As you might have noticed, when you go down the spiritual rabbit hole and start seeking out experts in the spiritual field or when you get into therapy and start meeting with therapists, pretty quickly, you will be oriented towards yourself for everything. You will be put on the fast track to a state of hyper independence, hyper responsibility and hyper individualism. But why is it that so many spiritual teachers and therapists take you in this direction?  

When you get into spiritual practice or into therapy, especially if you live in the Western World or Western Influenced World today, you will be surrounded by ideologies like: Everything you need, is within. You create your own reality. You are the only one responsible for your own happiness. No one can make you feel something without your consent. If it drains you, let it go. You don’t owe anyone anything. The outer world is only a reflection of your inner state. Non attachment is the goal. You have to love yourself before someone can love you. You are the only thing you can control. You are your own soulmate. Don’t give your attention to anyone or anything that decreases your personal vibration. Healing is a solo journey. The message is the same: If you are evolved or healthy enough, you won't need anyone. And you won’t be affected by anyone. This ideology is profoundly flawed. But, let’s look at why so many spiritual teachers, so many self-help experts and so many therapists go in this direction. 

1. One of the things that spiritual teachers, self-help experts and therapists are the most dedicated to is: You being in a state of personal empowerment. Seeing as how powerlessness causes so much suffering. Well, if you haven’t noticed, running around trying to control everything and everyone else is not a particularly effective strategy for personal empowerment. Neither is running around trying to appeal to everything and everyone outside of you to do something so that you can feel good or get what you want. On top of this, many teachers and therapists are at a loss regarding what you or they can do to externally change things. For example, they can’t tell you how to get your boyfriend to start acting committed. They can’t tell you how to get your parents to stop scapegoating you. They can’t tell you how to get your friends to be reliable. They can’t tell you how to get inflation to go down, so you can afford your life. The sheer scale of modern systems and global challenges has shifted the locus of control to large, impersonal institutions that individuals have no access to. The vote, which used to be what granted power to the individual, has been shown to be something that can be tampered with and fixed and that may even just be an opiate for the masses. Huge, systemic issues are baked into the infrastructure of our lives, in a way where you cannot participate in society without feeding those issues. We are facing problems that require massive, collective solutions and yet, we live in a day and age where social capital has been systematically destroyed. So, it isn’t a strong resource anymore. Because of all of this, in order to empower you, most teachers and therapists put the focus on: Me, myself and I. What YOU can do to make the relationship better. How YOU bring about the things you are suffering from and what YOU can do to bring about what you want instead. How YOU can change YOUR perspective about what is happening or YOUR reaction to it. What YOU can do to take responsibility for things. How YOU can meet your own needs. And the list goes on. Most spiritual teachers, self-help experts and therapists see this as an orientation that sits you squarely in the seat of personal empowerment. And in many ways, this approach is quite effective, that is until it starts leading to its own issues; like stress and burnout, isolation, denial of relational needs, the perception of perpetual inadequacy, blaming oneself for what was not actually one’s fault or within one’s control, disconnection, the breakdown of community, failure to see the actual problems, including systemic problems, because blame is put on oneself and acts as a smokescreen for everything else. But the bottom line for this point is, focus on self-empowerment, tends to swing you in the direction of self.           
2. So many people find their way to spirituality and/or therapy because of trauma. And so, so much of the trauma that leads people to both fields, is interpersonal trauma. Relational trauma. Some then go on to become teachers or therapists. But this does not mean they have healed from that trauma necessarily. It is very important to know that one of the main stress responses or adaptive coping strategies you will see in people with relational trauma, is hyper independence. They figure out that the way to avoid pain is to become an island unto themselves, to find every way they can to try to not be affected by other people. To use self-reliance as a protective shield. To never depend on anyone. And to reframe all of their relational avoidance “issues” as somehow good, virtuous, awakened and empowered. For example, avoidant attachment becomes “protecting my own energy”. Emotional numbness becomes “I have found inner calm!”. Fear of intimacy becomes “Love your own company!” Fear based isolation response becomes “I have found a higher state of consciousness”. Social troubles are reframed as personal psychological deficits. You really need to accept that many teachers and therapists simply find and teach methods and ideologies that in and of themselves are unhealthy defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms. I’ll give you just one example. Imagine that you were born in India, a culture that is especially prone to enmeshment dynamics between parents and their children. You suffered all your life from those experiences where you were controlled and where your boundaries were never recognized and where your parents acted as if you exist for one reason, to make them happy and meet their needs. What thoughts would end your suffering? The answer is things like: A person must become their own source of safety and happiness. No one belongs to their family; they belong to the universe. Methods of detachment. Absolute freedom in non-attachment. Solitude is an audience with the self. And you would not want anyone to suffer as you have suffered, so what you teach them and the direction you lead them, is in the direction of autonomy, extreme independence, individualism, self-reliance and rebellion against social constraint. The same is true of therapists and their own personal traumas. So much of what so many teachers and therapists teach, is a direct counter reaction to their own trauma. This is a shadow that each and every one of us must remain all too aware of. 
