Anyone else really struggle with unsolicited advice? Help me to be less prickly, please!!

[camillax]

I really, really struggle with unsolicited advice.

I realise this is generally a me problem (unless someone is doing it as a dominance display, which usually isn't the case, I think it usually comes from kindness).

But I really struggle with people assuming I don't know how to do something and telling me what to do, when I haven't asked for their advice.

Example, I moved house recently and changed gyms. Went to a Les Mills class at the new gym (for context if anyone don't know, Les Mills classs run internationally so you can go to pretty much any gym in the world and if you do a LM class you've done before you basically know what to expect).

Anyway. This other lady in the class (not the instructor) buzzed over, 'noticed' I was new and started giving me her advice on how to do the class (I've been doing BodyPump for 3 years, I don't need to do the entire class on beginner weights, which is what she felt the need to tell me to do).

It just made me really prickly. The class hadn't started. I knew how to set up. Why did she feel she needed to come and tell me what to do?

But more importantly why did something so minor piss me off?

Does anybody else get stupidly irritated by this kind of thing?

I've got teenagers!! I'm pretty sure unsolicited advice annoyed me back then but I was probably too sleep deprived to remember it 😂

Unsolicited advice is patronising and assuming they know better than you. So quite normal to be annoyed by it.

I would be too.

So your family and friends give you advice on recommendations and experiences etc?

Nothing like the OP described then. Do you family and friends go up to strangers in the gym and tell them that they bought the wrong trainers and they should have bought X brand instead? Because that’s the kind of unsolicited advice the OP and the rest of us on here who don’t appreciate it are referring to.

Some of the best experiences of my life have been ones that didn't go to plan.

This is where autism differs substantially from ADHD.

So I'm offended by the paternalistic idea that people with disabilities automatically need strangers to caretake them on outings.

I didn't say they did, but never mind. If you go back to @catscalledbeanz's post, she said:

They'd have walked a mile there and back unnecessarily. And in March in Wales that walk would probably have included copious rainfall.

I don't know anyone, disabled or not, who would welcome a needless two mile walk in the rain. Being disabled would likely make that even more unpleasant.

What kind of person thinks that staying quiet so that someone gets a needless two mile walk makes them morally superior to someone who speaks up?

BTW the person who approached you in the gym shouldn't have done, she's not trained nor insured to coach people.

Exactly

@camillax when I read the OP my immediate thought was, she mustn't have children! I remember a complete stranger telling me I should talk to my baby as I walked him at a few months old. He had no words! Anyway I agreed and walked on briskly, as I was afraid she might try to stroke him or something.

Recommendations, examples and experiences are not unsolicited advice. It is normal to be able to converse with friends and family about their experiences and problems without wading in with advice that was not asked for. Often people want to be heard and validated, not ‘fixed’. It is very tedious trying to converse with someone who centres themselves by offering advice as they need to feel important by taking an advisory stance or they lack the creativity and social skills to have an interesting conversation.

Often people want to be heard and validated, not ‘fixed’.

I'm autistic and really struggle with this concept. I'm thinking "why are you telling me your problem if you don't want me to help you fix it?"

Based on your responses on this thread OP, I'd say what you struggle with isn't your prickly reaction to unwanted advice, but misanthropy on a grand scale. Why on earth ask "why does this bother me so much and how do I deal with it?" if what you really want to say is "people eh, twats, am I right?"

I’m not autistic and I struggle with this concept too! I’ve learned to manage my responses through coaching but I think it’s the result of being a parent and leading a team where often you’re the one to offer solutions or come up with a way through the problem.

I'm as prickly as fuck these days. I've got chronic, debilitating health conditions that busybodies know how to treat, usually with heavy overtones of "DocT0rS woN'T TelL y0u tHiS". I wasted years, making my health worse, following the bullshit advice of everyone from personal trainers and internet gurus, to randoms who just happened to have read an article in the Telegraph.

For the record, unremitting exhaustion will NOT be improved by getting out more, stepping up the exercise, following a diet incorrectly claimed to be Palaeolithic or any other orthorexic nonsense, CBD, acupuncture or extracts of seaweed 🙄 CAN YOU TELL I'M ANNOYED?!!

While I was unwisely stepping up the exercise, I was plagued by mansplainers. God knows why so many blokes deem themselves experts and assume women want, need, even crave their technique critique no matter how pointless or wrong it may be.

My stepdad had a neighbour who never stopped imparting unsolicited advice. He'd march over to where SD was putting up a fence, planting leeks, anything he saw him doing, and deliver a loudly overbearing stream of "Don't do it like that, do what I say". It was driving SD insane - the temptation to bash him in the head with a rake was dangerously strong - so we made a pact. SD would go "Hmm," ignore and carry on while thinking beautiful murderous thoughts. And I would do the same with amateur health advisors.

It mostly worked 🙂 I do, however, tell people sometimes that I don't want their advice or that it's crap advice. I've been known to say "Thanks, but go away," and "I wasn't asking". I don't care if they're offended, why should I?

... After this much-needed rant (sorry), OP: Go ahead and be annoyed! You don't owe anything to interfering fuckwits.

