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Guardian

Guardian

Health

Health

After becoming obsessed with self-help, I had to heal from ‘healing’

Guardian
Summary
Nutrition label

62% Informative

Last year I read twice the amount of self-help books than I logged on Goodreads .

I wanted to stop being someone with fairly unhealthy relationships and a discreet but unshakeable suspicion that I’m inherently unlovable, which is probably most people’s issue.

The lack of a shared cultural definition of “healing” doesn’t help.

The Global Wellness Institute projects that the wellness economy will grow to $ 8.5tn by 2027 .

To heal is invisible, unquantifiable stuff. That’s not a marketable dream, though. There are enormous amounts of money to be made from the vulnerable seeker (which, given the right circumstances, could be any of us).

This is as much intimacy as I can bear with people. This is how I communicate when unpredictably activated by childhood hurts appearing in the present. These are the places in my mind to which I occasionally retreat. I could be better but I’ve been much worse. Hannah Ewens writes a spirituality newsletter called Heaven Sent and is author of Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture .

VR Score

47

Informative language

35

Neutral language

35

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

41

Offensive language

not offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

not detected

Time-value

long-living

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