Self-Help That Actually Helps

And If (P)leather Jackets Were Attachment Styles

It’s a new year, and— despite a firm resolution to have no resolutions—there’ve already been at least three 6:30pms when my husband has found me *on* bed, listlessly crunched against the headboard in a position that says, “I don’t care what happens to my neck!”

There I lay, looking like Jessie Buckley as The Bride of Frankenstein only without the compelling art direction. Feverish from a day of Zooms (still in my pajamas from the waist down because you can pull that off these days) muttering some variant of “things need to change around here!”

“Things” being me. “Around here” being the inside of my head.

Of course, the effect the state of the world has on our collective mental health cannot be over-emphasized. If someone told me that they were currently experiencing 24/7 placid calm, I would open their jacket and check them for a plug and an on button. Even for those of us lucky enough not to fear for our own physical safety or that of our families, it’s impossible to witness all of the interconnected atrocities currently unfolding and not feel deeply, whatever that means for you.

At the same time, one of the wildest aspects of being alive is that even as we process the pain all around us, the uncertainty of the future, we still have to go through life as ourselves, witnessing the daily soap opera that is having a human mind. I’m always amazed, when reading diaristic accounts of some of the most troubled times in history, at how the day to day concerns of being human are not erased by a world in crisis. In some ways, they are only enhanced- something we all feel varying degrees of shame about.

So why has 2026 been shaded with anxiety, aside from the obvious? Unlike in my twenties, it’s really nothing that dramatic. I haven’t had a confusing drug trip, a shocking-to-no one-but-me fall out to an obsessive friendship *or* felt compelled to “finally say something” about a subject that is literally none of my fucking business. A lot of my biggest meltdowns turned out to be the result of exactly what I told my father they *weren’t*: youth and hormones (I know this is like some good old boy standup joke told to cackling men at a casino by my cousin Jeff Dunham, but PSA: it doesn’t matter if it’s true, don’t tell a bitch it’s her hormones. She’ll figure it out eventually. Or she won’t! Until then, find a nice vintage steamer trunk you can hide in.)

Now here I am, on a steady diet of HRT, sobriety and a steadfast commitment to staying in my lane, and the dramatics have cooled. I’ve been sober for almost 8 years. I’ve been married for almost 5. I listen to my self-compassion meditations and pursue my hobbies (watercolor, interior design, raising well-behaved prey animals and stacking and restocking my books.) Most of the time, when someone asks me how I am, the answer is some variant of “pretty good!” (Pretty good is what you say when nothing is abjectly bad, and sometimes when it is since we somehow never grow out of assuming that nobody wants to hear the real answer.)

I don’t mean to imply that quitting pills, shacking up and ripping pages out of World of Interiors is a recipe for inner calm. In Famesick, I talk about all the shit that somehow got even worse before it got better. I was so set on proving that I was more than my lowest points that I created some even lower ones. I can’t pinpoint the moment that things began to trend upwards, only that— after a concerted effort at previously laughable concepts like pacing myself and listening to my intuition— one day I was no longer living in the eye of a storm that only I could see. Chronic illness has been a very good teacher- the fact that my body will always be experiencing some degree of instability meant that if I didn’t locate some inner resources I would not be able to survive it.

I started thinking of my spiritual life as a well-built and sturdy boat— sometimes it is docked, sometimes it comes ashore for repairs and sometimes it encounters unexpected wave patterns and its construction is tested. It’s always kind of thrilling, when those moments come, to see the way the crew works together to navigate out and through. Okay, I’ve reached the end of my boat knowledge!

I do my job. I love my family. I try to be the kind of friend and colleague and neighbor I would want, the kind of citizen I would respect, and to properly live in some balance of productivity, connection, being of service and “the moment” (not sure I fully understand that last one yet.) I don’t always succeed, but I abide by “the 50% rule,” an axiom my mother coined when she noticed my tendency to overperform (socially, professionally) and exhaust myself. She told me that giving 50% was actually exactly enough, and that succeeding at my goals 50% of the time was enough too. The whole “110 percent at everything I do” strategy is not, in fact, a signifier of worth- it’s a mandate under capitalism designed to wring the last drops from us, to bleed us dry and send us into profound burnout. Of course there are things I offer 300% of myself to- the completion of a creative project, supporting a loved one in peril- but if I’m giving more than I’ve got in one place, chances are the rest of my life is getting a solid nothing. And that’s okay. There is always a chance to recalibrate.

I remember the moment I realized that my grandmother was right when she said things always look clearer in the morning, that the sun always rises again and with it a chance to rearrange ourselves like a voluminous tea length-skirt around a gamine Audrey Hepburn.

