Updated July 1, 2026
Psychology Today Weighs In on "Let Them" Theory Post-Controversy
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In This Article
- The Woman Behind the Words
- Robbins's Response and the Citation Gap
- A Second Controversy: Financial Documents and AI
- What to Watch
Mel Robbins built a devoted following by telling people to stop trying to control others and start governing themselves. But as of spring 2026, the self-help author finds herself at the centre of a mounting controversy: plagiarism accusations over the origins of her "Let Them Theory" concept, and separate backlash over a campaign in which she asked followers to upload personal financial documents to an AI tool. A May 2026 analysis by writer Ambika Singh documents the accumulating criticism in detail, and a deep-reported April 2026 investigation by The Atlantic identifies the woman at the heart of the plagiarism question: Cassie Phillips, a nursing-home worker and bartender who says she wrote the original "Let Them" mantras in 2020, during one of the hardest periods of her life.
The Woman Behind the Words
According to The Atlantic, Phillips began writing lines — "If they want to go weeks without talking to you, LET THEM"; "If they want to follow the crowd, LET THEM" — in 2020 while her marriage was disintegrating and she was isolated during the pandemic. She described the writing as a way to "get through the day knowing I didn't have anybody but myself." Phillips acknowledges the phrase itself was not entirely her own invention; she was partly inspired by a clip in which Tyler Perry's character Madea says, "If somebody wants to walk out of your life, let them go."
In 2022, Phillips left her husband and had the words "let them" tattooed on her arm. She posted a photo of the tattoo on Facebook alongside her mantras, and that post went on to accumulate nearly 50,000 shares, with people reposting the text across Facebook and Instagram and screen-printing it on T-shirts. Phillips told The Atlantic she was in "survival mode" at the time and did not pursue any commercial claim on the idea.
The following year, Phillips saw an Instagram video in which Robbins said she had "just heard about this thing called the 'Let Them Theory'" and expressed enthusiasm for it. Phillips, assuming Robbins was referencing her work, initially sent Robbins a message of thanks, The Atlantic reports.
Robbins's Response and the Citation Gap
Robbins has denied reading Phillips's poem or being inspired by it. Her representative told The Atlantic that "neither Mel, the fact checke[rs]" — the statement was partially cut off in the sourced excerpt — had encountered Phillips's work. Yet of the book's 203 total citations, as confirmed to The Atlantic by a Robbins representative, not one credits Phillips.
The Atlantic's investigation frames this as a question the book never satisfactorily answers: how a viral piece of writing, widely circulated under the same name and built on the same core idea, produced no attribution in a heavily footnoted volume. Robbins has continued to publicly defend and promote the book in recent media appearances, according to Singh's analysis.
For a fuller assessment of the book itself — The Let Them Theory is a self-help framework arguing that releasing the urge to control others is the path to personal freedom — see our review.
A Second Controversy: Financial Documents and AI
The plagiarism dispute is not the only pressure point. According to Singh's analysis, criticism intensified when Robbins faced online backlash for encouraging her followers to upload sensitive personal financial documents into Microsoft Copilot prompts as part of an AI partnership campaign. The request triggered alarms among members of Robbins's own audience, adding a data-privacy dimension to an already complicated public moment.
Singh also situates the episode within a broader critique of the self-help industry: that its ecosystem depends on keeping audiences in a recurring cycle of self-improvement, perpetually searching for the next framework or mindset shift — with major platforms and personalities benefiting from that cycle.
The site idontblog.ca draws a sharper structural point, arguing that the industry's tolerance for such controversies is uneven: "If someone else had pulled this stunt, especially a lesser-known writer or a person of colour, the backlash would have been swift. But for Robbins, it's just another day in the self-help machine."
What to Watch
The central unresolved question — whether Robbins or her team encountered Phillips's widely shared post before developing the book — remains open. The Atlantic's investigation did not produce a definitive answer, and Robbins's team has not altered its position. The Haven has also noted the absence of any mention of Phillips in the book's text.
What the episode has done is place a renewed spotlight on attribution standards within the self-help genre, where ideas frequently travel through social media before being formalised in books. Whether that scrutiny produces any industry-wide reckoning, or settles as one author's controversy, remains to be seen — but the questions Phillips raised are now part of the public record.
Story updates
We track this developing story and add verified developments as they happen. Originally published June 1, 2026.
Psychology Today Weighs In on "Let Them" Theory Post-Controversy
A July 2026 Psychology Today article examined whether Mel Robbins's "Let Them" theory constitutes genuine therapeutic wisdom or merely pop psychology, reflecting continued public and professional scrutiny of the concept in the wake of the plagiarism controversy. Separately, a July 2026 piece noted Robbins discussing her own decades-long "campaign of misery" — a pattern of internal negativity — as part of her ongoing public messaging around the theory.