What is the most unhelpful advice you have received?
3 years ago by axolittl to c/asklemmy
I'll go first: "You have to have children when you're young," told to me when I was in my late 20s, with no desire to ever have kids, and no means to support them, by someone divorced multiple times with at least one adult child who does not speak to them.
Also: Responding to "How do I deal with this problem?" questions with "Oh, don't worry about it, it's enough that you're even thinking about it!"
The problem is that when the people giving that advice were working, it was great advice. Companies took care of their employees. Tenure mattered. Companies today are mindless corporate blobs that only care about spreadsheet numbers and the next quarter's results.
Maybe in some situations in the past owners were better to their workers, but in many cases there is an unbroken line of exploitation going back in the past. The idea that exploitation is an extremely new phenomenon benefits the owning class by concealing the long and bloody history of proletarian struggles.
Oh absolutely there was exploitation. Especially in certain industries.
Some of that advice is true ... work hard, work at something all the time and do your best ... but always for yourself and your well being and for your own self and your family.
I'm Indigenous Canadian and this is what all my family did including me. I worked for myself all my life ... building, construction, renos, fixing stuff, building stuff all the time ... I did some work for companies and businesses but always with the idea that I wouldn't work more than I had to and only to gain a bit more money to move on as soon as possible.
Twenty five years later ... I own three properties, multiple old vehicles that I maintain myself and I own everything I have without debt ... I'm not the wealthiest but I am debt free and have a healthy savings and I still work for myself gaining a bit more every time .
Your experience is the exception rather than the rule. It's been shown that rags to riches is a myth perpetrated by capitalism. At one time I had your level of success. It was all taken from me when I became disabled. As a Canadian, you have the distinct advantage of at least some social welfare assistance whereas your neighbor to the south has virtually none.
I agree that the whole rags to riches idea is a complete sham that doesn't exist ... unless you are already born wealthy ... and then that doesn't make any sense because you never had rags to begin with.
My story is more rags or bare clothing ... I'm not wealthy ... I just have enough to be comfortable ... I'm not in debt and I drive old beater cars and trucks and never owned a new vehicle in my life ... I bought small properties away from big city centers where land is cheap but living is hard
And yes ... I know most people are probably not capable of doing what I did ... I grew up with lots of people in my situation and I was fortunate enough to figure a way out, mostly through the luck of finding the right partner who worked just as hard as me, parents who were great guides and teachers and a small network of family and friends I could count on.
I have a less impressive, but similar story to yours. I’d say it’s fine to work hard and do work that’s not your job, but the key is to follow through by demanding the proper acknowledgement and gratification for it. Like, doing it for free a couple of times to be nice is fine, but after that, the value you bring with this has to be properly acknowledged and compensated.
If you’ve been working hard and helping out, and an employer doesn’t gratify you to that value, the proper response is not to give up and pin it on hard work being the problem. That employer is being the problem. Try to change that if you can at all.
Absolutely! Strategic quitting is an option that people don’t use enough. Definitely improved my quality of life!
as everything this has contexts in which is valuable and contests in which it's not
don't quit because you're demoralised. don't quit because you're tired. don't quit because it's hard.
if your first natural response to adversities is flying instead of fighting, it's telling you to fight, because you are likely the only person losing when flying.
it's not about never change your mind. never critically think what's the situation and if it's still worth it.
or check up with yourself and see if that's still what you want.
after all leaving a situation you don't want anymore, it's not quitting, it's moving on
it seems just semantics, it's about knowing yourself and being honest with yourself.
nothing is black or white
You dont have to keep going if you are tired and demoralized either. You dont owe pain and suffering and missed opportunities to your past self. You can quit any time you want for any reason or no reason at all, just be prepared to accept the consequences.
They told me to not quit. So I'm still a crack addict.
The problem is that a version of this advice can be very helpful. As someone who has suffered from ongoing mental health issues and also work in an industry where I regularly support people with mental health issues, one piece of advice I often give is to identify what traumas are you unnecessarily holding on to, which are contributing to your depression/anxiety etc.
When you can let go of some of the more mundane stresses in your life, you have more energy to tackle the real issues you're facing. Of course this is much easier said than done and has to be used as part of a more wholeistic approach, but sometimes the advice to just learn to let it go is very good advice.
Unfortunately, many people don't understand that intricacy and so just repeat the surface level comment which is far from helpful. And this in turn also leads to a push back in the other direction where people who could genuinely benefit from letting go of some of their stress refuse to do so because they have spent so long being told that's all there is to it.
There's heaps of psychology research into therapeutic approaches and all that stuff out there if you're willing to essentially do a degree on the topic, but personally I like to keep things as simple as possible so anyone can start applying it straight away.
