>more people are harmed by self help books etc than helped

It is certainly a business but I assume that most of these self-help gurus truly want to help. They are promoting different methods(more or less rational) but the core message is often very similar and amounts to "take action". If all roads lead to Rome you may very well get there.

I think by listening to these books you are in fact priming your brain to find a way to improve your situation.

My personal observation is people are generally soothing their brain into into inactivity rather than priming it for something. There is a reason get rich quick scams are so effective and so much home exercise equipment sits unused, the first step is usually the easiest.

I suspect a self help guru like Tony Robbins would have actually given similar advice to the root commenter - to consider your options and then to get off the couch and do something.

Lumping all self-help resources into not being useful or even harmful doesn't help. There will always be some quacks, but there will always be some people with genuine insights and the ability to help others understand themselves better and move towards their goals.

I've never paid for Tony Robbins material but would say its been helpful.

In the OP's case they could use the material to understand what is behind wanting the change. Understanding their why.

Is it a feeling of significance / love / variety / contribution that they're lacking? How could they go about getting what's missing? What are their options?

These are the types of things that I get from Tony Robbins - almost like a problem solving framework for personal problems.

All that being said, do people use self help as a form of procrastination? Yes I'd say many do. However I believe the people with all the resources that refuse to take action are no worse off than they would have been anyway.

As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

I can’t tell if that was supposed to be a parody or not.

Which is kind of my point. Some material may be better than placebo, but when we are talking about self help as an industry you need to consider the impact of everything from Scientology to actually lethal practices like Breatharianism. The trends within the industry seem to focus on what’s useful as a business rather than what’s helpful to it’s customers. So yes some people are helped, but some people are also financially ruined or even killed.

It’s not that everyone is trying to scam others, just that the same kind of forces that cause clickbait still apply and impact what’s popular.

> just wasting time, money, and mental effort.

I don't believe it takes effort. On the contrary, reading self-help is basically a guilty pleasure. Otherwise it wouldn't sell in such massive quantities.

What else would you call all that chemical energy used up when neurons are firing etc to allow you to read and remember something if not mental effort?

All things we do requires mental effort. Laying in bed and daydreaming also results in neurons firing. So, I think we're just discussing the amount of effort. My point was that self-help is usually written is such a way to make its reading very pleasant and to actually be a dopamine hit - it makes the reader imagine all the potential changes they can implement in their lives, it pumps them up with positive message etc. It feels good to read it. However, in vast majority of cases, people remember and try to apply the advice for a couple weeks at most, and after that life happens, habits take over and they're back to their default.