Wow! What a good group of students! Sky quoted my first paragraph in Chapter 1. Most of you said something along the same lines. The basic idea of self-help, to me, is to intentionally cope with your own problems.

Keep in mind that at that point in the book I wanted to differentiate self-help from psychotherapy and from group therapy...and from taking directions from others, including parents, spouses, children, bosses and other advice-givers. I did not say that getting ideas and help from others is bad. Indeed, I often and strongly recommend getting therapy, going to a group, listening to advice, etc. We need to recognize that help doing self-help comes from many sources--therapists, groups, friends, enemies (who sometimes tell you the truth), and many others, BUT the helpful information from any outside source has to be processed and applied by your own brain. I assume that is intentional. So, to some extent I may want to modify my last sentence in the paragraph Sky quoted. Self-improvement is done by yourself but the ideas you use may come from many others, someone in your family or group, a song, a book, from your own thoughts, and on and on. I hope that makes sense. I don't care much where you get ideas that work for you.

Thanks for sharing your ideas...and listening to mine.

Clay