I usually start with the picture story book The Huge Bag of Worries by Virginia Ironside (there's a read along of it on youtube) to frame the conversation. It helps to set up the idea that the "worries" are real and are having an effect on the individual. Also that many people struggle to know how to deal with them and end up giving bad advice, often because they are carrying their own bag of worries. I also at this point remind them that we are unlikely to get rid off all the problems, eg I can't cure your depression or rebuild your brain to make it neuro-typical, but we can make it so they are the only things in your bag making it a lot easier to carry.
Then I'll talk about a Catastrophe Scale. This is where we take a worry and rank it on a scale out of 10 of how bad is it really. 1 is a minor problem that will go away on it's own, and 10 is an extreme issue that will have a permanent impact on your life. Like in the book, many problems stop being an issue once you realize they are only a 1 or 2 on the scale. This is the "just get over it" point. Other's need some attention but can easily be solved or passed on to someone else in your support network to handle, but once you've spent that small amount of energy, it's gone. This is the where we see the value of another piece of despised advice, "stop worrying and just do it" or "have you tried going for a walk outside today". Once again, often spouted advice by people who think of it as the only thing needed without understanding how it fits into a complete treatment plan.
Finally that just leaves the real problems, the ones that are less easy to deal with. But without having to carry the weight of the whole bag of worries, we now have a capacity to take those worries to therapy or a doctor to medicate etc, and just generally do the more difficult and complex work that's needed.
Similar to this: telling someone with ADHD "stop letting yourself get distracted"
"But it's not actually scary!"
Yes, I know, that's why it's a disorder and not just being a reasonable person who's afraid of frightening things!
Someone told me that if I wanted to be a history teacher I should get a degree in special Ed to "make myself more marketable." It took 14 years to get out of special education and land a job teaching history
Teaching as a profession sucks ass in general right now... but at least a lot of the special educator-specific bullshit is not my problem anymore. But thank you.
Coincidentally, I know someone who recently applied for a regular teacher's assistant role and when they got to the interview the hiring director didn't even ask questions about that position; instead they interviewed for a special ed job and then only offered that. It was a total bait & switch to try and fill a role nobody was applying for.
I got the same thing said to me but to go into math instead. I never listened to them. Now I'm looking for jobs and there's a ton of openings for history jobs and I tend to feel a little smug about it.
"There are people worse off than you"
Thanks, that totally solves my problem.
I was a new dog owner, went to /r/Dogs to ask about a particular behavior my dog was exhibiting I'd never seen or read about before (turned out to be normal tho) and every reply I got basically told me I don't know how to care for an animal and that I should give him to someone else.
It was then I realized that it wasn't just /r/RelationshipAdvice that was full of bitter, jealous losers whose advice is always "dump them." It applied to literally every single subreddit dedicated to advice. They may have started with good intentions and knowledgeable people, but over time filled up with people who had no business giving anyone advice.
Oh yeah even lifeprotips, if you go in the comments it's just full of people grasping at straws to find the tip useless and upvoting each other's cynicism
There was one: "If you want a fridge's compressor to turn on and off less frequently (ie: if you sleep in the same room), fill it with water bottles to increase thermal mass" and the top comments were "Actual life pro tio: get an apartment with 2 rooms???"
I was like: are these people actually that slow?
The less there is to say about an advice, the less reasons you have to go write a comment. Therefore the people in the comments are often outliers
As a fellow dog owner, the internet always seems to be the most judgemental place to get dog advice. If you dont spend 6 hours a day training your dog, feed the top of the line kibble, and vax them for diseases only 3 dogs have got ever, then you dont deserve to have a dog.
This is true. Even random articles found on search engines give messed up advice.
"Can dogs eat avocado?"
Websites: "Yes. No. Maybe? They are toxic. But what makes them toxic doesn't affect dogs. At least not as much. Don't give them avocado."
People get so hand-wringy about what dogs can and can't eat. Like I've had people tell me not to let my dog eat apple because there's a chemical in apple seeds that's converted to cyanide in the gut.
Like, first of all, I'm not feeding the seeds to my dog, and second of all there's not enough of that stuff in one apple's worth of seeds to hurt you, and third of all you'd have to basically chew the seeds into powder, a thing that dogs famously do not do, to get even that tiny harmless amount.
It's not safe for dogs to eat chocolate, grapes, or alliums. Everything else is kinda fine. (And tbh growing up my family dogs ate all of those things a few times and were fine -- how dangerous it is depends on the concentration of the toxic thing, the size of the dog, etc.)
My dad threw a party to celebrate when I graduated university with a degree in Computer Science.
At the party, my dad's friend took me aside and said "My nephew just got a degree in electrical engineering. Now that's an up and coming field, you should get a degree in that."
Like, alright buddy. Hopefully that career pays well enough for another four years of student debt. I'm still kinda in shock at how dumb of a thing to say that was.
Echoes of The Graduate...
