Stop Trying to Fix Yourself: How the Self-Improvement Industry Fails Neurodivergent People

Content Warning: This post contains some profanity and a single mention of decreased life expectancies and increased suicide rates

Welcome back, my friends. Today we're talking about the ways the self-improvement industry fails neurodivergent people — and why we have to stop trying to fix ourselves in order to actually improve our lives.

Whether or not you think of yourself as someone who's all-in on self-improvement, almost all of us are influenced by the industry because its reach is so wide. Self-improvement is big business. It generates billions of dollars each year, and that figure is growing.

Self-improvement has its roots in the origins of essentially all modern religions, ancient philosophy, eastern medicine, and early psychology. It expanded through writings and lectures and some programs and treatments a person could pay to participate in or receive. School, from preschool through graduate level education, and including skilled trade trainings, are considered by some to be self-improvement programs. And even when education is seen as a separate industry, essentially all education programs are designed with self-improvement or personal development components. Meditation practices, spiritual movements, retreats, mutual aid and support groups, motivational speaker events, personal training, athletic club memberships, diet and exercise programs, life coaching, and even psychotherapy are, in essence, all self-improvement programs.

Up until 20 years ago, most of what are commonly considered self-improvement programs were accessed in person in your own community, and through books. Summaries and opinions were also found in magazines — usually targeting specific audiences in men's and women's lifestyle magazines — and covered in radio and television programming, especially with the popularization of daytime talk shows.

And then along came the internet! All of those other things are still available in one form or another but, where self-improvement programs were once the offerings of established businesses, organizations, or publications, we now have access to self-improvement offerings that look just as good, are promoted with the same level of customer endorsement, but could be something someone with no qualifications thought up, mocked up, and started selling with no vetting at all — and that might not have ever helped anyone at all. And on top of that, self-improvement philosophies, advice, strategies, tips, and hacks are accessible, and often free for the taking, on every social media and podcast platform and through apps, blogs, forums, and email blasts.

The rapid advances in technology mean people have access to far wider variety of self-improvement approaches, often without having to consider cost. Plus many people who have truly valuable ideas to share — but may never have landed a book deal, secured startup capital, or landed a job in the established business or agency — are able to reach and help more people and generate revenue doing it.

Self-improvement programs have always come with the risk that they wouldn't "work," but now the legitimacy of a self-improvement program or product is harder — or impossible — to verify until you've invested money, time, and energy into it. Essentially anyone can offer a proven system that has not actually been proven and may be a scam, or just a sucky program, which we find out after we buy it and try it.

Even if the financial investment is smaller, the risk is greater, and it can have the greatest impact on people who are really struggling and desperate for solutions to their problems. And whether it's a program backed by mountains of real evidence and real testimonials, or something we're giving a go after a friend told us all about how great it's been for them, there's an even bigger issue with virtually all self-improvement options for neurodivergent people: Most of what works for the masses just doesn't work for us.

To be fair, I'm not suggesting the creators and providers of self-improvement programs should be required to accommodate every neurotype; I'm not even suggesting that they should try to offer variations of their approaches. The problem is that they probably couldn't, because mainstream knowledge about neurodivergence is still not current, accurate, or complete, which means that self-improvement programs are created on the assumption that everyone is equally capable of benefiting from them, at least for the most part. Even people with good intentions, who go out of their way to be inclusive, tend to think their self-improvement strategies and philosophies can help the majority of people, and they count us in that group — and so do we!

Again, most people don't have current, accurate, or even close to complete knowledge of neurodivergence and "most people" includes everyone — from the scammers to the geniuses who create life-changing self-improvement programs, to the neurotypical and neurodivergent people who come across a self-improvement program — maybe even something "designed for neurodivergent brains" — and think, "Finally, the solution I've been looking for! This is going to change everything!" But, it almost definitely is not, even if it's a generally great program.

