Let them?
17 February 2025I’d like to preface this screed by pointing out that I’m not trying to be some sort of witty or insightful commentator on mental health or any other subject. I’m just pissed off and I’ve decided to type about it, so this may not be very coherent. Read on if that hasn’t put you off.
Lately, I’ve noticed ‘the world’ (privileged white people) going crazy over a ‘life-changing mindset hack’ (a basic piece of conventional wisdom dressed up as something revolutionary) called the ‘Let Them Theory’. Said theory has naturally been expanded to book length and is available from a range of retail outlets, particularly those that sell books as a side gig to people who never knowingly own more than five books.
The author of said book, Mel Robbins, is also famous for a TEDx talk - of course it’s TEDx - entitled How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over. Now, I’m a glutton for punishment but I have my limits, so I’ve consumed neither the book, nor the talk, nor her wildly popular podcast, but as a neurodivergent person who has done the bare minimum level of research I have thoughts on this, and the bare minimum level of research seems to pass for expertise now so I’m going to share them here.
Before I do, though, I want to make something clear. I don’t make any assertions that Mel Robbins’ life has been an entirely easy ride, or that nothing qualifies her to offer commentary on mental health. She’s gone on the record with diagnoses of ADHD, anxiety, and dyslexia. None of those things are at all easy to live with, and I see no reason not to take her at face value… but. But.
She loves a hack. She admits her theory is a ‘cheap trick’. It’s self-help, served to us by a woman who has no doubt faced challenges in life, but is also wildly successful. And therein lies the problem.
Why is self-help so often the only help available? Why do we need to ‘hack’ things? Why are we implored to ‘take control of our lives’, and always by people in a position of control, wealth, influence? Look at the world around us. So much is out of our control, and just generally out of control, and yet this expectation persists that the mental and emotional wellbeing of some incredibly vulnerable people - and I include myself in that number - can exist in a bubble, independent of outside factors. ‘Stop screwing yourself over’, as if so many people from Presidents on down, or up, aren’t doing their fair share of screwing. What absolute bullshit.
I’m tired of the world for so many reasons, and so many of them boil down to this: the world refuses to take anyone seriously if they don’t carry the default settings. More than that, in fact, the world makes us feel as we’re inconveniencing them, ignoring the inconvenience their ignorance causes us, not just on isolated occasions but every minute of every day, trying to get by in a world that at best, isn’t designed for us; at worst, is downright hostile.
I’m not drawing equivalences here before anybody asks, but how dare neurodivergent people exist among neurotypicals? How dare transgender people use bathrooms or simply exist with legal recognition in the United States? How dare anyone rail against racial profiling or officers of so-called law enforcement applying excessive and sometimes deadly force? How dare anyone suggest that maybe tech billionaires could afford to manufacture consumer tech products we don’t actually need with methods that don’t exploit Congolese men, women, and children? How dare Palestinians exist at all, and particularly on such lucrative beachfront property?
How dare we. This is what they think of us. This is what they do to us. They may not admit it because that would require these twisted, rapacious cowards to demonstrate honesty and some semblance of a backbone, but they want all of us gone, out of their way, and it’s my firm belief that the only reason why some of us aren’t being shot at in the street is because some of us are at least about fortunate enough that we live on streets where that would be considered uncouth.
Still, however, this all begs the question - do we let them?