"I've got one word for you, Benjamin. One word only. Are you listening?"
"Yes, sir."
"Plastics."
In the 90's before I was doing it professionally, I used to go on massive 10 - 15 hour binge programming sessions only stopping when I realized I hadn't eaten in that entire time. It was some of the best fun I've ever had. But it happened rarely and organically, not 5 days a week on a predetermined schedule.
I like programming, and I program for a living, but there is nobody on earth who gets out of bed every day and is like "Aw yiss I'm gonna go code a bunch of salesforce integrations!"
I've been working long enough that at this point my work goal is like, I want a job that 95% of the time I do not actively dread. I don't need to be excited about it, I just need it to be fine.
Totally relatable! As you already pointed out, it's the "a day" part. I like listening to the radio but I talked to a former car radio tester who said that his car radio is never on and he enjoys the silence. It's one thing to do stuff you like when you want to, maybe even binge, and another to have a schedule.
I started programming at school and when I studied computer science, another student asked me after the first semester what I'm going to program on vacation. I stared at them and said I have vacation. Now I programm full time and barely in my free time.
My experience may be an outlier but...
Formal education was great for me, promise of working with cutting edge technologies. Vast amount of opportunities working in the IT sector. I was excited and happy for starting my second career choice.
As for the job I've landed, acceptable-better pay/benefits than most, the most backwards tech to work with and managing environment. I'd like to fantasize about leaving but with the work ethic in my area I can't escape it without a drastic move.
Ah, that's fair.
I'm having the opposite experience, unfortunately. I loved working at {co-op company} where I had a choice of developer environment (OS, IDE, and the permissions to freely install whatever software was needed without asking IT) and used Golang for most tasks.
The formal education has been nothing but stress and anxiety, though. Especially exams.
Ah wow that's a great experience for your co-op! You know maybe i'm rose tinting a little bit now that you've mentioned exams haha, but yeah I'd still say it's been interesting working in the field for me to say the least.
On the other hand I avoided going into the field until I hit 30 because I didn't want to spend all day on a computer and then have it effect my willingness to use a PC at home.
Of course you don't have to be a programmer to be stuck in front of a PC all day so I figured I might as well do something I'm good at. The main shift was that I now strongly prefer console/couch/tv gaming over PC/monitor/desk gaming.
That said I still find I come home unmotivated for hobby dev, if I'm going to work on my hobby projects I need to get out of bed 60-90 minutes earlier and do that while I'm fresh.
The main shift was that I now strongly prefer console/couch/tv gaming over PC/monitor/desk gaming.
This is the big one for me. My co-workers all wonder why I switched from pc to PlayStation, and I'm like, "dude, you just watched me troubleshoot 10 machines that failed our OS upgrade, and you think I want to come home and find that Windows update just broke my sound drivers again?"
That since I was pregnant it was time to let my career go.
My career is critical to my family’s ability to live a middle class life (and it’s critical to my sanity and happiness, but the person who gave me this “advice“ wasn’t really one for acknowledging or valuing mental health).
"Nothing happens in god's world by mistake." "God never gives you more than you can handle." Etc etc.
When 1 in 6 women has been sexually assaulted in their lives (and many men and NB folks), that's a really fucked up thing to say. You never know what someone's been through, and I've personally been through a lot of awful things. I guess it helps some people to tell themselves this kind of shit, but it is impossible to me to think of any kind of meaning that would make being a victim of violent crime "positive" or "worth it" or "a learning experience" blah blah blah. I think the term for that is "toxic positivity."
So either "everything happens for a reason" is utter bullshit, or god is a sadistic fucking asshole.
I'm a Christian but I support the school of thought that says "shit happens".
Another problem with the thinking "everything happens for a reason" is that it can lead to belief in "the just world". When one thinks that life is fair you start to believe that bad things only happens to bad people, ie they deserve it.
Am I supposed to upvote this because it's awful advice or downvote it because it's depressing advice?
It seems like this person either had success with their advice or had nothing to say, but felt the need to say something.
My favorite advice for clinical depression is "just snap out of it."
“Just have one or two and then stop” when telling a friend I’m an alcoholic. Well shit, thanks! That never even crossed my mind!
That is absolutely what follows. I am doing MUCH better, I’ve had 2.5 years sober in the last 3 years because I thought I was “cured” and started “moderating” last summer. The stop drinking subreddit was amazing insight and help. It’s on lemmy but the only posts are the daily checkin. I should start being more active on it to boost it.
It's more a question of how many times it crosses my mind.
People can really suck when it comes to this. I hate how normalized alcohol is in society.
The usual acne related ones, like washing my face more or using tooth paste on my spots. Turns out clearasil won't fix your hormones.
Use olive oil instead of sun screen because it works better than SPF and isn't full of chemicals.
