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For me as someone with ADHD and Autism i could list so many. But the most useless defenetly are:
"Just use a planner"
"You can learn to reign it in, others have learned to do so too!"
"Dont throw such a fit over something that small! I only changed your routine/moved around your entire order"
"You just need to focus more!"
"Pull yourself up by the bootstraps!"
My old boss used to say: "there is never a good time. Do it anyway"
This was often about taking your holidays, visiting your parents, testing a theory, building a PoC, etc. Analysis paralysis kills success.
I love this advice, and I like to combine it with one other
"Take one more step"
It's similar to "give 110%" but I don't want you to burn out. Give me 80%, and then give me just one more step. Expand your capabilities in a comfortable range.
For this particular scenario: take it one more step and help them make the decision. I'm not gonna influence your decision, if I can avoid it. But I'll be your rubber ducky and I'll let you know when you need to pause for a second and gather your thoughts to find the solution.
Go to bed early so you can get a good night's sleep. I have heard this so many times, and I'm convinced it was the cause of many sleepless nights. It's probably great advice for people with a normal circadian rhythm, but it's useless for those with a non-standard chronotype. That shit is baked into your DNA, and medicine currently has no idea how to change it. Especially since it's so much easier just to blame the night owl.
Lord, how I couldn't agree more. There are so many conflicting studies about how humans sleep because there's a fuckin lot of us and we each sleep a bit different. I, for example, can take a 30 minute nap and hit one REM cycle and then go at 100% for 4 hours. My partner needs to hit at least 3 REM cycles across 9 hours in order to feel okay for even one second of their day.
Me - "Doctor, it hurts when I do X." X is a perfectly normal activity like walking, raising arm over head, etc
Doctor - "Then maybe you shouldn't do X?"
Did you get your doctor on Stackoverflow?
lol, the internet was unknown to most of the world at that time. He was just a doctor with a horrible bedside manner
"Choose to be happy" This is advice I've heard from people on Reddit who have overcome their depression and say it's a choice. No, Happy, it is not.
I try really hard to not downplay the environmental effects that played into my depression journey when I give advice for this exact reason. You're right, it's not easy to fundamentally change the way you think to such a degree that your hormones change. It's possible though. But it's probably gonna need a disruption in your environment that you may or may not be able to facilitate. I got lucky, and my disruption happened to me so my journey was helped a lot
There's a major push coming to ban depression meds. I had long, drawn-out conversations with people who genuinely think exercise will fix things.
Yeah, for people without clinical depression, maybe.
"I was lucky and my brain chemistry corrected itself, so all you need to do is stop being unlucky and be lucky like me!"
While we're at it, if you can't reach the top shelf, just grow taller. That's what I did.
Maybe a bit of a stretch, but I try my best to interpret things in the best possible way (sometimes to the point of naivety). In a way, I think of it as "choosing to be happy", in the sense that if someone says or does something that could upset me, I try to look for a way to interpret their actions as something that doesn't upset me.
Of course, this doesn't always apply, but I've experienced that it makes life a lot better. A lot of unpleasant things can be attributed to mistakes or misunderstandings, which are a lot easier to not get upset about than people being intentionally mean.
The only actual advice I can think of that relates is refusing to be involved with people who make you unhappy (which I realize so much of requires choice and resources to island yourself off in this way).
Its still something to keep in mind, if you can insulate yourself from people you've noticr make you unhappy and overstimulated, that is a very different state of being even saying nothing about whatever "happiness" is.
If I had to choose between happiness or freedom from pain, I would choose the latter every time. Happiness can be stumbled upon or negotiated or gradually arriver at, pain needs to be alleviated or it cancels out everything else
I remember my friend being really upset that her long term relationship failed with her partner leaving for another woman. I remember trying to empathise saying something along the lines of, “You can’t ever really trust anyone no matter how long you know them.”
I still kinda believe that however it was 100% the wrong thing to say in terms of being reassuring since it implied they’d been naive which was not the case. Their ex had all the responsibility for their relationship ending.
“You just have to be persistent”
That can be true but no amount of persistence is going to make Timothee Chalamet be interested in me as Im closer to his dad’s age and he’s not gay.
“Don’t worry, everything happens for a reason.”
That “reason” could be shitty decisions, power beyond your control, or sheer bad luck. But we all know it’s just thinly-veiled religious indoctrination.
The one that's even worse is "God never gives you more than you can handle." Tell that to a bajillion dead people.