Just by virtue of the collective understanding of neurodivergence, and perceptions of perfection and success in the U.S. and similar cultures, pretty much every self-improvement program won't apply to us without modification, will require us to lean even further into being some false version of ourselves we think everyone wants us to be, or will actually harm us.

This is a completely unrelated example and it's extreme, but think of what I'm describing as being like the first wave of airbags that were available in standard passenger cars. I mean, airbags are truly incredible, life-saving technology, and if you could have a car with airbags when they were first rolling out, of course you would. They made cars safer than they'd ever been, so you'd absolutely seat your child where an airbag would protect them — and you'd probably feel great about it, proud even, that you were among the first to provide that level of safety to your most precious cargo.

Except that early airbags deployed in a way that seriously injured and even killed children, even infants in top-of-the-line car seats who were faced away from the airbags. In fact, early airbags were not safe for adults under a certain height either, and even modern airbags can seriously injure people under 5'4", which is about 5 percent of American men, and half of all American women.

I am 5'2", and I know that statistic, but whenever I get into my car, any thought I have about airbags is that I'm grateful for the added safety — just like my automatic thought about all of the self-improvement books, programs, apps, memberships, and systems on which I've spent way more money than I'd care to admit, was that they were awesome. I felt great about having them, proud even, that I was able to buy the book or join the program and that I was still trying to improve myself, to make myself into what I'm supposed to be, because there's no way I already am what I'm supposed to be, right? Are you?

With the exception of scams and ridiculously unfounded practices, most self-improvement programs and products are beneficial overall. The world is probably a better place because they're available to people who need them. But in the realm of self-improvement, neurodivergent people are the kids who got hurt by airbags before that industry realized the design needed to be modified so the benefits outweighed the risks for as many people as possible.

That's because essentially all self-improvement programs and systems are built on the foundation that there's an ideal way to be that is the same for everyone, and that everyone has the same capacity to reach that ideal the same way. That means that, overall, self-improvement programs don't work for us, don't work the same way for us, or only work when we can hide and ignore who we actually are, and how our brains and bodies work, so that we appear more like everyone else who's striving for that ideal.

The irony is that it's harder for us to achieve and maintain that kind of transformation, but we are more primed to think we can and should pursue it. That's because, for many of us, the chase for an improved version of ourselves started in childhood — long before we realized the difference between that kind of instruction and what we were taught in school or the lessons about manners and morality most of us got from our parents.

For many of us, when being ourselves meant we didn't do what was expected of us how and when it was expected of us, we lost access to activities we really enjoyed, or we were punished, rejected, isolated, criticized, and blamed. How many of us had to follow some system of tracking or compliance — like a chore chart or a homework schedule — when a neurotypical sibling did not? Of course, the framing was that the sibling didn't need the system — and you wouldn't either, if you would just do what you're supposed to do.

Most of our parents were doing the best they could, and that was based on the limited mainstream knowledge of neurodivergence — which means many of our parents had no idea we were neurodivergent, so they were just holding us to standards they were told and believed applied to us. If they did know our brains work differently, they were probably following a professional's advice when they made playing sports contingent on getting good grades, refused to acknowledge what we were saying unless we looked them in the eye or stopped moving, or bribed us for going a certain amount of time without stuttering or having a tick.

Certainly it was at the direction of professionals that some of us were placed in fully contained special education programs, speech therapy, social skills training, or formal treatment programs that required us to stop doing things the way we naturally did and start doing what people wanted us to do, like ABA therapy. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to make an argument that there should be no treatment programs or parenting practices that use consequences and rewards. I'm not saying that every program intervention or other attempt to help is actually harmful. That's not fair to say, or accurate. But the more we learn about neurodivergence and the impact of early experiences of neurodivergent people, we know that systems with the primary goal of making people do the same things the same ways in the same timeframe, or else get the people who don't away from the people who do, are harmful in the long run.