And then, as my friend Pe says, “everybody dies on the last day of their life.” And we don’t know when that is (not even those guys who sit in ice baths and promote peptides do! Not even them!) Do you really want to spend all the days until that day torturing yourself about the things you failed to perfect, the fact that you didn’t score 10s across the board? Most of us are profoundly at capacity, whatever our personal capacity is. Being kind to yourself about what you don’t have room for- and being honest with yourself about the values you’ve internalized that don’t actually belong to you- is, like, the greatest thing that can happen to a person. The 40s seem like a hot time for that. I’m excited.

My “anxiety”— which was so real to me, so omnipresent for so many years that it might as well have been a plant or a pet or a vintage car I made into my entire personality— isn’t the top note of my life anymore. But it’s not gone. I don’t believe, with the particular brain I inherited and in this particular time that we live in, that it ever will be. And keeping it as a polite neighbor rather than a dish smashing, EDM blasting, crack-smoking roommate takes constant vigilance.

The older I get (I talk about getting older constantly, it’s so boring and every young person I know shows me how boring they find it when their eyes turn grey at the mention of aging) the more I realize it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes I spend a month in vague agony over a perceived slight, and sometimes a really, truly painful event results in surprising calm and clarity, a strength and presence of mind I hoped I was capable of but couldn’t be sure. My heart-pounding January was nothing special. I was butting up against my own capacity, feeling the shame of my limits more than the pleasure of my abilities, running as fast as I could but always feeling ten steps behind.

One of the most frustrating parts of being human is the repetition of patterns, followed by the glee of revelation, followed by a brief respite from said pattern, followed by a brief lack of vigilance that causes the pattern to reemerge. As I said, when I was younger this was all more intense- break ups and make ups, unsafe situations, choices that injured my body and soul. Now, it’s always pretty wonderfully banal: loss of balance between work and the rest of my life, a tendency to fawn, over-apologize and over-explain, an instinct to diminish myself that often feels like it pre-dates me. Like, if we believe in reincarnation there was a Lena in Salem in the 1690s offering herself up to the witch committee just to get it over and done with, despite having no special powers. Strange beliefs about who I am and what makes me useful to the world, beliefs I can see but not feel my way out of, are always going to poke their noses out of the mud like alligator eyes.

I’d like to say that over the past month, as certain familiar forms of panic crept in, I moved toward the things I know work- therapy, meditation, co-regulating with a friend, time spent away from my phone and with beloved animals and people (please note the order there- animals FIRST.) Instead, I created a bunch of new labels for my Gmail, sat up like a ghoul and grabbed my phone from a dead sleep just to add a bullet point to my to-do list. I didn’t knit or paint, dance or stretch. Instead, I became obsessed with…

…finding the right (p)leather jacket.

I don’t remember the last time I even wore a leather jacket. It was probably when I was 28 and having a cropped biker jacket in a weird pastel color seemed fun. Back then, my personality was defined by a kooky shade, a strange collar, fugly shoes. I hadn’t yet adopted my father’s policy— put your freak into your art and let the rest be kind of a snooze fest. I know I was kicking around in this dumb thing for a while (so was Hannah!).

Meanwhile, my mother still wears this jacket which (I am sorry Mrs. Prada, you are an unassailable genius) made me look like a gynecologist in an A24 horror movie.

I don’t buy new leather these days (no judgment, but as a pig parent it’s not for me.) I also like to be cozy, and pleather has never struck me as a material you can truly burrow down in. But something about the structure, the toughness mixed with uncalculated ease, made me so sure that if I just located “the one” it might change the way I move through the world. Perhaps, the right faux-leather jacket could save me from self-doubt, do what dozens of mental health professionals and healers have not quite managed.

I couldn’t picture the jacket. I would, I reasoned, know it when I found it. My criteria were few: vegan or vintage, won’t hug my arms so that they resemble a pair of fetish-y sausages. Won’t look like I’m in a Pillion Halloween costume.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up with not one but five pleather jackets, which I’ve treated like portals to inner calm. Each one has its own personality, its own fears, its own attachment style if you will.

Artwork by Phoebe Ward

At the same time I went pleather jacket crazy, I downloaded a bunch of “self help” books to fall asleep to, the soothing rhythms and words of affirmation allowing me to drop into some version of calm. Like the jackets, some are old, some are new, some are a little cheesy in a compelling way.

Self-help is a genre that, for many readers, is drenched in shame. It shouldn’t be. It’s literally… helping yourself. During my teen years, back when I didn’t know enough to know better, back when hanging around the bookstore could be an entire afternoon’s activity, I wasn’t embarrassed to be seen crouched down under a sign that read “self-help and sexual health” (shout out to the Montague Street Walden Books, RIP! You didn’t have a high brow selection, but you were there for the most tortured and hormonal years and I’m grateful for you!)

