Why the best advice to give is no advice at all.
By: Tanya Tinney
Tags: Advice, Personal Development, Advice For Life, Parenting Advice, Parenting

These days, I’m really shy about giving advice (at least the unsolicited kind). Or helping unless I’ve been directly asked. Which possibly sounds selfish, but I’ve come by these decisions from lessons hard-learned. Experiences that have taught me that sometimes the best advice to give is no advice.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I really love to share my two cents with anyone who will listen (or read). But these days, I try to do so in a way that is authentic, vulnerable and speaks to my own experience while honoring that of others. What ‘advice’ anyone takes from it is purely subjective. Which (selfishly) means I’m off the hook when it comes to responsibility for the what, how, if or why from doing so.

Not being responsible for anyones choices except my own = freedom (if you haven’t tried this, you really need to try it — my first piece of unsolicited advice 😉 ).

Who knew therapists don’t give advice?

Now, I’m not gonna lie, it came as a complete shock and something I had to work around when I realized that one of the most important things therapists should NOT do is give advice. Wow. My mind was blown and I had to reconsider my life goals and choices. As a people-pleaser and self-diagnosed over-thinker-extraordinaire, my evil plan was to use these skills to figure out solutions and give advice as a career.

Thankfully, as I learned and grew personally and professionally, I learned that helping clients come up with their own advice was a much more effective, long-term strategy — for them AND me.

Image: Dean Moriarty Pixabay

Because, you see, advice is generally only helpful if it’s been asked for — and even then, unless we have all the details and context and mind-ninja tricks to understand WHY we are being asked for advice, we will still get it wrong.

And when we get it reasonably ‘right,’ the advice is really just ours — and can potentially serve to disempower the advice-seeker. Pretty quickly, it can all become a weird, toxic, co-dependent relationship. (It’s shocking how often that happens in therapy relationships, friendships, business relationships, families and marriages).

Certainly, I’ve asked for advice and then just as quickly thought of thirteen reasons why that advice won’t work for me. If you think about it, you probably have too.

We all do it. My teens do it about a zillion times a day.

The problem with unsolicited advice

Perhaps the biggest problem with unsolicited, over-helpful, solution-focused advice or help is that it only targets the immediate problem — and only from the experience of the advice giver. While a therapist might have a broader and deeper experience than, perhaps, your cousin Ricky, it is still limited by their own perspective, experience and ego (hopefully not too much of the latter).

Don’t get me wrong: cousin Ricky might have the BEST advice ever, so don’t let me stop you from following their pearls of wisdom. But remember no matter how good, Ricky’s advice will be colored by their own experience, their knowledge of your situation, and whether or not their intentions are objective.

I have PLENTY of advice for my teen girls that I dole out on the regular. Most of it falls on deaf ears, some of it they actively argue with me about until one of us calls a truce, and the rest of it ends up being some sort of mush-up of helpful and it-would-be-better-if-you-just-stop-talking-mom.

A personal tale of well-intentioned help gone very, very wrong

If you have read any of my previous blog posts, you know that I love to share personal stories to help explain what I’m talking about (and also to provide background for any future therapists trying to help my children). Today, it was a struggle to think of a good story to tell: my mind felt like a plate of mushy refried beans. When suddenly, out from the pile of beans emerged a picture of my childhood self. And in that picture I was wearing red knitted shorts.

Which I realized was the perfect analogy for today’s story.