Awesome Article On Coping With Unsolicited Advice

[roxie]

It's invisible illness week and invisibleillnessweek.com has a lot of great articles.

This one in particular was great about how to cope with unsolicited advice we always receive

http://invisibleillnessweek.com/2010/08/24/how-to-cope-with-unsolicited-advice-when-you-have-an-invisible-chronic-illness/

[brethor9]

good article bananas! although I have to admit the longer I have this illness it is becoming harder and harder for me to be graceful with people giving me unsolicited advice...like we don't struggle enough with the symptoms and then have to deal with all the back talk.....ugggh ;(

[roxie]

I know!

And what really gets to me is when it's someone who has a health problem that different than ours. Have you ever run into someone who thinks what works for their disease must for work for yours. SO FRUSTRATING.

And do you ever feel like our illnesses aren't looked at like other disabilities? Like you see ppl in wheelchairs and w/out limbs that can do all sorts of things & they are praised for it, rightfully so! Yet some don't see us as strong or persaverant bc we aren't doing earth shattering things. When it takes a ton of courage to get up everyday & get through basic things.

[Batik]

Fairly good article, yep. Here's one I discovered by accident when yet another person was urging me to try homoeopathy. You simply say briskly, "Thanks, but I've tried it already and it didn't do a thing for me." Then change the subject immediately. I then realised that this is an excellent response, even if you haven't actually tried the quack therapy in question.

Explaining how something is a quack therapy rarely works, on the other hand. If they know nothing about it and don't have an agenda to push, they may want to listen. If they have something invested in the idea, forget it. You would not believe how many people urged me to follow the scam known as a "liver flush" when I had gallstones, and even when I politely showed them conclusive proof that it was a scam, most of them got even more argumentative and sometimes quite nasty.

[spinner]

Getting unsolicited advice is INFURIATING, but not just in the medical arena. I try to never give advice unless

asked, and even then with hesitation because people dont take it anyway.

People tend to blurt out emotions rather than facts. My own sister is a health professional and told a large group of people how "impatient" I am when I went to mayo clinic last year. This was after being sick for six months and unable to work! I guarantee you, until it happens to them, they have all kinds of opinions based on ignorance.

My technique for dealing with this advice is probably not textbook. Sometimes I'll even say "what is your own personal definition of dysautonomia? Stunned, they confess they have no idea what it is. The obvious implication is that it is essentially impossible to give commentary based upon admitted ignorance.

Edited September 13, 2012 by MomtoGiuliana

[Sea otter]

What's the worst/funny advice you've been given? 

Mine... to reduce water and salt and see what happens, just push through/what can get wrong, eat more/change diet, go outside/in the sun.

[MomtoGiuliana]

I was also told by a doctor to reduce/eliminate salt.

Of course the worst advice, that many of us have gotten, was to see a psychiatrist.

[MikeO]

For me it is drink more water when i was already drinking a gallon of fluid a day when i was passing out just trying to stand up to get more water to comply and then told we don't want blood pressures to help see what is going on. issue was i was way over medicated