Guideline Reminder: Giving and Receiving Advice

[Kizzie]

Hi Everyone:

Every once in a while we add a reminder here about certain guidelines if we see that people are beginning to stray a bit. The Mod Team is seeing a tendency for members to give advice rather than make suggestions and share their own experience so we are posting a reminder here to encourage members to follow our guideline.

The difference between giving advice and making a suggestion is saying for example, "You should do so and so" and "What about trying XXXX?   I did that in XXXXXX 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 which as I understand is XXXXXXXXX.  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." 

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 cope or have 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.

[Hope4Me]

All these rules and technicalities and watching out for triggers are overwhelming.   I don't understand triggers or how you know what one is so I will I guess just be quiet.

[Kizzie]

Triggers refer to posts that are overly graphic such as describing in great deal the abuse you suffered rather than using general terms and then talking about how it made you feel which is the crux of why we're here basically.  It can be difficult to know when something is near to or crosses the line (which isn't cast in concrete, the line I mean, it's more a matter of considerate judgement on the member's part), thus if you think something might be triggering, we ask that you reword it or add a trigger warning.  This allows members who are struggling with similar issues to choose whether or not to read the post. 

Similarly, the guidelines as a whole are intended to help this community be as safe as possible given that everyone here suffers from CPTSD. We all need to as safe as possible and to know that others will be considerate, encouraging and supportive in our journey to recovery. 

Certainly you are most welcome to just read for a while and in doing so you may see that the guidelines are actually helpful for you in your recovery and chose to post at some point. 

Welcome to OOTS!

[Kizzie]

Just 'pinging' this as I've seen some posts leaning in the direction of advice giving.  Instead please make suggestions, share your experiences, give your opinion but try to stay away from statements like "You should/should not  _____________".

Thanks everyone!

Kizzie