When taking a taxi on a short stop over in Dubai, the taxi driver told me not to have blue hair (which I had) or no man will ever want me, while my then boyfriend was also sitting in the taxi, masquerading as my husband (we were wearing rings and just letting people assume we were married, which everyone did. Including the taxi driver!)
Work related: don't make my code too "complicated" or my one coworker can't understand it (read: my coworker doesn't know what async means, and instead of him learning, I'm just not ever meant to do anything async... When processing huge amounts of data... Also, error handling is too hard, don't do that either) yes, I will forever be salty about this. He deleted weeks worth of work while I had covid because he didn't even try to understand it - his reasoning being "it doesn't work anyway, so there's no point in understanding or learning what I'm doing"
Where do you work that allows someone to just delete someone else's work all willy-nilly? If someone did that to my code I'd be PISSED.
Someone did that to my whole project. I had catefully migrated all the source control to a new and improved system. Out boss decided which project went into which organization.
Some idiot went and intentionally deleted a project I was meant to do maintenance because he had decided all by himself that it wasn't meant to be there.
I had to do a long train ride to the idiot's office for a training and when he told me what he did (proudly!) I gave him the sort of verbal bollocking I have never done before or since.
To the point where he contacted our boss to complain. I got a call from my boss to excuse himself on behalf of the idiot.
ggdG:wq
D:
A game changer I had for acne as a teen was putting a new towel on my pillow every night. My pillow was likely riddled with Cutibacterium acnes from sleeping with acne.
It helped another friend with an acne problem as well.
Mind you that bacteria isn't always the cause of acne, but it's worth trying this trick for any people out there going through it.
Yeah, my painful acne lasted far into adulthood. Found out it was 100% hormonal and finally got on something to treat it.
There's a lot of things that can cause acne.
Same. The amount of times I've heard "have you tried Proactiv?" as though it wasn't the first thing I went and bought when I was 15 is just aggravating. The fact that not even doctors seem to know much about the internal causes of acne and how to treat it is really just embarrassing.
I've also heard the "change your pillowcase" thing far too often. If your pillowcase is so dirty that it's the one thing that stands between you having acne and not having acne, then it sounds like you might have bigger issues lol.
tho to be fair "change your pillowcase" is probably a decent bit of advice for a lot of teen boys in particular. I knew a lot of guys in college who only washed their sheets once a semester. 🤢 It's the "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" of acne advice.
That would have been actually useful advice! I actually did start doing that a couple of years ago, and it really did help. It didn't clear it up, but the acne hasn't been quite as aggressive since. I also do other things now too, so I'm in a pretty good place for my face skin at last lol
Wow that last bit sucks. I'm assuming you don't use GIT and could roll back your changes or fork it from a previous point.
I think that would push me over the edge.
I typed a long reply, forgot to hit send and my reply is gone lol
But yeah, we actually do use git. I was brought into the team to be the git "expert" of the team. But while I was away, not only did he delete my work, he replaced it with something that can't work in the long term and then presented it to my boss, stake holder equivalent and the non-technical testers as the final version. His implementation was "finished", mine was not and I was too angry to look at his work. So in the end, I made it crystal clear that this can never happen again and I made it super clear to everyone involved in the project that my responsibility lies in the X part, and if someone needs something done for the Y part, they are to go to my co-worker. So like a clear division of responsibility.
I also don't have the time to un-fuck up his work. I asked him to integrate certain parts of the original implementation, but he threw a tantrum and yelled that I have no right to tell him what to do. (Ok but even if I were telling him what to do, I have 6 years of experience and a CS degree on his 1 year and no formal training, so like...)
“Everything happens for a reason”
“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle”
"sleep when the baby sleeps"
Yeah because there's absolutely nothing that needs to be done once I finally get my daughter down. No washing and sterilising, for prep for us or for her, general chores around the house which you can never do effectively one handed. And fuck me if I wanted to try and relax and have an actual evening after they're down too.
"Sleeping like a baby" had also never seemed like such a juxtaposition!
Exactly, unless they actually meant it to mean "for no more than 30 minutes then wake up crying inconsolably because I've shit myself."
Then they hit the nail on the head and people have just misconstrued it!
Here's some more unhelpful advice: Hang in there, it gets easier! (for real though)
Also, like, adult humans don't do so good if they only get to sleep for an hour or two at a time. I don't have kids but I have a puppy and my mental health improved 10x when he stopped waking up every night because he needed to pee. Just going from two 4-hour blocks of sleep to one 8-hour block.
Then he hit puppy adolescence and had a massive sleep regression and I was getting an hour or two of sleep at a time between SCREAMING PUPPY INTERLUDES and promptly lost my fucking mind. I gave up on crating him because I needed the sleep.
"You just have to work through the pain." I've injured myself multiple times in the past exercising by following this idiotic advice.
