SELF-HELP BOOKS ‘CAN BE HARMFUL’

Subjects of the popular books range from boosting confidence to quitting smoking and losing weight.

They are designed to lift self-esteem and promote positive action with statements such as “I am a lovable person”, or “I will succeed”.

But experts who studied fans of self-help books found that individuals with low self-esteem actually felt worse about themselves after repeating “positive self-statements”.

Canadian psychologists discovered that, paradoxically, they fared better when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative, go-ahead ideas.

The researchers, authors of a report in the journal Psychological Science, concluded that repeated positive self-statements can “backfire for the very people who need them the most”.