Self-help books

Self-help born of a wound: Bertello, emotional well-being and the habits of 2026

Gianluca Bertello presents “Reprogramado por el dolor”, a self-help book born from his experience with bullying. We read it alongside the selections from HOLA and El Confidencial to understand what readers of the genre are looking for in 2026.

By Pedro J. Pérez · 29 October 2026

A wound turned into reading

The news comes from ReconquistaHOY: Gianluca Bertello presents “Reprogramado por el dolor”, a self-help book that was born from his own experience with bullying. This is no minor detail. When an author turns an episode of suffering into a text intended for others, the genre recovers its oldest meaning: that of the voice that accompanies. The volume is announced at once as a narrative and as a tool, and in that dual condition lies much of its literary and human interest.

It is worth pausing on the gesture. Self-help does not begin with a formula but with a wound seeking words. Bertello does not offer an abstract treatise: he offers his biography as the starting point for a conversation. The reader of these books rarely seeks absolute truths; he seeks reasoned company, someone who has gone through something similar and has afterwards ordered the experience. That is the promise of the volume and also its limit: that of a personal testimony proposed as a proposal for others.

The publishing map of 2026

Bertello’s book does not appear in a vacuum. In March 2026, HOLA published a selection of the year’s best self-help books for working on emotional well-being; in October, El Confidencial proposed another set of titles for beginning to change habits with the arrival of autumn. Three dates, three media outlets and a shared diagnosis: the genre is still alive, is renewing itself and responds to concrete demands from readers.

That map draws two dominant concerns of the moment: emotional well-being and the transformation of habits. The first addresses how we feel; the second, how we act. Contemporary self-help moves between the two, no longer limited to motivational advice and interested in everyday mental health and in small repeated gestures. The press selections function as a thermometer of those concerns, not as a definitive canon or a closed list.

From testimony to method

Self-help books that endure tend to combine two registers: narrative and method. The first gives flesh to the proposal; the second allows the reader to do something with it. “Reprogramado por el dolor” is announced from that logic: an experience with bullying—a situation of violence among peers—that becomes material for others. The title itself suggests the idea of reprogramming: reviewing what was learned in harm and trying out another possible response.

That passage from the I to the you is neither automatic nor simple. It demands literary distance: whoever narrates must order the pain without displaying it and propose without imposing. The quality of a book of this kind is measured precisely in that balance. If testimony becomes prescription, it loses truth; if reflection shuts itself up in introspection, it loses usefulness. The interest of these works lies in the tension between both shores, and there a good part of their value is at stake.

Reading to understand oneself

That a book about bullying should present itself as self-help has an evident relevance: it names an experience often silenced at school and in the family. Those who have lived through something similar find in the text a mirror and, with luck, a map. And those who have not lived through it can better understand a phenomenon that runs through classrooms, networks and everyday conversations. Self-help literature, when it succeeds, fulfills that function of translation between different experiences.

Autumn adds a symbolic nuance. El Confidencial’s proposal for changing habits in that season connects with a widespread intuition: changes are rehearsed at thresholds, when routine is reordered. There is no need to believe in the magic of dates to recognize that certain moments invite a review of customs. Books take advantage of that impulse and offer structure where there is usually only good intention, which is no small thing.

Criteria for choosing well

Before a shelf full of titles, it is advisable to read with judgment. A good starting point is to distinguish what kind of book we have in our hands: if testimony predominates, the usefulness will lie in identification and in the language; if method predominates, in the clarity of the steps and in their plausibility. Asking who is speaking, from what experience and with what limits are simple questions that avoid excessive expectations.

It also helps to pace one’s reading and to contrast it. Self-help books perform better as conversation than as dogma: underlining, noting objections, commenting with other readers. And it is worth remembering that no volume replaces professional help when the distress is intense. The selections from HOLA and El Confidencial can guide the search, but the final choice depends on each reader’s specific problem and on his or her way of reading.

Conclusion: well-written company

Taken together, the three news items describe a genre that continues to ask pertinent questions. Bertello contributes the testimony and the wounded origin; HOLA, the interest in emotional well-being; El Confidencial, the will to change habits. Read together, those threads show that self-help is not a homogeneous block but a family of books diverse in ambition and quality. To judge them as a block would be as unjust as to celebrate them without any discernment.

What remains is the essential: a book can accompany, order and suggest, but the work belongs to the reader. “Reprogramado por el dolor” proposes reviewing what was learned in harm; the press selections offer entry points to emotional well-being and to habits. In all cases, reading functions as that patient interlocutor who does not promise miracles and, even so, changes something in those who read with sustained attention.