophy, so this makes sense.
but i'd prefer to go with Deleuze's idea that we are 'dividuals' - not unified, singular 'selves', but fluid beings that are endlessly configured and reconfigured by way of our interactions.
in practice, i find this very true. we never really achieve self-help; rather, almost all self transformation—and the integration of that transformation—happens through relationship. why is this? i think there are two big reasons:
- we see ourselves more clearly through others
relationships act as mirrors, reflecting back our inner patterns. they become the stage where we project our hopes, fears, and insecurities. our partners often reflect what we feel is missing in ourselves. it’s one reason they can simultaneously inspire and annoy us unto oblivion. when there’s friction in a friendship or tension in a partnership, it’s often an opportunity to see through our own blindspots: other people can call out our bs in ways that solo journaling never could.
- our relationships shape who we are
changing who and what surrounds us can be one of the fastest shortcuts to spark personal change. you've probably heard that we become the sum of the five people we hang around the most - and this is quite accurate.
stepping away from toxic dynamics can work wonders for your wellbeing. similarly, i doubt you need to instill more compassion from some external source—you likely already contain it, in abundance. what you really need is to be around people who invoke & encourage the compassionate one in you.
in this way, the conditions of possibility for who we can become are always being mediated by who we spend time with.
from self-help to group care 🌱
i notice there’s a growing wave of yearning to engage in this process of 'growing through relationship'.
perhaps you feel it to – a desire to support and be supported by our friends and/or family in deeper & more meaningful ways, rather than try to figure out the mess of our lives in isolation. to create loving containers where we can grow together, challenge each other, and hold each other accountable on our development pathways. to shift from self-help to something more like 'group care'.
i find this shift exciting, particularly because group care is something we can all start practicing, even in small ways.
how can you do group care?
group care starts with something as simple as inviting a few friends to try something new together for mutual growth. read a self-help book as a group. sign up for a course together. share child-rearing practices over tea. commit to a shared habit of regularly sharing your progress and setbacks in your passion projects.
you could experiment with a peer coaching practice, where you take turns deeply listening to each other’s struggles without trying to fix them. you might form a braintrust, or a community of practice to learn something together, or an action circle to support each other in shifting to an ecologically sustainable lifestyle.
perhaps you’re craving something more radical, like creating a mutual aid fund with your group to support each other financially. or to be in solidarity & advocate for an urgent social justice cause (because let's face it – in many cases, if systemic issues causing harm get addressed, we wouldn’t need as much self-help to patch ourselves back together in the first place.)
the best experiments i’ve seen in group care aren’t anything particularly groundbreaking. they’re usually simple practices or formats. what we're looking to do here is to rally those we care about to do those things with slightly more intentionality, and do them together.
be brave and send the invite!
group care can start in your group chat. initiating the conversation with friends, family, or anyone you trust enough to invite into an experiment in group care. it may be scary, especially if your group dynamic has calcified into a familiar pattern where you don’t really show up for each other in that way. heck, it takes real courage to admit to your friends you want to get closer. it’s not something that comes naturally to most of us. but this is the gateway ticket to deeper intimacy.
if that is successful, you can then meet and make a shared commitment to whatever it is you wanna get up to. i’m a big fan of the microsolidarity approach: keeping the group size small, and setting a time-bound commitment—say, six weeks—with a clear end point.
at the end, you can choose to recommit or step away, no hard feelings. this makes it easier for people to leave gracefully if the experience wasn’t quite what they needed, without the awkwardness of feeling like they’re 'quitting'.
and there you go, you've got a social container in which to grow together! set sail!
why do we need group-care?
these small group configurations can be a kind of petri dish for experimenting with different ways of caring for each other and growing together. they create a context where all the self-help practices you used to do alone—reading books, taking courses, introspecting—suddenly make sense to do together. this addresses the fragmentation issue.
what’s more, it can be deeply healing to support others. there’s something powerful about realizing you can uplift someone else. and because no one person has all the answers, the group’s experiences become a wellspring of insights and solutions that you’d likely never reach on your own. you're quite literally harnessing collective intelligence.
group care also shifts the focus from consumption to participation. instead of endlessly reading, scrolling, or planning to improve yourself, you engage directly in the process of showing up, sharing, and co-creating growth with others. in my experience, this is the fastest way to grow and make learning stick.
self-help has its place. there are times when we need to retreat inward, face our own shadows, brave the Dark Night of the Soul, and do the hard work of reflection alone. group care doesn’t aim to supplant self-help—it invites us to take it one step further. it asks us to show up for each other with compassion, even when someone isn’t able to show that compassion to themselves.
i hope to see more such crucibles for connection emerge.
that's it for this week! thanks for reading.
~C