Self-help is like dietary supplements or the crypto market— some of it is real but nobody is doing any quality control so if you stumble into the wrong situation, there’s a strong chance you will feel way worse and have done it to yourself with your own money!

So below, 5 of the books that have actually made a difference in how I treat myself and engage with the world. And 5 (p)leather jackets that may or may not fix me (if they were attachment styles.)

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The Perfectly Broken-In Vintage Find

Source: Etsy

Jacket: No name brand, just a strange gold horn that disrupts the Amelia Earhart lines of this 1980s treasure. Buttery soft (the only actual leather good in the bunch.) Confidently imperfect. It has some strange details, and yet when viewed as part of a larger design philosophy they make perfect sense and only improve the overall effect. Can be worn anywhere and nowhere, is content to support an outfit or lead, takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

📖Book: True Love: a practice for awakening the heart by Thich Naht Hanh (Shambhala Publications). It feels pretty comical to describe prolific activist & teacher (and Buddhist monk) TNH as an OG, but that’s what he is. His ability to simplify concepts like non-attachment for a results-obsessed Western audience has given his work (and his Plum Village tradition of engaged Buddhism) an enduring appeal. This is a great book to take in bite-sized chunks every morning, a kind of literary Xanax to smooth your transition into the day (at which point, let’s be honest, most of what we’ve learned and resolved is lost in the crush of unanswered texts and loafer blisters.)

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The Cropped, Overstyled “Statement Piece”

Source: Steve Madden

Jacket: It’s a cropped, boxy blazer. It’s got workwear detailing. It has a crackle finish. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a peplum… around the neck?

What would you wear it with?” my friend (whose name is Mark Jacobs, so I trust him with dominion over my style choices.)

“Everything! Nothing!”

It’s the jacket that says “I will be anything you want me to be- just please, please don’t leave me at home.”

**(My mother gave me some attitude about this, because she clearly hasn’t listened to The Cutting Room Floor podcast ep that made SM a folk hero.

📖Book: The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie. She literally wrote the book on codependence. Melody Beattie had a condition that, for many years, was just called “being a wife and mother.” In this book of daily meditations (it also comes in app form, which I cannot recommend more) the author reframes our idea about what codependency is. We all know people who say things like “I’m just too empathic” or “I’m always putting other people ahead of myself” with some degree of pride. But the truth is, it’s more like the evergreen tweet:

In actuality, codependent behavior isn’t a Girl Scout badge of generosity- it’s actually a means of attempting to control those around you and (on some unconscious level) attempting to manipulate them into caring for you with the same velocity you are offering and feel you are owed. It also causes the codependent to exist in a perma-state of lack, to live under a cloud of martyr-y resentment. It’s painful for all involved. It’s never cute. And if, at an early age, we are attuned this way then our compass will point us back that way consistently if we don’t stay vigilant as fuck. This book is an easy way to remind yourself, 365 days a year, that it’s not selfish to prize your own peace above all else. In fact, it’s the only way we’re ever going to have anything real to offer.

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The Immaculately Tailored Trench

Source: Alice Temperley

Jacket: This was a true splurge for me- I don’t think I’ve ever spent this on a garment sober. But it has yielded profound returns— it goes on over nightgowns to walk the dogs, evening dresses to mess them up a bit and in anxiety-inducing meetings it acts as a shield- “no, I don’t need to hang my coat, thanks so much!”

I am Neo. I am The One. But that means I’m going to have to travel between worlds, flying and deflecting bullets and stuff, so I can’t really make a plan for the next…

Bob Mankoff-core

📖Book: Be Honest You’re Not That Into Him Either by Dr. Ian Kerner. I was still a virgin (albeit a version prone to obsessive, earth-shattering, nausea inducing crushes) when I first read He’s Just Not That Into You, the bestselling dating book that sprung from the SATC industrial complex. At the time, it read to me like a sacred tome, even if it was really just the “if he wanted to, he would” of its time. What’s telling about the success of that book is just how many women had to be reminded that making themselves available for quite literally any kind of treatment was not, in fact, their job.