It's one thing to push through discomfort, that's how your body gets stronger. But If you're in actual pain, stop and listen to the alarm bells your body is giving you.
I said "you're absolutely right" and left it at that. They were trying to get to the idea that mental illness is made up and shit like that. I don't feed into that sort of stuff so the conversation didn't carry on after that lol.
Lost out on a good job opportunity with this one. I was going to do some interview prep and someone just told me to, “be yourself, they just want to get to know you.” Yeah bullshit… didn’t get that gig and did interview prep for a different opportunity. It went incredibly well the second time around.
As long-term career advice, I think this is helpful In finding something that doesn't drag you down. If you can't be yourself at work it's going to be far more taxing.
But I absolutely understand this is a luxury to be able to be in that position of being choosy about your employer.
You'll be far happier in an environment that enjoys you for being you, but you'll find a job quicker by saying what they want to hear
Find a trade. If you're good at what you do, it really doesn't matter how wierd or fucked up you are. You can even get in full-on arguments with your boss that get forgotten about once everyone calms down.
As if you are not already yourself!
I like to think what people really mean when they say that is "be your best self", but that's still not very helpful.
When I used to make notes because I don't retain information instantly my boss said "Just don't forget" I exclaimed: "Thanks, I'm cured!" The office got a laugh but it still bothers me that he thought it was a choice
For me it's the opposite, at school I was forced to take notes. Teacher would give me bad grades if they saw me not talking notes. But notes are completely useless for me, and if I take notes I don't understand the lecture. So I started the habit to sketch on notebooks pretending to take notes. Schools can be pretty stupid
Sold it 5 years ago for somewhere in the 700s. So ultimately it turned out okay. But there was an extremely awkward period where I had to move out and would have sold if it wasn’t underwater. I wound up becoming a landlord for several years which I wouldn’t have chosen and felt pretty scummy but it did save me in the long run.
wtf does this even mean. Apart from overt sexism
Internalized misogyny
On dating and relationships: "Just be confident."
It's not wrong, but spectacularly unhelpful. I mean, a brain surgeon has to be confident to go cutting into somebody's head, but clearly that's not enough, right? Confidence as a romantically-attractive quality is a very particular (and peculiar) performance. Going to a party 110% certain of one's own value, sitting in a corner with a confident set of one's jaw, and silently waiting for the ladies to form a queue is...
...sufficient, apparently, because you just to be confident.
That family crap is awful, I would be blessed to never speak a word to my relatives ever again. Luckily though, I'm on a 2 year streak
The first one is the worst. My dad says this to me all the time, well, why is it that I have to do all the work, they never try to maintain a relationship with me. Also, fuck them, they are terrible people, maybe I don't want to maintain a relationship with toxic shitty people even if they are family.
When I was a teen I worked as a waiter at a dirty smokehouse/bbq place.
One of the kitchen staff there would make sexual comments about me. Say things like "You're lucky you look good because you're so stupid." And would ask what kind of underwear I was wearing.
I told my parents about it, and the advice they gave me was "Deal with it. You need a job."
Within a month that kitchen staff member had started to grab me and sexually assaulted me.
I don't talk to my parents anymore.
“Deal with it. You need a job.”
WTAF? How can someone be so blase about their child being sexually harrassed?
Student loans are an investment in your future.
I'd have been better off becoming an electrician.
"Why are you making mistakes? Just don't make them!" - my German teacher
Like... yeah, thanks, that's very helpful! Why didn't I think of that?!
This advice has saved me so many times. Bless your German teacher 🙏.
"Think harder." You are already thinking, trying to come up with an answer and aren't able to. What does "think harder" even mean?
Instructions unclear brain bigger thoughts slower.
Pray about it
Some of the churches where I live have a big banner outside that says, "Try praying". It strikes me as comically desperate. Imagine a car dealership with a "Try driving" banner, a restaurant with "Try eating".
Meditation is better advice. By which I mean doing the exercises to approach grounding oneself in the present, sensing and feeling things from that perspective, instead of the YESTERDAY and TOMORROW clashing storms inside our minds.
But one can't just start meditating one day - "from zero to sixty", so to speak - and expect immediate results. It's a discipline, like brushing your teeth every day.
This, as a general advice, is just as bad as praying unless you actually know the person.
Me: *Suffers from severe depression and anxiety as a teen*
My family: You're just gonna have to deal with it!
They've since gotten my brother treatment for the exact same thing. Meanwhile, I'm still severely depressed and totally untreated because I can't fucking afford it.
"Try again." Particularly involving schoolwork. Derelict teachers then complained when the result of trying again would be identical, to the letter, for the same reasons as the first time. But teach? They did not.
Back as a young fella, striking out in the dating market a bunch ...
"Just be yourself!"
No, honestly, that was the problem last time - I was looking for something a little more granular and actionable.
