And coaches, and experts, and self-certified counselors—

Self-certification, a term I only recently stumbled upon, is, from what I’ve deduced, a conclusion by an individual that their experiences and opinions are deserving of accreditation and monetization. There are certainly professions in which personal experience is an invaluable and essential source of knowledge and scholarly training, certification, or guarantees are not required. None of which include the spaces where many of these self-proclaimed experts have parked themselves. Namely, the fields of health, mental health, spirituality, and self-improvement, all of which intersect primarily with people who are at their most vulnerable and therefore unusually susceptible to manipulation, insincerity, and questionable motives. It’s not just the influencers, or Insta wellness gurus, or that online psychic who’s so damn accurate; it’s far more nuanced, prevalent, and persistent than that. It is the sale of spirituality. The promise of access. The promise of change. The lure dangled in front of pain, grief, loneliness, and struggle. I can make you better; I can give you access to the part of you that you think you cannot reach; I can transform you, sustain you, and guide you—for a fee, of course, and ideally, a subscription to my well of wisdom.

No matter how we navigate our lives or whether or not we believe it is true, we are all compelled by a universal yearning to connect and to be seen. Those are our most basic spiritual wells that ache to be filled. We will go to unfathomable lengths to fill them, often without even considering the implications. Thirst is thirst and it must be quenched. And when someone gives us a drop or two of something that tastes like water, often we will do almost anything to park our mouths beneath that spout. It isn’t a flaw or weakness; it is survival. It’s unusual, mostly, to stop, take a step back and first examine the spout, and the pipe it’s connected to, trace the pipe back to its source, and get the water tested. That’s an excruciating prospect when we live in a time and a social environment that has left us all so parched that most of us would rather drink now and ask questions later.

One of the most crucial of those questions is regarding the motivation of the person who is offering us a drink. What kind of person would certify themselves as qualified to guide (and treat!) the most vulnerable among us? We may pay to be quenched, to be seen and validated, but do we stop to wonder what sort of hunger we satiate in return?

I posit that for many of the people who deposit themselves into the spaces of guru, guide, healer, coach, psychic—it is the desperation of their followers and fans that feeds them. And the feeling of being anointed, chosen, essential, and wise. It is no different than any other addiction—in this case, the followers, whether online or in person, are the addiction. The constant stream of awe and approval is the fuel in their engines. And the cash, of course.

The pastor of my childhood church had battled and succumbed to all sorts of addictions. His testimony was that he had overcome them, conquered them, risen above them after the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This, his own experience and journey, was what qualified him to preach, guide, and command his flock (possessive intended). But as I grew and the scales slowly fell from my eyes, perhaps the newness of my sight was what made it easy to note that he hadn’t really beaten addiction, he’d just traded the old ones for new ones—addiction to the doctrine he’d constructed, addiction to the power of managing his flock, and addiction to the constant stream of supplication and admiration, the desperate need among his followers for his counsel and guidance—those affirmations made him insatiable, an insatiability that inevitably destroyed his church and him. He believed in his divine anointing and the wisdom, righteousness, and power it bestowed on him with every cell of his being. As I and my fellow young people grew into ourselves, the emperor had no clothes was an understatement; the emperor was a shriveled and desperate old man and had nothing in his cup but the validation loop of the world he had created, certainly nothing to offer us. He could only be full if we continued to be empty. And when that world cracked, exploded, and turned to dust, the faucet ran dry and the thirsty souls scattered, many, sadly, in search of another just like him.

And this was before Instagram, TikTok, hours-long podcasts by people in love with the sound of their own voice, and You Tube how-to’s that are all somehow way longer than they need to be because the public service element—this is how you do this simple thing—isn’t the point. Instead, it’s, this is me, this is my face and my name—memorize it. I know how to do that thing that you don’t. I know lots of things you don’t. You don’t know it yet, but you are inadequate, you need me—don’t forget to like and follow!

My pastor had none of those tools which these days make the coach, guru, self-certified expert, and cult-leader roles so much simpler to execute. He had to work hard, keep a tight leash on it all and demand allegiance. He used to insist that when I had a crisis or heartache, I shouldn’t talk to anyone but him. At first, I thought it was because of his anointing, his inherent wisdom and holiness. I soon understood that it was his only way of ensuring control. He needed me to need him, and he needed to know that he could quash any blossoming sense of purpose and self. Every time I was small, he grew. Every time I was depleted, he was fed. Imagine activating those same reward systems instantly with numbers—of likes, of followers, of comments—and then when you’ve accumulated enough, the world treats you like you suddenly matter more, as if you possess some special something that exalts you when the truth is, not so long ago, you would have remained a trivial, desperate addict in the middle of nowhere Colorado who most people would have never heard of. Chasing gratification and validation obscures the root of the addiction instead of unearthing it and it continues to reemerge, simply changing form if it must.