A few years later, recovering from my first real breakup on a family trip to Rome, I sat in a verdant old graveyard in a Charlotte Ronson halter dress smoking unfiltered cigarettes and reading Dr. Ian Kerner’s rebuttal “Be Honest, You’re Not That Into Him Either.” Leaving aside how embarrassingly gender rigid these books are and the cheesy third wave-isms that dance through the writing, together they form a thesis: some people have been coded to make themselves endlessly available (often women) and others have been coded to run (men, a lot, but not always!) but people who do the chasing don’t often stop to ask just how connected they feel to the person they’re so hell bent on getting close to. My father once told me there was no such thing as unrequited love- love that isn’t mutual doesn’t engender real understanding, and therefore it’s not love— it’s projection. By really interrogating why we are so focused on our object of limerence (do they represent something you’ve been told you can’t have? Do they look like your childhood crush who died after accidentally kicking a beehive while looking for your lost mood ring in the woods? Or have they just shown a glimmer of interest and that is enough?) we can rewire ourselves to desire what desires us back. Then, once that person realizes you’re no longer available and inevitably starts popping up in a way that would have fixed all of your problems six months ago, have fun saying things like “oh, Friday? That’s me time, I can’t.”

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The Studded 70s Blazer

Source: Colin Locascio

Jacket: This is one of those items that defines me- I am a woman who has and can wear a studded 1970s Jim Morrison jacket- while not leaving the closet very often. It’s got shiny studs, wide lapels, an intimidating set of pockets but then, just when it’s getting started, it stops mid-thigh, as abruptly as two teens on a mission to score beer who run into their teacher at the gas station. It’s too light for winter and would look odd over knits anyway, and it’s too heavy for a slip dress. In an ideal scenario, it would just be slung over the shoulders of someone in a fashion bikini and hot pants- someone with bony shoulders and fat hips, someone who has a rare condition in which they don’t feel temperature, someone who is angry at their mom but still sleeps in her bed.

📖Book: Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective by Dr. Mark Epstein Rizzoli. Pre-eminent Buddhist Psychotherapist Mark Epstein (who, trivia fact, was the father of one of my preschool friends and the only person who could calm down my hysteria when I lost my nerve at a birthday party and wanted to go home NOW) has a novel idea: the problem can be two things at once, and adopting an Eastern religious perspective on psychoanalysis only enriches both practices. For instance, it may be true that you have daddy issues, and it’s also true that if you accept the transitory nature of all things you can kill two birds with one stone. We can use Buddhist thought as a way to deepen our exploration of our mortal coil, and we can use the principles of psychoanalysis to better understand the tenets of Buddhism (a religion that is very generous to dabblers, and compelling in its ability to potentiate whatever other spiritual or psychological dogma we follow!) pro tip: listen to the audiobook as Dr. Epstein has one of the all time great voices. Even now, I hear him calmly encouraging me to remain present until my father appeared and wrapped me in his Brooks Brothers camel coat.

The Slouchy Shacket

Source: Lovers + Friends

Jacket: I didn’t know what I wanted exactly- it felt like it was somewhere between this Agnes B. leather snap cardigan, which I couldn’t find on the resale market, and this which is the triple threat of alarmingly priced with a limited size range in brand new leather.)

When I pulled the trigger on this, it felt like what they say on Love Island UK when they think someone’s nice but are not at all horny for them:

It had all the qualities I professed to want, and yet I had no abiding sense of need. There was something both terrifying and vacant about the purchase, troubling in that it was a math equation and not the result of true aesthetic arousal.

But then, lo and behold, I unwrapped it, surprised at how soft and cool it felt, like a soothing hand on a fevered forehead. I put it on and couldn’t help but strike a pose. I wore it to the airport over striped pajama pants from the Anthropologie sale on our high street and a Donni Oxford I scored on sale and felt, if not polished, sturdy. Secure. Like someone who you’d be excited to have as your seat mate because their stuff is neatly arranged in one carry all and they’re focused on their book. When it came time to nap, I curled inside it in a way I haven’t done with a jacket since my mother got me a floor length puffer at the North Face outlet to take to college in Ohio and I slept in it when our dorm heaters shut off. I love my shacket and my shacket loves me.

📖Book: Rest is Resistance: a Manifesto by Trivia Hersey. Founder of The Nap Ministry, Tricia Hersey has written the preeminent text on disengaging from capitalism long enough to notice that you’re not just tired- you’re withering. In her referendum on rest as a sacred act, both of protest and self-love, she manages to weave in strands on race, disability and gender to give us a nuanced perspective on the cost of over performance on our inner lives and on our bodies. Unlike so many treatises on “self-care”- a word that has been diluted so intensely by advertising and misunderstanding that all it calls to mind now is a woman named Ashlynn getting a gel manicure- Hersey is keenly aware that for many, overwork isn’t a choice but a condition for survival, that work/life balance is a luxury many cannot afford. But under her careful tutelage, no one is excluded from the lessons she’s learned and the truths she tells. Another great audiobook to- you guessed it- fall asleep to.