This is one of those helpful and encouraging things that people say without necessarily really thinking it through. Deep down in intent, they're right - you can't fake your way to healthy relationships, being insincere or putting on a performance of being someone you're not isn't going anywhere genuine down the road. Absolutely correct, absolutely great advice - but it's never given in sufficient complexity and depth to be useful.
None of those grown-ups were like "Ah yes, definitely be sincere about who you are - but also don't spend a whole date monologuing about the book you just read or your favourite video game."
That you can be genuine and sincere about who you are, while still using your social skills and putting your best foot forward socially just ... didn't occur. At the time, my understanding was that it was a hard binary - either I was 100% me at 100% volume and whatever came out of my mouth was definitely the best thing I could say, or I was stifling myself and being 'fake' in order to build an equally-fake relationship.
It took a friend's brother taking me aside to make it 'click' - he was holding a can or a bottle and was like "So the whole object is all 'real you' yeah? But any time you're talking to someone is like right now - you can only see the side that's facing you. It's all you, it's all honest, but you still want to show them the best side, the best angle, of the whole thing. Don't sprint straight to showing them all of your worst angle just because that's what's on your mind that day."
Yeah, the simplistic "Just be yourself" advice doesn't take into account the "If you don't love me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best" type of attitude.
It also bypasses the fact that "yourself" is such a fuzzy concept anyway. So because I'm bad at public speaking, that shouldn't mean I should "be myself" and avoid it. I should merely be aware of my current limitations. That was an accurate way to describe myself in the past, but instead of accepting it, I worked on it, forced myself into a job that requires it, and now I'm pretty good at it.
I think almost everyone can look back 10 years ago and think of some way they ended up changing. So with that being the case, who knows who we'll be 10 years into the future? No need to anchor too hard on who we think we are right now, it's valuable to also give consideration to the kind of person we want to be in the future and take action towards becoming that person.
The problem is that "yourself" still comes out eventually. And sometimes it takes a long while to find "the one" because you kind of hid certain aspects from your partners for too long. This is generally why most of my longer-term relationships have failed. Too many "best faces forward" for too long, until one breaks that
I was mid 30s when I found the one that is "the one". We had our first date in our work clothes, and had a conversation that would sound insane to any observers. For the last 5 years, I've never felt the need to hold anything back or change the way I talk about things, and I dont think she does either. Because we still have insane conversations
I saw a physio, they gave me some exercises which didn't help. I did a bunch of reading online and followed that advice and it worked.
https://www.healthline.com/health/sleeper-stretch
I had quite bad impingement from months of poor exercise selection at the gym. Changed the routine to be balanced internal/external rotation, did 1/2 above 1-2 times a day. Took a few months but now it's completely better. I still do the stretching as a prehab now.
It bugs me when told "nothing you can do" what they really mean is "the problem is chronic so the recovery will take a long time. Patient compliance is often very low and most people won't last the months required for a solution so I'm not going to waste my time. I can help more people if I focus my efforts elsewhere." If you're willing to put in the time, you can fix this. And I suggest you do, if you do nothing impingement inflames each time it happens, decreasing the space in your shoulder, increasing the likelihood, etc.
"You just need to focus and you can do it."
Ah yes, my ADHD ass will just magically find this focus thing you speak of instead of the long and brutal process of finding the right combination of meds and therapy. Problem solved. /s
ADHD advice from non-ADHD-havers has always been infuriating.
It's like yelling at a drowning person with no arms to "swim better!"
Seems to be the case for most mental ailments. It's hard for some people to grasp that other people experience life completely differently. It took me a long time and some very patient people to finally teach me that.
I'm glad you were open to learning, though!
I have a very progressive siblings who is very pro-mental health and all that, but she never fails to mention how "those meds are so bad for you!" Yeah. I mean.. I guess. The alternative is me being unable to care for myself. But whatever.
"Try exercising!"
Cool, I'd do that if my brain didn't confine me to my bed for 18 hours without meds.
People just. don't. get it. And they need to acknowledge that they don't. It's fine!! Just don't try to act like we're on the same level playing field. We're not!
Agreed, also people need to know how literal having "poor mental health" is. The margin you have for extra load or bad things happening is so much smaller. Similar to how an unexpected bill will be shoulder shrug for someone with good economy and a disaster for someone with bad economy.
Cool, I'd do that if my brain didn't confine me to my bed for 18 hours without meds.
Is that what that is? I'm in my 40s and trying to get diagnosed, and the possible ADHD has got worse over the last few years. I've gone through periods of weeks where I'm really struggling to get out of bed, and they coincide with each other.
Oh yes, such as "just form good habits"...
Sorry, I'm incapable of making habits.
Or "think how good it will feel when you're done".
Sorry, best I can do is feel enough anxiety over not having done the thing that it will outweigh the anxiety I feel regarding doing the thing".