Recently, I got curious about numerology, because, why not? It’s ancient, it’s commonly utilized along with other life-prediction tools in flourishing societies, and I’m ravenous when it comes to unlocking the rooms of myself I’ve yet to explore and assembling the puzzle of human existence in general—our motivations, our instincts, and our deepest hunger. The more I understand myself and the people around me, the more compassionate and empathetic I can be, as a person, friend, sister, mother, and partner, which is my most profound desire. I didn’t search for a numerologist to consult; I puttered along at my own pace with my atrocious math skills requiring frequent resets until I got the hang of it. Because I wanted to investigate, contemplate, and discover without anyone’s notions of me clouding my experience. What I found was intriguing, validating, and unnervingly accurate and I was so grateful I was exploring it now, during a time of confidence, maturity, self-awareness, and self-acceptance and from a place of curiosity rather than urgency. I’d already learned so much, evolved, stretched, and reconstituted again, and again, my wisdom and clarity defining themselves over time. What I was curious about was, what have I missed? What resonates? What did I fail to understand entirely but makes a lot of sense when it’s plopped in front of me?

I laughed out loud, there were some tears, and some things that made zero sense, which didn’t rattle me because I wasn’t there out of desperation or need for definitives. But more than anything else, I appreciated the fact that what I discovered was affirmative rather than predictive and that I hadn’t consulted an “expert” because it was an exercise of reaffirming my autonomy, persistence of self, and the intuition I had tapped into subconsciously for most of my life, rather than an exercise of handing my power over to someone else and trusting that they knew me better than I knew myself. Which, of course got me to thinking about scams, half-truths, and cults of personality, but more so, cults of desperation.

When we reach for such tools when desperate—any kind of tool—it’s so much easier to transform what we discover into doctrine, which is rigid, unmoving, absolute, and definitive, rather than contemplation, which is soft, malleable, fertile, and ripe for growth. For me, the information contained in such tools is not absolute—it’s just information—and I decide whether it resonates. And exploring the charts of the people closest to me who I care for most deeply, isn’t about knowing something about them that they don’t. Quite the opposite. It is the commitment to understanding the possible challenges, strengths, and depths of my nearest and dearest that is the thing that opens my heart to greater compassion, patience, and true care rather than performative care.

The trouble with using numerology, astrology, tarot, divination, and—fill in the blank—as predictive or definitive (and by extension, the people who convince us that they are the conduit) is that they become a cage instead of a tool, restrictive rather than liberating. The use of a tool is a choice—we decide the duration and degree of usefulness. Free choice isn’t just part of the puzzle—it is the whole thing—we choose, moment to moment, day to day, no matter what is written in the numbers, the stars, or the cards. If someone shows us the tools but keeps the toolbox requiring a constant connection with them when the need arises for said tools—they are not serving us or our growth—they are ensuring our dependency in order to satiate their own hunger or prophetic delusions, maybe without even knowing it, but lack of awareness doesn’t excuse the behavior. If we feel compelled to return to that person every time we are uncertain or unfulfilled, they have not gifted us the confidence of self-worth and self-reliant discovery—they have gifted habituation and self-doubt. They are not committed to our connection to ourselves, they are desperate for our connection to them as a teacher, a guide, a conduit to spirituality. This is ego and it has little to do with wanting to help others and everything to do with wanting to cement one’s own relevance. The most effective psychologist is the one who is eventually no longer needed. * This is true of anyone who chooses to step into a role of helping, supporting, or guiding. When I was an advocate, I used to say that the best possible world would be one in which I no longer had a job—and I meant it.

The person who defines themselves by being the one above, the one who knows, the enlightened one, is missing the point entirely. How often we fall into the lament—if only I knew then what I know now. I have lived there, I have festered there, and I have lost track of myself entirely there, consumed with judging my past on what it should have been if only I knew then what I know now, if only I’d had a guide. But that’s not the way knowing works. It can only grow and evolve with experience and time. And, from my perspective, there is a difference between knowledge and knowing. Knowledge=school, something imparted. Knowing=something that is infinite and infinitely a part of all things. It always is, what evolves is our access to it. And access isn’t limited to the “enlightened” or the “worthy,” it is available to all of us.

The thing I’ve appreciated most along the way is the opportunity of a fresh perspective, the invitation to reframe the challenges I always characterized as faults or failures, instead, as mechanisms of coping and thriving that were built into my person, had served their purpose flawlessly and granted me the courage and space to evolve. I’d spent so much energy trying to measure up, trying to change the bits of me that didn’t fit the vision and expectations of everyone outside of me. It was grueling, draining, and at times, debilitating. The more time I spent in that vortex, the further I was from me. And that is an untenable, unsustainable place to be. And each time I reached for a hand to guide me, I found myself once again contorting to measure up to some new expectation that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with whoever I had tethered myself to.

The sword of influence is one to wield with the utmost consideration and care. In this age of influencers—I wonder how many of them feel the weight, the responsibility, or the humility of their position. Not performative humility but actual humility. It’s not enlightenment if it’s tethered to superiority. The idea that only some people have the capacity to connect to a greater understanding and purpose is an absolute fraud. It is natural and healthy to ask for help, support, and guidance from time to time. The trick is knowing where to look and how to recognize when the person we’ve turned to ends up needing our need more than we need them. Personal growth is empowering. If we are incomplete or struggle to make decisions, or require affirmation of our choices from our guru, pastor, healer, coach, or psychic—they have failed us in lieu of sustaining themselves.

* Speaking purely from my own experience with therapy as a source for perspective, tools, and a space to probe questions and answers with a sounding board. I am not referencing cases of persistent mental health challenges which I am by no means qualified to speak to.