coping with unsolicited advice

[Guest guest]

After experiencing a rash of unsolicited advice, I came up with these

strategies for handing unsolicited advice and wanted to share them with you

in case you run into this problem too.

[i don't intend this post as unsolicited advice! I know we all have

developed our ways of handling things--by necessity. This is what I've found

helps me (and I tend to be very sensitive to people suggesting I've done

something wrong, so some of these techniques might be particular to my

needs).]

http://freeideasblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/unsolicited-advice-strategies-for.html

*Strategies for Handling Unsolicited Advice, by Runyan*

Unsolicited advice is practically another symptom of Lyme disease or of

other invisible illness.

If you have invisible illness or any sort of weird illness that people don't

understand, or probably any long-term illness at all, you're going to get

unsolicited advice.

It doesn't say anything bad about you if this happens. If far more people

try to give you advice than did so when you were well, it doesn't mean you

are doing a bad job or making bad choices now. It just means you're in a

life situation with which the people are unfamiliar or untrained.

Perhaps because your life seems bad, people feel compelled to give you

helpful suggestions. Or perhaps they are unaware of the trade-offs you might

be making, such as:

-Benefiting from exercise versus damaging your body from exercise.

-Trying alternative treatments that might not work versus missing out on

alternative treatments that others seem to have found helpful.

-Adhering to your treatment regimen versus letting lose and having fun.

It takes so much skill to survive as someone with a life-altering chronic

illness, that outsiders without the illness really have nothing to offer. I

will take advice from people with my condition; but people who have not

experienced what I am experiencing don't have much to offer.

But people offer advice nonetheless.

Here's how I interpret it:

1) First question: Does this person offering the advice understand my

situation?

If not, then there is no need to take the advice seriously. This holds in

general, even when not considering illness.

2) Has anyone with my condition (or anyone who intimately understands my

illness and my personal situation) offered me this same advice?

If not, I can discard it.

If multiple people are aware of your situation; and if no one who knows your

situation is telling you that this is a problem; then it's probably not a

problem.

How to Give a Good Response to Unsolicited Advice:

A) Commit to being non-defensive. You don't need to prove yourself or to

explain yourself. In fact, you don't even need to respond at all.

The less explanation in your response, the better (if the person doesn't

know much about your situation to start with, he or she might argue with

your explanations).

If you decide to respond, first express thanks for their trying to help

you. Focus on your gratitude that they care about you and went out of their

way to try to help.

C) Say firmly, I'm already aware of what you are mentioning, and you can't

tell me anything I don't already know about this or that I haven't already

considered.

Implied: I am not interested in further suggestions. Also implied: I am the

expert in my own situation.

D) To round out the response, and to help them feel like they helped you (in

which case they are less likely to pester you in the future), you could add:

" But now that you mention it, I do think I could try doing ___, or I've been

meaning to do ___, etc etc. "

You have to weigh how it will feel to you to say part (D). I used to think

the most important thing was making the person who was offering me advice

feel good about themselves.

But then I realized that my responses were causing me to feel bad about

myself, as though I was in the wrong and a complete stranger was able to

pick out something blatantly wrong that I was doing without hardly knowing

me.

E) This last part is just for fun, probably not to actually say to anyone

unless they were being particularly egregious:

" Could I offer you some unsolicited advice back? Have you thought about how

people might feel when you tell relative strangers that you think you know

better than they do what they should be doing?

" I am concerned for you. I think this strategy might hurt you in life. I

encourage you to be more cautious about offering unsolicited advice; and if

you do say something, I think you should learn to say it in a nonviolent,

sensitive manner. "

How to give unsolicited advice (to an individual):

1) Don't.

2) If you must, first ask how well you know the person's situation. Also ask

how well you know the topic about which you would give unsolicited

advice.If your answer to at least one of these is not " extremely

well, " go back to

(1).

3) Use Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to communicate. Use " I " statements.

Most importantly, don't assume you are right! Even if it seems beyond

obvious to you that what you are suggesting is correct; and what the person

is doing is wrong; there might be factors you don't know about. Withhold

judgment!

4) Express confidence in the person's judgment: " I am sure you know what

you're doing. I respect your judgment. You've probably already thought

through this. "

Offering advice without establishing your respect for their judgment is

tantamount to saying, I think your judgment is so bad that I assume you are

in the wrong in this situation even when I hardly know what is going on.

5) Portray the issue as a concern that you are having, involving up with

your own emotions and experience (since that is what unsolicited advice is

anyways).

" I am just having my own issue, where for my own reasons, I get worried

about ___ happening.

" In my limited experience, I thought that __ was true. Perhaps you know more

about this than I do. "

" I know that in my own experience, which is a completely different case from

yours, __ works for me. Would you be interested in helping me to understand

how your case is different from my case? "

6) Use plenty of qualifiers to make it clear that the other person is an

expert in their own situation, and if you are questioning them about it, it

is as much for your own education as for their potential education.

Since they are the experts on their own situation, they are more likely to

have something to tell you than for you to have something to tell them.

You know, Kegan had some excellent words about this issue toward the

back of How We Talk Can Change the Way We

Work<http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Change-Work-Transformation/dp/078796378X>.

He gave an analysis of the way managers are encouraged to give constructive

criticism, but then stepped back and pointed out a possibly untrue

assumption underlying all of the usual advice: namely, that the manager was

right. Abolishing this assumption can lead to much better communication in

which both parties are more likely to learn something.