Somewhere along the line in self-help, you might start thinking about where humanity went wrong in the first place. How could we be so flawed? Why are we so sensitive? Why do people do bad things? Where did alcoholism get its origin? Why would we be interested in alcohol at all?
These are very good questions. They are good because at some point, when we reflect on this kind of thing, we start to see the connection between childhood and our mentality. It is easy to trace a lot of mankind's problems to things like natural disasters that shocked us and traumatized us, the loss of our caretakers, and of course destructive people and criminals. We should talk about those kinds of people more, not to judge them, but from the perspective of understanding what shaped them. Nobody arrives cruel. Something was done to a person, usually early, usually by someone who was supposed to protect them, and what was done gets handed to the next person in the line, and to the one after that.
This is exactly the kind of thing meditation is for. Not the calm, not the relaxation, though those come. Meditation gives you a place to sit with a line that long without being swallowed by it. You can look at what your parents carried, and what their parents carried, and see it as a chain of frightened people doing what they learned, rather than a personal verdict on you. That distance is everything. In an ordinary state of mind you cannot hold this material for more than a minute before it turns into resentment or shame. In a quiet mind you can hold it, turn it over, and stay in the body while you do.
And then something practical happens. You start to notice the exact moment the old pattern moves through you, the tone of voice, the flinch, the reaching for something to take the edge off. You see it while it is happening instead of a day later. That is the point where the chain stops. Not because you forgave anyone, and not because you understood the whole history of human damage, but because you were awake enough to catch one link, in yourself, in real time.