The self-help industrial complex has a reliable playbook: take a simple concept, claim it as a personal epiphany, package it with an origin story, and monetize it across books, podcasts, and speaking tours. When the first concept loses steam, rinse and repeat. Mel Robbins has become the poster child for this cycle, and her recent New York Times op-ed on family estrangement reveals why we should be deeply skeptical of influencers tackling complex psychological issues without the credentials to back it up. 

Robbins, a former criminal defense attorney turned motivational speaker, has built an empire on repackaging commons sense as revolutionary insight. Her law degree from Boston College doesn’t qualify her to dispense advice on family trauma, abuse dynamics, or the nuanced decision-making around estrangement. Yet there she was in the Times, co-authoring an op-ed with Cornell professor Karl Pillemer warning readers that going no contact with family will “likely have a devastating impact on your happiness and well-being.”

The timing is revealing. Robbins spent roughly a year riding the wave of her “Let Them Theory,” a concept she’s attempted to trademark despite strong evidence that it originated from poet Cassie Phillips’s 2019 viral poem. Multiple investigations have documented how Phillips’s “Let Them” movement, complete with tattoos and online communities, predated Robbins’s claimed 2023 “discover” by years. When confronted, Robbins dismissed it as “ancient wisdom,” conveniently erasing the grassroots movement that made the phrase culturally relevant. 

Now, as interest in “Let Them” predictably wanes, Robbins pivots to its philosophical opposite: arguing against letting people go. The contradiction is glaring. If “Let Them” means releasing control over others’ choices, shouldn’t we… let them choose estrangement? But consistency isn’t the goal here, attention is.

The problem isn’t just hypocrisy. It’s the dangerous oversimplification of trauma. When Robbins and Pillager write that distancing yourself from difficult family members will devastate your well-being, they flatten the lived experiences of abuse survivors, LGBTQ+ individuals rejected by their families, and people of color navigating racist relatives. Their thought experiment, “Would you want to spend your last Thanksgiving resenting your fathers’ politics?”, treats estrangement as petty grudge-holding rather than survival strategy.

Consider who typically goes no contact: people escaping emotional abuse, physical violence, or fundamental rejection. Research shows that while family estrangement has increased, so has awareness of abuse and the language to name it. Younger generations, equipped with therapy and online communities, are more willing to prioritize their mental health over maintaining toxic family bonds. 

Robbins and Pillemer’s advice, essentially “lighten up” and watch Jeopardy together, might work for garden-variety family annoyances. But it’s dangerously inadequate for addressing the reasons most people actually estrange: not political disagreements, but patterns of harm. 

The broader issue is how the self-help industry operates. Robbins represents a class of influencers who cycle through trendy positions without accountability. Glennon Doyle rewrites her narrative with each marriage. Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean in” feminism looked different after Facebook’s scandals. These pivots happen because the market demands fresh content, not because the advice becomes more accurate or helpful. 

What makes this particularly insidious is how Robbins packages it. The black rimmed glasses, the research citation, the prestigious co-authors, it all creates an illusion of expertise she does not posses. She’s ever trained in family systems therapy, trauma treatment, or clinical psychology. Her backgrounds is in litigation, not healing. 

The self-help here thrives on making the complex seem simple. Five-second rules, two-word theories, one weird trick. But human psychology, family trauma, and decisions about estrangement are irreducibly complex. They require nuance, cultural context, and deep understanding of power dynamics. Not sound bites from someone whose primary qualification is successfully monetizing viral moments. 

When Robbins tells her millions of followers that estrangement will devastate their wellbeing, she’s speaking to survivors of abuse who’e spent years working up the courage to protect themselves. She’s dismissing the experiences of people who’ve tried everything, from therapy to boundaries to second chances, before finally walking away. And she’s doing it without any formal training in the field she’s speaking on.

Writer and comedian Meredith Lynch (@meredithlynch) said in a TikTok video, “This is self-help for people who don’t want to do complex work,” or, perhaps, don’t know where to start and Robbin makes it seem like a digestible toe-dip. That’s the entire game. Real healing requires sitting with ambiguity, doing the hard work of therapy, and accepting that some situations have no tidy resolution. It can’t be packaged as a TED talk or monetized through a book tour. 

Robbins will almost certainly pivot again when this position loses its currency. Perhaps she’ll “discover” that boundaries are actually essential, that some families are irredeemably toxic. She’ll have a new origin story, a new book deal, and her followers will nod along, having forgotten the contradictions.

Meanwhile, people genuinely struggling with the decision to estrange from harmful family members deserve better than a former lawyer’s op-ed telling them to lighten up. They deserve therapists, not influencers. They deserve nuance, not thought experiments. And the deserve to have their experiences validated, not dismissed but someone chasing the next viral moment. 

The self-help industry won’t regulate itself. But we can be more discerning consumers. Before accepting life-altering advice from social media personalities, we should ask: What are their credentials? What evidence supports their claims? And who benefits from this advice; the vulnerable people seeking help, or the influencer’s bottom line?

In Robbins’s case, the answer is uncomfortably clear.

Editor’s note: Despite multiple attempts to reach Robbins’s team, The Sixteenth did not receive a response by the time of publication.

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