That problem is both systemic and programmatic because our society still operates that way for the most part, and because programs and proponents of practices are very slow to acknowledge the long-term impact, especially the ones that produce the intended results at the time. To use ABA as an example, some ABA programs have invested substantial resources into modifying their interventions to focus on helping people change in ways they want to change, while respecting what change looks like for them. But many others have not, because ABA usually does reduce quote-unquote unwanted behaviors in autistic children, and that's what parents sign up for, no matter what autistic adult survivors of ABA are shouting from the rooftops.

Whether formal or informal, the sanctions neurodivergent people experience — early and often — in response to our natural ways of being prime us to become adults who don't just want to improve ourselves. We believe we NEED to improve ourselves, and the distinction really matters when it comes to self-improvement products and programs.

Think of it like this: A person who wants to improve themself and comes across a self-improvement product is like a 5'7" adult driving a car with airbags. Maybe they invested a bit more for the car with that safety feature, which is probably worth it just for the peace of mind it gives. That's all that's lost if the airbag never deploys, and if it does, it could save the person's life. Just like a self-improvement program could cost some money or time, but the person gets a moral boost just from having access to it. That investment is all they're out if they never use it, but if they do, it might dramatically improve their life.

In contrast, people who believe they NEED to improve themselves are like a 4'11" person driving a car with airbags. They invest in a car with safety features that we all just automatically understand as being good to have, which is how their brains perceive self-improvement products. They feel good about having modern, safe vehicles, — and about the subscription they just committed to for the self-improvement program, for example. If they never use the program, and if the airbag never deploys, the investment is all they've lost — at least on the surface, and I'll say more about that later. But if the airbag deploys, it could injure the person — a little or a lot — and even kill them.

If a person who believes they NEED to improve themselves puts full effort into a self-improvement program and it does not improve them, the consequences are not as obvious as being fatally injured by an airbag, but we know neurodivergent people are psychologically injured. — a little or a lot — by those experiences. And newer research is showing that people with ADHD or autism, let alone both, have shorter life expectancies overall, and are more likely to consider, attempt, and commit suicide.

That is a complicated and nuanced topic that needs to be its own episode, and I'm not suggesting that the self-improvement industry needs to accept responsibility for those outcomes. But the combination of believing there's something wrong with you you have to fix, and having multiple repeated attempts to fix yourself fail, hurts people a hell of a lot, and it's very common for neurodivergent adults' lives to feel perpetually stuck at the intersection of that exact combination.

Most of us don't wake up every day thinking we're happy and healthy, and have a really good handle on things, and since we're so far ahead of the curve, we may as well spend some of our free time making ourselves even better. Even those of us who are temperamentally optimistic and have achieved success are pretty exhausted and feel overwhelmed by the nagging sense that we are constantly falling further and further behind all the ways we're supposed to be better.

So when a self-improvement product comes along with its promises — "This will make you into your best self! And it will be fun!" — it usually doesn't feel like an exciting invitation to do something you can do if you want to. Instead, it often feels like something that caught up with you, again, to remind you of what you should already have done and better do now — like, "Here's another chance to finally fix what's wrong with you. Are you gonna blow this one, too?"

The feeling and belief that we HAVE to improve makes it almost impossible to resist the promise of self-improvement, and high-end advertising is no longer required for something to be marketed in a way that makes results seem all but guaranteed. There can be a feeling of relief, even a surge of hope, when we come across something new that might be what we've needed all along, so we buy the books, we register for the programs, we download the apps, we buy the memberships, we get yet another planner, and we put our faith in them, our hope that we'll do what we have to do to make them work, and our fear that we won't. Maybe we let ourselves think — just a little bit, or maybe a lot — about what life is going to be like, maybe really soon, when we're living it as our finally-improved selves.