3. You cannot separate the current world from history. You cannot separate individual experts from the cultural attitude of their day. And the reality is, the world today and its teachers are highly influenced by neoliberalism. Let’s go back in time. In the 1970s, many nations faced high inflation, but low economic growth, such as unemployment and a drop in profitability. There was a need for a new economic approach. Neoliberalism was that ready-made solution that had been cooking up nicely since the 1930s. The ideals espoused by neoliberal leaders gained massive traction as the ne solution. In this ideology, collectivism and the government was pointed to as the problem. Individualism and a free market was pointed to as the solution. Collectivism was branded as coercion (forcing you to pay for things you don't use and forcing you to carry other people, lazy people). It was seen as the smothering force that kills the drive to work hard. Individualism was branded as freedom and choice (the right to spend your own money and live your own life and weave your own fate). By cutting the social safety net and lowering taxes, those leading the movement aimed to set the individual free because they believed that self-interest is the most powerful engine for progress. And that by everyone looking out for themselves, the free market would grow wildly, make society wealthier as a whole. This was a massive, collective mentality shift towards individualism. 
   Just like that, societal values began to shift and individuals where now valued, praised and esteemed for hyper independence and hyper individualism. It may interest you to know that psychocentrism was a key element of neoliberalism. Basically, the personalization of societal, systemic issues and the responsibility shifting away from the state over to the individual. For example, suddenly, the problem wasn’t housing inequality, it was your own success mindset failure. And perhaps to your surprise, this all caught on. Why was this shift to psychocentrism so wholeheartedly adopted? Because it offered a sense of personal empowerment and personal agency in a world that felt uncontrollable and full of chaos. It helped people to believe that they were the masters of their own fate. It was painted as virtuous. Unlike systemic change, it offered instant gratification. It rebranded challenges and misfortunes as necessary experiences for growth. And being the new value within society at large, all of the things that are supported by neoliberalism, like independence and individualism are what now got people social acceptance and approval. 
   While self-help, psychology and spirituality all have origins that are older than the neoliberal movement, during this time, there was a drastic shift within them all, a shift towards alignment with neoliberal ideologies. And guess what? The explosion of self-help industry happened in perfect conjunction with the rise of neoliberalism. It became a mirror of this new ideology, essentially built to back it up. Just like neoliberalism espouses hyper independence and individualism, so too does modern spirituality, modern therapy and modern self-help. It makes people really uncomfortable to think that the standard mentality in fields like psychology, self-help or spirituality have been influenced by a political, economic philosophy that arose as a direct reaction to things like fascism, socialism, communism and stagflation. But it is true. 
4. Commercialization of spirituality and psychology. Being an expert in these fields is really difficult because in today’s world, you need to make money to live well. But, if your career and expertise is in one of these fields, you need to sell what you do as a product. And it needs to be marketed. What sells? Self-Centered things. Things that are aligned with individualism and independence and personal empowerment and self-actualization. This makes wellness look like an individual project, when it isn’t. Spirituality and Psychology and Self-Help is now tailored to meet the consumer’s demand. And if you won’t do this, you are sacrificing your own success and limiting your own exposure. And in a world where the cultural ideology is neoliberal, the experts that resonate with people most and are the most commercially successful, are those who align with this ideology. So, naturally and especially in a world controlled by personal algorithms, you will see more of them!  
5. Many people (including teachers) misinterpret high level concepts. And many more love to skew them to support their already hyper independent, hyper individual world view. For example, a teaching like “everything you see outside of yourself is a reflection of what is within.” Can easily be misinterpreted to suggest that true spiritual work only happens within, which is not true in the slightest. Or teachings around non attachment can easily be misinterpreted so as to teach a person detachment, disconnection, indifference, renunciation, lack of affect, having no goals or desires and needing nothing and no one.         

Self-Empowerment and Self Actualization is awesome. You don’t need me to tell you that. The thing is, we are living in a day and age where people are becoming more and more separate from each other. A world where loneliness is an epidemic. You are living in a day and age where independence has become a sickness. If you would like to learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: The Great Independence Sickness. 

It is possible to be profoundly empowered, without swinging the pendulum and slipping into the rigid self-defense mechanism of hyper independence and hyper individualism. Without denying the reality of systemic issues. Without denying that human beings have relational needs and are not islands unto themselves. And most of all, without perpetuating the toxic ideology that if you are evolved or healthy enough, you won't need anyone. And you won’t be affected by anyone.