Your Advice is Terrible
Some terrible advice I’ve been given and some alternatives when you don’t have anything valuable to add to the discussion.
When someone we know is having a problem, it’s natural to want to help them. It’s a sign that you’re kind and caring and want to be useful— these are all good traits, so why is so much advice met with irritation? Honestly, because a lot of it isn’t helpful.
If a person is in a very tough spot, feeling a lot of anxiety, it’s easy for annoyance to build if they’ve been given bad advice or the same advice multiple times and haven’t found it useful. Really obvious advice can also feel insulting, as if you believe they don’t possess logic.
Sometimes Just Listen
A couple of years ago, my cat got very ill. I was feeling extremely stressed over the growing vet bill and the possibility that my cat was going to die.
All of this happened in April of 2020, so as you can imagine, some external factors were making me more stressed. Plus, humans were not allowed to accompany their pets into the vet’s office, so I was concerned that if it came to the point where we had to put the cat down, I wouldn’t be able to come in to comfort her and hold her. I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to the creature I raised from the time she was 2 months old.