But for most of us, it doesn't go as planned pretty much right from the start. We tell ourselves it's the learning curve and we just need to get used to it. We remind ourselves it takes 30 days to create a habit, and we keep going. We go to bed before we're tired, and get up as soon as the alarm goes off, even though we're exhausted. We go out of our way to be more social, but also make sure we stop ourselves from asking too many questions during meetings. When the time block we set for a task ends, we close the document, even though we're finally making real progress on it. Those ways of going against ourselves are the successes of the program, so we keep track of them with pride. Over time, the successes come harder, not easier, and less often, not more, leaving us feeling dumbfounded, heartbroken, guilty and ashamed.

Others of us make an art of improving ourselves, achieving the promised results of one program or product in record time before moving on to the next win, causing everyone around us to see us as having it together, having it all, perfect. We memorize the scripts, perfect the routines, and check all the boxes. We get the grades, collect the awards, earn the degrees, climb the ladders, and carefully cultivate the right relationships. We become experts at living by someone else's playbook, never easing up, because we never get to the point when who we're trying to become is who we are.

The premise of self-improvement is that people can enhance and expand the characteristics that make them who they are. In other words, people improve themselves, but still are themselves. Neurodivergent people who appear to succeed in improving themselves often report that what they've actually succeeded in doing is living as some alternate version of themselves that is terrified of the real them that lurks in the shadows, ready to take over again and ruin it all. Does that resonate with you?

If you weren't already, take a moment to think about the ways you've tried to improve yourself. Maybe it was a diet, nutrition, or weight loss program, a new routine for exercising, meditating, journaling, reading, or even spending more time with people you love. Maybe it was a strategy for managing your time better, being more productive, getting organized, or completing a daunting task.

Now think about one of those in which you found some success. When you imagine yourself at that point of having improved yourself — even if you hadn't reached your ultimate goal, but you'd made enough progress to notice — did you feel more like yourself? More connected to yourself? Or can you almost see yourself at that milestone and off to the side is the real you? The one who eats junk, is back at your heaviest weight, hasn't exercised, meditated, journaled, or read so much as a page in months? Can't remember the last time you really connected with your child, partner, or friend? Manages time like you're chasing water down a hill? Isn't productive or organized, and is back at square one on that daunting task?

Our minds like to put things in neat little categories, so if the false, fantasy version of you is the hero, the main character, the person we and everyone else is rooting for, then your real self, who you truly are, the person who was once just an innocent kid with dreams and goals as big as anyone else's, that's the monster, the villain, the one you and everyone else wants to see defeated, slayed, annihilated. Let me say that again: In your mind, without you giving it any conscious thought, the enemy, the thing you have to defeat in order to be victorious, is yourself. How the fuck is that supposed to work?

The truth is, it can't. Self-improvement that is, at its core, a war against yourself, does far more to diminish you than improve you. If victory requires you to stuff who you really are and what you really want and care about way, way down, then even when you're winning by external metrics, internally you are losing, because every day you spend trying to perfect a mask is another day you spend further away from yourself and the life that would make you truly, passionately, jumping up in the air, HELL-YES happy.

And here's the cruelest part: The more successful you are at keeping your true self shoved onto the ground in the corner of your mind, the harder it is to help them up, because it doesn't feel like trading a system that doesn't work for a life that does. It feels like giving up all the things we decided a very long time ago were more important than being true to ourselves: The approval and acceptance, even if it was built on false pretenses, the familiarity and predictability, the acknowledgement, recognition and inclusion that comes with being seen by others as checking all the boxes.

Choosing to be who you are feels like waving a white flag when you're winning the war. But you know the victory is false when you feel hollow, like you are putting on a show, or you know that the success you're achieving is costing you authentic connection and happiness, or that there's no way you'll be able to keep it up forever. If you know what I mean, if you've been there, or you're there now, believe me when I say you are not supposed to win that war — because you're not supposed to fight that war.

You are not the enemy. Your brain, your energy, your way of seeing and moving through the world — none of that was a problem that needed solving. The problems were and are the systems, institutions, and people that refused to make room for you as you are. The problem is a culture that defines success so narrowly that anyone outside the mold is tricked into believing their only option is to keep throwing themselves into the mold again and again in hopes they'll eventually become that one right shape. But to hell with that!