It also tries to remove accountability from people who really do not care to pay attention to what they're doing. They'll be in shit and they'll think "ahh this is what God might have had planned for me" and instead of trying to fight to survive, they just succumb to it with that belief.
Religion is just bad to believe in.
IDK, I think "just do it" is actually pretty reasonable advice, for the most part.
Obviously, it depends
everything depends
but I feel like it applies to many aspects of life.
Sometimes you're scared or anxious about something needlessly, and it really is best to just go for it and figure it out later, no matter how much your brain tells you it's terrible and not worth it.
As someone who struggles with anxiety paralysis on certain tasks, "just do it" is extremely helpful.
THANK YOU!!!!! I replied to someone that replied to my comment trying to explain exactly that...
it's good advice, until someone's asking "how?" then saying "you just do it" becomes useless as tits on a tomcat. cause I DON"T FUCKIGN KNOW WHAT "IT" YOU"RE REFERRING TO! THAT"S WHY I ASKED
Yeah this thread just feels like an axe grinding session where people are taking a situation where someone gave them advice that maybe wasn’t applicable or good in that context and now they think it’s just useless at all times. That’s fine I get it vent away, but yeah lol
"Be yourself." Motherfucker, who else would I be?!
What "Be yourself" means is: "Don't pretend to be someone else because you think that will make you more appealing. It will likely show through that you're not that other person and your attempts at deception will drive away the people you want to attract. Further, if you find that being your authentic self is something you are ashamed or embarrassed being, perform some introspection on what those things are about yourself you don't like and take action to change on things you can. Examine rationally whether the thing you think is shameful is something you even have control over. For example, are you ashamed because you're not tall? You have no control over that one. That is nothing to be ashamed of. Are you ashamed because you don't have good hygiene? That one you DO have control over. If you don't know how to correct that, ask for help and get to the place where you won't be ashamed of your hygiene. You will 'be yourself' that is not as tall as you like, but with good hygiene."
That's a lot to say so it gets boiled down to "Be yourself".
I hate that advice. It would literally ruin my livelihood as an identity thief.
bonus points when "being yourself" is what got you into a mess to begin with. I was myself in school and bullied endlessly into suicide
"It is what it is"
That's not advice.
I respectfully disagree. there are things out of your control you must accept. if you do not, it will only stress your mind and body out.
focus on the things that you can, like keeping your family intact and having a good support group. good luck!
Just get over it!
Move on!
Because both pieces of advice are intended to play out on the advisor's terms!
So if you were to follow their advice with, "Cool. Get the fuck out of my life!", they'll be, "No! NoT tHaT wAy!!!"
Don't get mad! It doesn't help anything.
In the replies there willl be a lot of examples of advice that actually does work forna lot of people, but not everyone. They are valid examples of bad advice at the personal level because it doesn't work for them, but the advice itself is not bad advice in general. A lot of people do hold themselves back by not trying or do wallow in self pity (not clinically depressed) and most people can overcome those thing by just doing something, but not everyone can.
Like I have ADHD and I have tried enough memory tricks and failed at them to know adding more things to remember is counter prodictive for me, and that scheduling tasks only works up to a certain number of tasks in a time frame before being overwhelmed.
But there is one piece of advice that is actually the opposite of what the saying literally means and where the phrase came from. "Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" was an example of doing something that is literally impossible. It was used as an example of how impossible the thing that was being asked of people was. Now it is twisted to mean that success is possible if you try hard enough, which is the opposite of what it means. It is literally the worst advice because it is saying "do the literal impossible thing'. .
Thank you.
Like "choose to be happy" isn't a magical mantra but something you need to work on in order to change the way you reflexively think.
"Be yourself" is essential advice for people trying to have a mask on 24/7.
And I've mostly given up replying to such threads because they're usually an excuse to wallow and complain that they've tried everything.
I don't have a magic potion that makes things better overnight, but I do have techniques that I have found valuable in improving my own mental health, but by bit, over several years.
All will be good.
"Just be yourself" without clarification.
There's something to it, but too often it is interpreted as "no need for introspection or improvement"
"You got this!" What kind of magic spell do you think that fucking phrase is?? That is one of the stupidest, low self esteem phrases in the last 50 years.
Tell someone "don't get upset" and they're gonna lose their shit
Tell them "don't panic" and they'll listen most of the time.
for some reason, someone saying "just stay calm" would just make me brace up.
or if someone says "it's easy, you can do it", the sus gauge starts rising.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!
"Pick up a pencil ❗❗❗1"
