Useless Advice

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What is the most useless advice you have received?

Me? Go out and talk to people.

Does not work at all when it comes to helping you to make friends. It only helps if you want to have 50 conversations a week about the weather.

"just be yourself" (has taken me nearly half a century to even begin to figure out who that is)

to just keep putting myself into situations where i'm uncomfortable, until i'm not: "push through it"
(25 years of trying never worked)

"Be yourself" - Whenever I've tried to do that, they tell me that I'm acting just like someone else (i.e., father, teacher, actor, et cetera).

'Join clubs/societies to meet people with similar interests and make friends.' I kept on trying this for years and it never worked.

'You need to learn to trust people again.' - after being too trusting led to me making terrible decisions.

"Be positive."

"There's always someone worse off than you."

sagely advice of my dad- "don't bother with 'so and so', they're not as smart as you"...yeah, people he said that about generally ended up being the few people who's intellect I respect. He held the idea that IQ the definitive way to gauge intelligence, so anyone not on my IQ level was not good enough for me to spend time around.

When I am about to have a meltdown, "Just breathe." I find that most infuriating and extremely counterproductive.

I've had that one. Doesn't really work does it?

"Just be yourself."

Right. I haven't been myself in social contexts in so long I've forgotten what my own self looks like.

I'm purposefully phony to fit in.

"Just be yourself" would be an awkward, quirky person who uses lots of left-of-center quotes and terms to make his point.

OMGosh, not only does it not work but it actually makes it worse. I know I have to breathe. I don't need them to tell me that and I feel like it's extremely condescending especially when it comes from people who have never had a meltdown in their lives.

Another great one, "Just get over it." I've been told this a lot when I react to Misophonic triggers apparently again from people who have no clue what the heck they are saying when they say something like that.

I also hate it when people tell me to buck up. Sometimes I feel like my entire life is bucking up. If I didn't and they truly saw the extend of how I feel a lot of the times, they would know that the times I can't buck up I really can't and if I could I would.

Last edited by skibum on 29 Sep 2013, 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

it does work for me. but hearing it from someone else could be the equivalent of "calm down" which i generally do find makes it worse.

I agree. The breathing part helps. Hearing it from someone who has no idea what a meltdown is as if that person thinks that I don't know that I should breathe, makes me want to scream!!

To be honest I can't ever remember anyone giving me any advice (or maybe I just wasn't listening), and by the same token I'm not usually that eager to hand out advice.

So it works both ways I suppose.

"just do it" - "imitate/emulate successful people-" see youtube vid below to see what I mean-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLgJWaDYPc8[/youtube]
the only thing missing from his routine was, he shoulda had the last passerby say "gesundheit!"