We've been throwing ourselves back into that mold over and over again, somehow thinking the results will be different than all the times before. That mold is the worst. It hurts. It's expensive. It's wasted our time. And it's never worked. So we're done with it. We're moving on. Real self-improvement doesn't come from conquering yourself. It comes from accepting yourself, connecting with yourself, figuring out what you want to do, who you want to be around, what matters to you — and pursuing that, which it turns out is far easier than chasing what you think other people think you're supposed to want to do, who you're supposed to wanna be around, and what's supposed to matter to you.

Here's something to think about: What if the only reason you've been focused on self-improvement all this time is because that false version of you can never really be improved because it's not even real? What if you help the real you up, get to know the real you, let the real you be the only you you are, and you discover that you don't feel that crushing pressure to improve yourself anymore at all?

Everyone can enrich and expand their understanding, experiences, relationships, and even performance, but you can't improve yourself if you can't be yourself. Instead of self-improvement, what most neurodivergent people need is to learn to trust themselves and believe that their real selves have always been worthy — no matter what anyone said or how the world made them feel.

You don't have to improve yourself — and you never did. You don't have to win a war that was never winnable — and never necessary. You don't have to fight that war — or yourself — because the parts of you that you thought you had to get rid of aren't the obstacles to your best life; they're the keys to it. They're the map to that ease, happiness, and fulfillment you never found through self-improvement.

But how do you follow that map? If mainstream self-improvement is a setup that harms us way more than it helps, how do we make our lives better when we know there's room for some kind of improvement? It is really hard to pivot from our relentless attempts to fix ourselves without feeling like we're giving up, resigning ourselves to less than we're capable of and want, but it's the exact opposite of that. Each of us is most capable when we're true to ourselves, and how else could we know what we really want anyway? So we're going to throw out all our notions and goals about improving ourselves and focus on improving our lives.

The shift from self-improvement to life-improvement changes everything for neurodivergent people. It lets us acknowledge our needs without being ashamed of or hiding them. We can stop seeing our needs as flaws and start seeing them as neutral facts that don't mean anything about our worth, aren't up for debate, and don't need to be changed before we can have full, happy lives. Just like someone with a peanut allergy doesn't see their need to avoid peanuts as a moral failing, your need for flexible deadlines, visual schedules, a permanent pass on company parties or large family events, flexibility around routines, heads up about changes — whatever your needs are, they're not failures. They're just facts about what it means to be you.

That acknowledgement is what's always been missing from self-improvement for us. It gives us distance from that undercurrent of belief that we are obligated to become more and better than we are. It gives us freedom we can't possibly know when we're fighting a war to the death against our own selves. It lets us respect ourselves, appreciate ourselves, and listen to ourselves, so the choices we make and actions we take can be rooted in our own values and interests instead of in our best guesses about what we think we're supposed to do and be and want for ourselves.

But it's important to understand that choosing life-improvement over self-improvement doesn't mean everything gets easy overnight. It doesn't mean the systems — or the people — around you will magically adjust. It doesn't mean you'll never have to navigate friction, misunderstanding, or injustice again. Mainstream knowledge about neurodivergence is not current, accurate, or complete — yet. We still live in a society that promotes compliance and conformity, while differences and disobedience are controlled or punished.

But that's changing — agonizingly slowly in some ways, and sometimes steps forward or followed by steps backward, which we've definitely seen recently — but overall, it's still changing, and our actions can contribute to that change when we make the conscious choice to stop fighting ourselves and start fighting for ourselves. That doesn't mean you have to take to the streets or proclaim your neurodivergence to everyone you meet, though I encourage you to do both if you're so inclined.