It's such a joy sometimes...
Yepp, or at least a subgroup of it and/or autism.
And if you're really "lucky" it turns into PDA, "pathological demand avoidance" or as I prefer to call it "pervasive drive for autonomy". Worst case you enter fight or flight mode due to any demands on you. My feeling is that it's a understandable reaction to the feelings of anxiety demands have pushed on you over the years.
"Being yourself" can be somewhat complex, though.
Our concept of self is more fluid than most people realise, and we will often be very different in different social groups. We might not even notice this until those social groups collide. Each version of yourself is no more or less "you" than any other.
Is it not? If a relationship forms out of you not being yourself then that's not healthy. Although you would have to be not-yourself constantly and at that point doesn't that not-yourself become yourself?
Is this a "be the change you want to see in the world" kinda thing?
I went to my doctor for an infection (i had a swelling in my throat)
My doctor told me to drink water...
I said.. "ok, thanks" and left.
Got a 2nd opinion.
This new doctor actually took a blood sample and gave me antibiotics. I was much better just a few hours later.
report to the medical board would probably be more effective but what dobi know, I am not, and will never be, a whale biologists
And not me directly, but some years ago when my friend and I were both desperately seeking work, and running up against the "you need experience to get a job to gain experience" conundrum. His mentor told him to stop being so precious, and get a boring corporate job with a pension, maybe one that would pay his law school tuition. It wasn't a thing yet, but wow, it would have been the perfect time to reply, "OK, Boomer."
That's like when they tell you to "pound the pavement" and ask to speak to the manager when you bring back your hard copy job application in person. It's hard to even continue a conversation with someone who's that out of touch.
Oof this is like every bit of job advice my dad has ever given me. He means well but he also hasn't job searched since like 1975.
To me, it's very zen. it's more about putting the situation in the perspective that you need to handle the situation for what it is and not focus on being upset at the situation or being upset at not having a solution. Not every scenario has an end that works out for you, If you even have any control over it.
I usually hear it said when someone is having difficulty with a problem they have no real control over. Sometimes you just have to let things go and deal with your own emotions on the situation (which nobody else can do for you), or remove yourself from the situation entirely.
My dad once told me that if my relationship with god was good, my grades would take care of themselves. I know what he meant was, “if you do the things god wants you to do, you’ll also be doing well in school”, but it’s still horrible advice.
More recently, my mother-in-law has been saying to my wife that she wishes that my wife could have faith in god’s plan because it just helps her in own life so much. I always roll my eyes at this. If there is a god, and he has a plan, his plan sucks ass and he plays favorites for sure.
Simple suggestions like this are shit advice at the surface, but they often are the answer in the end. You have to dig and find that internal will to realize them.
Easier said than done, though, so maybe take some drugs to just stop worrying.
I was in a “troubled youth” cult for many years. “Unhelpful advise” is an understatement compared to the heaps of fear-driven doctrines and rituals we had to follow, lest be homeless. I could go on for days about this topic, but the biggest “unhelpful advice” was to cut all of my childhood friends from my life completely, on the basis of “my own good.” I am now a virtual stranger to them, and although I’ve somewhat made amends, nothing will ever make up for our lost years.
Unsolicited medical advice drives me nuts.
Gee. Thanks "doctor" for your advice. Obviously I'm going to listen to you after you watched a three minute YouTube video and not the doctor with six years of medical training and education!
Yes, but have you tried this medical diet that cures all human illness? I mean, how do you really know until you've tried? You see what I'm saying?
😑
But they read the article about the one thing doctors don’t want you to know and now they need to tell you.
"life is unfair, get used to it" - says the fucking winner of life, Bill Gates
"Just be yourself"
That's how I got myself into this mess in the first place idiot
But It's in no way helpful advice to someone who is lonely or otherwise struggling. It's almost along the lines of "why don't you just cheer up".
Helpful advice would be something along the lines "I understand you are struggling, maybe it would be a good idea to check out therapy"
That doesn't really say much though. "Never use cement to fill a pillow" is also crappy advice for someone that feels lonely but can be considered very good advice for someone thats considering filling their pillow with cement.
What
I think it can be helpful as a first sentence, but it needs more. "By loving yourself, I mean treat yourself better. Get a style and work it. Work out occasionally. Eat better. Find a hobby. Find another. If you want somebody else to love you, you have to first take care of yourself or nobody will think you could take care of them. Secondly, you have to make yourself into a person that's interesting because anybody can be nice. You need more than nice. Third, having a life is how you meet people, and you gotta meet 'em before you can ask 'em out. That's why you have to love yourself first."
"Do something that you love and you'll never work a day in your life."
