Guideline Reminder: Giving Advice

[Kizzie]

Hi Everyone:

Every once in a while when I notice a trend in not observing a certain guideline I will post a reminder.  I am seeing a tendency for giving advice rather than making suggestions so I am posting a gentle reminder to encourage members to follow our guideline about this.

The difference between giving advice and making a suggestion is saying for example, Giving advice = "You need to do this or that" versus "What about trying XXXX or XXXX?   I did this in a similar situation and it worked well for me."

Or,

"You are dissociating and you should .........."  versus "It may be that what you are experiencing is dissociation meaning you 'go away emotionally' basically so you don't have to experience difficult feelings.  I would dissociate when XXXXXXXX happened and here's what I did to help myself - XXXXXXXXX.  There are some resources here --links --- if you want to have a look and see if that's what you might be experiencing and what you might do about it."

We are passing along our lived experience which we are well qualified to do, but we are not qualified to give therapy or counseling.

Here is the actual section in our Member Guidelines (http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=1616.0):

Giving/Receiving Advice

While we encourage members to support and encourage others in theirs recovery, it is important to remember that we are each here to work on our own recovery first and foremost.  Many of us with CPTSD have been trained to be caretakers and recovery for us involves resisting the temptation to do so here at OOTS.   

Feel free to share how you have dealt/coped with various situations and to make suggestions (as long as they are phrased as such) - that's the purpose of this forum, but please don't make blanket statements like "You *should* do this and that" based on what you think and/or have read in the resources about CPTSD.  Another person's situation may be very different from yours.  Often, people need to come to their own conclusions in their own time frame. We are all coming from different stages, situations, and backgrounds. 

If a pattern of giving too much advice to others and not focusing on one's own recovery is noted, the member will be warned and if the behaviour persists, possibly banned.

[Kizzie]

So I am pinging this post to once again remind members to avoid the "should" and "should not" posts in favour of making suggestions and using examples from one's own experiences. We cannot possibly know what is best or not best for another, we can just post about what we think, our opinion in what I call a "soft" way. That is, we don't know what will work best for the person but that we have a thought or suggestion about what might and often follow that up with an example from our own life.

There's a subtle but very important difference and it has to do with respecting the agency of the other person to know/do what's best for them.

Thanks for your cooperation with this, it makes OOTS a safer and more respective place for all of us to be!

Kizzie

[Blueberry]

Thanks for pinging this, Kizzie. There have been discussions on this on threads and various other places recently.

it has to do with respecting the agency of the other person to know/do what's best for them.

 

I may be in the minority, but otoh I'm probably not the only one on here: I am most helped by mbrs suggesting that I may be in an EF again, since that's mostly the case when things are hard-going. No matter how many times I end up in an EF, I don't seem to recognise it when I'm in it. Partially because my EFs are changing as healing progresses. Or else I'm helped by mbrs reminding me of what I've already written in posts, which some people on here do already, or encouraging me, pointing out progress I hadn't even noticed.

However, I am really NOT helped by head-based suggestions, no matter how much another mbr may be in their emotions when they suggest it. It is my experience that people are still working from a cognitive level, especially when they see I'm in pain and are desperate to find me a solution. Thank you kindly all who try, but I have enough experience to know that it doesn't work for me!! Often I don't know why a particular suggestion won't work, except that it doesn't resonate at all. Example: I was given the suggestion on OOTS of writing out a week's plan of when to do what, to help me get round to doing things. I actually tried that years ago but it didn't work. It's become clear to me  only in the last couple of days why not: I'm constantly, chronically trying to do too much. Everything is too much, almost all the time. Deep down I know that, have known it a long time, but it's been too hard to permanently and irrevocably accept. These past few days I've been getting lots done because I have made the final decisive step to give up my self-employed status. I'm handing my papers in so-to-speak and accepting that I am, indeed, far too unwell to work for pay, far too unwell to manage the admin of being self-employed. Would anybody on the forum have come up with this idea/suggestion for me? I doubt it. That's not really what you want to tell somebody: I think you should give up.     But even if someone had, it wouldn't have been useful because I need to come to the point of realisation myself! A deep-down 100% through and through realisation that is thorough enough for me to follow through on.

I've been on this forum quite a long time. The Guidelines basically remain the same but possibly different generations of OOTS mbrs interpret them slightly differently? Anyway, I've noticed the change into more suggestion-giving over the past 1-2 years, especially in Journals. Although suggestions aren't quite advice, I'd like to ask mbrs to go easy on the suggestions towards me, but maybe also towards others.

I understand wanting to help others who seem in distress but helping oneself out is all part and parcel of healing, which nobody can do for a different individual. I also note that when I'm trying to help someone else, I tend to 'split off' a bit. I go into my head and can't feel very well anymore. Maybe not everyone on the forum splits like this, but I imagine I'm not the only one either.

[Kizzie]

I agree that too many suggestions can be overwhelming BB and I'm certainly not recommending members take suggestion giving over the top. Just listening (or in this case reading) and letting the member know that you feel for them and hope/believe they can work it out is also helpful IMO. It takes our responses into the feeling/empathetic part of ourselves and we can all use a bit more of that I think. That said, it is difficult as you say to watch someone suffer and so we often feel the need to make suggestions that might help them out. It's in the nature of a support forum, but like anything too much of a good thing...