“So just do it” is a glaring one for me.
Simply because it is disregarding someone else’s thought processes and how their mind works. Where simply ‘just do it’ is not as easily and readily accomplished. This kind of advice is always uttered when one person is going on about how they’re tired of something and want to do something else. So this gets mentioned.
It could be a lot of reasons as to why, even if it is down to the obvious reasons. My valid reason a lot of the time is that I just don’t have the energy or will to just magically get myself to do something.
“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.
It’s those times where I shorten my response to something like “thanks I’ll keep that in mind” or “I appreciate you trying to help” and then brush it off/not follow that advice, because it usually comes from people who at least sort of care but have no idea what to say or how to fix the situation.
If someone genuinely wants to invest in helping your situation they’ll ask and be open. For me most of the time my answer is “you being there is enough” and when I tell them I don’t expect them to have answers to my problems they relax too.
If it’s randos trying to be argumentative or dismissive then they can go sit naked on a cactus. /tangent
TL;DR: You’re right, but it’s an onslaught and you deserve peace of mind. You aren’t obligated to defend yourself to them.
“Be yourself.” Motherfucker, who else would I be?!
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
I hate that advice. It would literally ruin my livelihood as an identity thief.
Came here to say that.
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”.
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.
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.
It still doesn’t work as advice for everyone, because some people have chemical imbalances that keep it from working no matter how long they try. For them, it won’t actually change how they think or feel, it is just practice for pretending it worked.
It can work for most people whole still being bad advice for some people. Heck, I have given up on trying to remember people’s names when I first meet them because decades of trying didn’t work since ADHD is a disorder. I’m acknowledging my limitations.
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.
“Promise me you won’t be upset.”
I am not promising shit until you tell me what we’re talking about. In fact, you just got me upset.
However, “don’t panic” wouldn’t get a better reaction from me. If you want me to not panic, tell me you’ve already dealt with it and there’s nothing for me to do, or at the very least describe your plan. I’ll decide whether panic is warranted after I hear your solution.
Another bad one:
“We need to talk when you get here.”
If we’re not going to talk about it now, why not wait to bring it up until I’m there?
I’m just saying, panicking basically never helps any situation and can even make things much worse. As much as that might go against human nature, not panicking will help you in infinitely more situations than panicking.
“We need to talk when you get here.”
If we’re not going to talk about it now, why not wait to bring it up until I’m there?
I think I might be okay with this one. If I think I’m going over there for a fun get together, but I’m ambushed with a serious discussion (almost always very bad) it’s going to be more challenging for me. I think the warning would prepare me for what’s about to happen.
Well, the context I was thinking was routine travel.
If I had plans with a friend, and they had something big to tell me, I’d be ok with them saying we needed to talk when I got there.
I’m thinking more along the lines of:
It’s Wednesday, I’m at work, and my wife calls me in the middle of the day to tell me we have to talk when I get home.
Or conversely, I’m at home, and my boss calls me to say I should come to his office so we can talk when I get in.
“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!
I find that people often say this when what “it is” is something too ugly to name. “It is what it is” is true, but sometimes what “it is” is that the speaker is a racist defending another racist
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!
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.
“Just do it” is helpful in some cases, but mostly not. E.g. you think that a hobby is cool but you don’t feel like you could start it? Just do it, take a course, try it out. It becomes unhelpful quickly when the realities of your life are just different. Telling in unemployed person with debt who is fascinated with flying to “just get a pilot license” ignores their reality. But telling a business analyst who’s interested in manga but feels like this hobby would destroy his image, to “just do it and buy some mangas” is totally valid.
I have been struggling financially for most of my life and have received way too often the unhelpful advice to “just do it. Live a little.” Just book that 100€ flight to Italy and see Rome. Just get a smartphone, everyone has one now! (That was when smartphoneplans were very expensive here and I couldn’t justify such a high monthly cost. Yes I’m older.)
There is way too much “just do it” advise by people that live in their nice little bubble of a well-off, supportive family system and never realize that the only reason they can “just do it” is because they never had to eat rice with tomato sauce for 3 days in a row because there were only 10€ on the bank account by the 26th.
On a similar note, “just get a job, just learn something more profitable/in an industry with high wages” is also an often unhelpful advice. Not everyone can be good at everything. And not everyone can just uproot their lives and go back to school for a few years. Yes, some people can do amazing things like get a masters degree while working full-time and having kids. But this advise, too, ignores the reality of many people. If you have no support system or if you simply aren’t cut out for the currently profitable jobs, you can’t just magically switch careers. And even if you do: things change so quickly and there is no guarantee, that the currently well-paid job will still be like that in 5-10 years.
All will be good.
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!”
“Trust your gut” sorry but our gut means our monkey brain. If logic is an option, trust logic. Trust your gut only applies if:
- You are talking about fast situations where all you can do is react as fast as possible
- You are really stupid and your gut out smarts you
- You are extremely biased and so your logoc is flawed
- You are talking about food
“Pick up a pencil ❗❗❗1”