Making your life better starts with giving yourself permission to be who you already are, and after many years of shoving that person down, it could be a bit of a fight, and it will definitely take effort. Permission is active, not passive. It's dynamic, not stagnant. It's expansive, not restrictive. But when you give yourself permission to be who you already are, you get to reclaim all the energy you've been wasting trying not to be who you are, and you can use all that bonus energy however you want, because the goal is to improve your life as yourself for yourself.

You can use that energy to determine how you authentically fit in the relationships, roles, and circumstances of your current life. The fit may be fine for some or all of them. I know that's counterintuitive, but neurodivergent adults often gravitate toward people, jobs, even cities they live in, that are more accepting of uniqueness, and when they start moving toward living authentically, they realize no one in their lives needed them to be that fantasy version of themselves except themselves. Still there can be a period of adjustment, especially if the people in your life are unfamiliar with neurodivergence and struggle to make sense of how you could have been "fake" all this time. You may struggle to make sense of that, too, and it can be a great experience to let people who care about you in on the process of exploring how that inauthentic version came to be in the forefront of your life and interactions.

On the furthest end of this spectrum are relationships, roles, and circumstances that you don't fit in as your authentic self at all, which is not to say that everyone faces that realization, but it's really tough on those who do, because it amounts to the same messaging we got early in our lives — the stuff that made us think we needed to be an entirely different, improved version of ourselves in the first place. And it can sound even more like it's coming through a bullhorn for adults, because people expect adults to stay exactly the way they are — even though no one actually does.

That can mean partners, friends, or family members who patently reject the "new" you — which is actually the old, real you — but maybe not the you they want. It can mean coming to the conclusion that it's best for you to find a different job, change your career or educational path, stop or start participating in certain activities, change your living situation, or move to another city.

It can also mean more simple things like realizing you never slept well because of the mood light you've had in your bedroom for years, or that eating the same thing for breakfast every single day just works better for you. But often you'll be pulled in the direction of some bigger and potentially harder changes, which you may see are necessary before you can actually make them happen.

If determining how you authentically fit in the relationships, roles, and circumstances of your current life means facing intense opposition or taking on significant life changes, it's definitely important to connect with a support system of some kind — whether it's people who are already in your life, new connections you're making as part of the journey, a coach, a therapist, or a combination of all of them.

Whether improving your life turns out to be a painless process or means upending the whole damn thing, the goal is for your day-to-day experiences to fit you authentically. If anyone tells you something like, "No one's life can be exactly the way they want," or, "Nobody gets to be happy all the time," ignore them, because they clearly have no idea what you're doing. Of course some things will be outside of that wonderful window of "exactly the way you want it," and odds are, you will have moods and experiences beyond happy sometimes, but there's no valor in resigning yourself to arbitrary standards.

The only difference between people who build lives that work well for them and people who accept lives that don't is exactly that: the choice between accepting and building. We accepted lives that didn't work well for us as children because we had no idea what was going on, and frankly, neither did anyone around us. But now we do. So now we can.

We can build routines around our energy levels and natural rhythms. We can build relationships with people who know, understand, and celebrate our true selves. We can build experiences that align with our sensory needs, social preferences, and genuine interests — even if no one, including ourselves, had any idea what those were before now. We can build careers that offer the right levels of structure, support, predictability, flexibility, creativity, and productivity for us — specifically and individually. We can build lives that are joyful, fulfilling, restorative, and safe without feeling that we have to apologize for or change who we are to deserve any of it — which is what most people have been doing all along!

That's why self-improvement programs and products work pretty well for them — like an airbag almost always protects people whose stature matches their design — and if something doesn't live up to the self-improvement hype, they tend to think of the book or app or program or membership as having failed them, not as themselves as being too flawed to benefit from it, because their lives are built on foundations of knowing, respecting and protecting who they are. You deserve nothing less than that, so get to it.

And until next time, remember, you don't have to change yourself to deserve happiness or success. Being who you are isn't the problem; it's the solution. I'm rooting for you — exactly as you are.