Bullshit. I worked in the video game industry in a field I'm very passionate about with great people who were all talented. But the industry burned me out and almost killed my passion for games as a hobby with the endless unpaid overtime, constant crunch and deadlines, fairly low wage and all that investment was rewarded by eventually being let go along with all the less senior staff because our studio was bought out and the parent company told to cut expenses.
Don't work for the video game industry, people. Make indie games by all means. But stay clear of the big names.
I have always hated that advice. While exceptions exist, there is no faster way to burn yourself out on something you love than making a career out of it. I generally do like my work (IT) now, but a lot if that is because I actively try to not even look in the direction of a computer when I am not in the office. I probably consume less tech/IT industry news now than I did before I worked in the field.
When I wanted to cut back on my drinking: "Just don't buy it."
Look, it's great that you've never been addicted to anything, but it also means that you're in no position to be offering addiction advice.
Obligatory unsolicited link to Dr Greger How not to die
> Science discovers eating real food, predominantly plants, assists health and maintenance of healthy weight without kj restriction
Idk man, I've never gotten married and it's been fine for me. My girlfriend and I have been together for 14 years, have 2 kids, and our family is all that has kept me going through this shitty world. Never married though, so many there is some truth to the advice.
Everything my father ever said to me. Tecate cans look like coke when your driving comes to mind as maybe the best.
"Just be yourself and you'll make lots of friends at your new school."
Four years of constant bullying and loneliness later: I had one acquaintance that would eventually become my friend after a few more years. I also has basically no self-confidence, and my social development was set back half a decade as was still looking for friends to have sleepovers with when everyone else has moved on to normal teenager stuff.
I'm 33 now, I don't remember my sleepovers and all of my highschool friends are gone. We see each other every now and then when it's convenient, but the new friends I made late 20s are the people closest to who I am now.
You aren't "missing out" and feeling like you are is only going to make your confidence issues worse. High school is not what defines who you are.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. (Markus Aurelius).
You have the power to feel confident by altering your estimate of pleasing people. Please yourself, confidence and everything else you feel you want will come much easier. Good luck!
I've realized the verb tense in my original post is misleading. I'm also in my 30s, and was expressing the opinion I had when I was 19. I have a well-established life now, with friends and family and purpose. But I'm not going to at like the experience didn't shape me either.
Particularly devastating when you reflect on a lack of success after following this advice because now you can no longer think you were a victim of unfair circumstance or something external, but rather, you are , at your very core, just unlikeable. After all, you were yourself and it turned out nobody liked you.
That said, I think it's only bad advice in as much as it's glib and shallow, but I can't exactly fault it per-se. I mean, I can't really say the inverse is particularly healthy either. We'd think an adult telling a child specifically not be themselves would be pretty fucked up, but in any case, it's just horrible advice to give because it doesn't prescribe any actual changes one can enact that would result in a different outcome and the advice is insidious because of the implications for the any lack of success you encounter when following it. The other problem is that, you were already being yourself when you sought the advice, and you mostly can't really help but be yourself even when trying not to because you ultimately become yourself trying to be someone else rather than someone else and that doesn't doesn't tend to work very well since if you could have been someone else you probably would be them rather than yourself given how much being yourself has sucked of late.
While I hate that advice though, I can see why it's tempting to give and also how tricky it is to have anything useful to say, especially to a child in school. School is such a hellish jungle. It's an environment so ripe for cruelty and all the worst of human nature at the very worst time for people to be exposed to it and there's so little one can say that really does help because it's such an inherently difficult situation to do anything about. You have to be there for years, you can't rely on any level of maturity at all because the perpetrators of the cruelty are often your peers who are children, none of the adult world's methods of navigating this type of situation are really applicable and the whole institution breeds an environment where this type of thing is such a regular occurrence that the best, kindest and most well meaning staff have to build a kind of immunity to it or risk emotional collapse from empathy for all the children that go through this every year and then you have the staff who are not good people, who don't have empathy and are perpetrators of the cruelty itself whilst charged with the care of the children. This turned in to a big ramble, but yeh, school, fuck school man.
Nah that's actually useful. May help the other person remember if they saw it/moved it/whatever or at least gives them a place to start helping you look for it. If they don't know they wouldn't be able to help question or not.
Australia had to do a huge public health advertising run to shift attitudes on this.
Damaging advice
"Don't try too hard (in my career). I don't want you to be disappointed."
...from my mother.
I like reminding my colleagues they don't get paid more for working harder.
Probably why I didn't get that manager promotion though.
Being perceived to work hard and identifying what's important to your manager / director is second only to being their mates. Good lunk in your endeavours!
Nice try mr. employer association account
"Just read the first and last sentence of each paragraph"
2004 told to use antipsychotic or be expelled from college https://controlc.com/17bd9edd
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Get an advanced education, work harder, never be the one to say, "That is not my job" was the worst advice I could ever receive. I got into debt and was abused and exploited by my employers.
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