The Only Way to Save Yourself

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about a song called Coma White by Marilyn Manson. The lyrics depict the bleak inner struggles of a troubled character, who is unwilling to confront her own troubled mind. She distracts herself with drugs, hoping to escape herself. But, of course, she fails, miserably.

As the song plays, “A pill to make you numb. A pill to make you dumb. A pill to make you anybody else. But all the drugs in this world won’t save her from herself.”

My take on the song is that “drugs” doesn’t have to literally mean drugs. It can mean anything that distracts you from having to confront your inner chaos. It can mean your work. It can mean food. It can even mean binging self-help content all day.

Let me especially highlight the last point. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with self-help. Improving ourselves is definitely something all of us should strive for. But all the self-help content in the world isn’t going to save you if you’re merely using it as an excuse to feel like you’ve already solved your problems, without actually having done anything meaningful. It’s not going to help if you’re using it to distract yourself from having to confront your innermost difficult thoughts and emotions, which is where the real work is.

“Self-improvement is masturbation,” as the character Tyler Durden says in Fight Club. 

He also says, “Self-destruction is the answer.” 

What he means is that the only way to truly improve yourself is by facing your inner chaos. You can’t change for the better unless you’re willing to confront your painful weaknesses and insecurities. You can’t grow unless you question your tightly-held beliefs about yourself and the world, as well as open yourself to new ways of seeing and thinking.

Most importantly, this means fully and unconditionally embracing yourself for who you are, for the things that you can’t change about yourself. “Self-love” and “self-acceptance” get thrown around a lot, but I’m using them intentionally here. 

It takes being ruthless, yet also compassionate with yourself, to be the best person that you can be.