Weeellll....the answer to that is in the thread. I changed position based on the responses. Isn't that the point of ASKING for opinions?

I've been going to Les Mills classes since the Gordon Brown administration. I don't need the concept explained and now I feel prickly. Like a prick.

My next door neighbour is just like your old one 😂he's exactly like the Harry Enfield character "I don't believe you wanted to do that".

He pops up to opine on anything and everything.

His name is Rick and we just refer to it in our house as getting rickrolled. Funnily enough, he doesn't bother me. I know he's going to do it, it's just his way, he's a nice helpful neighbour in other ways and we've got along fine for 15 years.

It's the fecking strangers that do me in. Which I suppose is in complete contradiction to what the early poster who said repeat offenders are the worst said. We're all different I think!

And I'm Glenn from Les Mills. Check out my guns.

Except sometimes people literally do know better than you, like the "museum is closed" example.

Someone else mentioned a broken bag earlier. I also have a broken bag and EVERY TIME I GO OUT people tell me my bags open and it drives me mental - but that's not their fault, they're trying to save me from losing my purse/phone and having a shitty day because of it, so what I really am annoyed about is it reminding me, again, I need to fix my shitty bag 😂 so I feel the irritation but I'd never spray it all over the kind people trying to help me for no benefit to themselves - I smile and thank them and get on with my day. If you can't do that, then yes it is a you problem.

On the plus side, this thread has reminded me what a lot of touchy humourless fuckers there are our there and to keep myself to myself. I was queuing behind a lady today wearing a baby sling in a way that looked uncomfortable (strap was twisted and digging into her shoulder) and I though several times about offering to untwist it for her, but didn't because I didn't want her to think I was interfering - than fuck I didn't based on this thread!!!

She probably does have nerve endings in her own shoulder so well done for recognising her agency in the situation.

I would be irritated as well. But I'm a person that stays to myself. I have done this but only after I have observed someone struggling etc.

Well yes, for some people the point of asking for opinions is to very quickly confirm their own total correctness and superiority, and you do seem to be one of those. Given you went from "am I too prickly and why would that be?" to "actually everybody IS just a cunt and my problem is I'm too nice so have trouble acknowledging that they are, must work on that!" in about 5 posts, and have aggressively and sarcastically snapped back at anyone with a view that indicates maybe the nice lady trying to be helpful wasn't a total twatbag who was out to shit on you for her oen ego-boost, forgive me if I am a little sceptical that you have thoughtfully weighed up the various opinions before arriving at your "people are twats" conclusion.

And what have you gained from participating in this thread?

Yeah I daresay she does. But when I had a newborn and was still getting the hang of having twice the amount of stuff everywhere I went, having to stand up straight when I had a sleeping baby stuck to my front, and slings were these strange new multistrapped contraptions that I had to master the use of on about 2 hours broken sleep, and was feeling like EVERYBODY ELSE was doing TOTALLY FINE and that asking for help was a sign of failure and weakness,little acts of supportive kindness from family, friends and total strangers could bring me to tears of gratitude some days.

Just saying everyone's different.

I remember once, about a decade ago, I was riding the tube to work after a fight with my boyfriend and crying (tried to stop, couldn't, was mortified). Everyone was doing the polite London thing of totally ignoring me in case I turned out to be an emotionally unstable crack head. Then I felt something on my knee, looked down, and a tissue had appeared on my lap, put there by the kind lady next to me. I mean I had tissues in my bag, and I could have got all narky because WHAT BUSINESS WAS IT OF HERS if I got snot all down my blouse, maybe I WANTED to get snot all down my blouse for all SHE knew, the interfering bitch. But actually it was exactly what I needed,to feel seen and cared for, and I carried that tissue around with me all day to remind me I mattered.

To be fair I am probably more hapless than most, given that once I actually lost a shoe down the gap on the tube and then the tube rolled away, and a stranger literally gave me their spare shoes. I could have learned a valuable life lesson that day, hopping semi-shod to Holborn New Look, but I'm very fucking grateful I didn't have to.

It's actually given me occasion to remember all the kind and helpful things that strangers have said to me and done for me over the years, and given me a rosy glow. So cheers for that 😁

It's a fair point, though, thanks for sharing.

I remember crying on a deck of an Irish ferry into the night when I was 18 over a boy I'd left behind in Ireland.

And some woman deciding to stand next to me and 'relate' to me about how it felt to be saying goodbye to Ireland. I was English. Going home after a holiday there. But she interrupted my solitary crying into the wind to commiserate about missing the homeland.

So often it's more about the rescuer. In fact, pretty much always.

The short answer to your question, after taking in the entire thread OP, about why we struggle with unsolicited advice, is that the advice really says nothing about you and is all about the person offering it. If we could only remember that when we hear it, then maybe we would not take it so personally.

It has nothing , nothing to do with you. It is all about the advice givers' needs for giving, trying to be helpful all the way down to being controlling, superior, centre of attention, trying to make you feel stupid, etc.

There are as many reasons why people do this as there are people. Whatever advice they give is a reflection on them.

Maybe the best thing to do is smile, ignore and get on with your life.
Like that smart girl golf pro did with the idiot mansplainer's unsolicited advice. Shot that ball straight out of the park.