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No, the actual issue here is that people don’t understand that they need to have enough empathy to be able to follow a logical sequence of steps before speaking

No, the actual issue here is that people don’t understand that they need to have enough empathy to be able to follow a logical sequence of steps before speaking: First, realize that the person with the chronic health issue has probably put a lot more time and effort into addressing the complexity of their experience. Second, realize it is in fact exhausting to constantly get unsolicited advice. Third, realize you presumably are not the only person this person with a chronic health issue interacts with and that most people do not take special care to avoid giving unsolicited advice. Fourth, realize this means you should assume that this person is getting a lot of unsolicited advice. Stop for a moment before speaking at this point. Ask yourself, is your additional one iota of advice is highly likely to be both completely novel to this person and efficacious for their issue? Your advice is unlikely to be both those things simultaneously but instead forces this person’s focus back on an issue they are likely trying to avoid thinking about. Okay, given all that, I am not saying “don’t ever give advice”. All I would request of people is that most of the time, ask first. If your advice is critical, novel, and highly likely to succeed, perhaps intervene immediately. But otherwise, the person will appreciate this opportunity to decide whether or not to interact with input regarding their chronic issue, it’s very unusual that anyone takes care to consider how it feels emotionally to be constantly the person who needs to be told how to live. Imagine you were telling someone what you had for lunch. You had a sandwich. They ask what toppings you had. You say you had these particular toppings. The person then says “you should try next time adding this other topping, that would have made your sandwich better and in fact would greatly improve the quality of your life”. Unfortunately, you’re allergic to this additional topping, which you dutifully inform the other participant in the conversation. Okay, that’s fine. Maybe it would have made the sandwich better in their opinion, and sometimes that kind of stuff is okay to let go. But now imagine this conversation happening with multiple people every lunch every day for the rest of your life. Pretty soon you’d start wondering why the fuck all these people have such strong opinions about your lunch. You would also notice that none of these people ate any sandwiches with the topping they insisted would improve your life so much. I have a chronic health condition that is better managed now, but at one point caused debilitating pain. I stopped talking about it and tried to avoid giving any indication I was unwell at all outside of intimate social settings, because the sheer volume of unsolicited input I got about how the right way to deal with the fact that a surgeon shredded the nerves in my abdomen was to take ginger and rub lavender essential oils on it, or just use CBD, or have you tried hopping up and down on your left foot on a Tuesday immediately following the vernal equinox...

temp0826 6y ago
I work with a couple of rather novel/unconventional treatments/“medicines” (kambo and ayahuasca). I find myself biting my lip hard at this topic because most folks have never heard of them and demand some kind of research backing the wild anecdotes surrounding them. They’re both incredibly potent and can treat a wide range of maladies, but are very demanding ordeals to actually go through. I’ve come to terms with not giving advice, and tell myself that he/she must want to be healed and they will ask if/when they want it. Often I simply want to bring them up, just to raise awareness, but even that very difficult considering just how “out there” they are (usually getting dismissed or raised eyebrows). Any suggestions for how to talk about these unconventional things without offending sensibilities?
- athriren 6y ago
  I think close family relations and friends, you should ask if they want advice. For this type of recommendation, I (personally) would want to know the person so I could guess at what their reaction would be. This is also more unconventional than typical, no one ever recommended I take ayahuasca, so for me personally it would be novel enough that it wouldn’t be frustrating to get recommended it by an acquaintance. This is my perspective. I would caution against the mindset in the middle of your paragraph though (“they must want to be healed”). I wanted nothing more to be healed, it’s just after 36 months of being poked and prodded by medical professionals it always struck me as a little haughty that someone else I didn’t know at all would presume to know enough about my situation to think their advice would be useful. But this is just my experience, and I only ever got useful unsolicited advice a couple times. I just think people need to be emotionally in tune with their conversation partners, and if you don’t know them well enough to read them then you probably don’t need to be giving them advice anyway.

temp0826 6y ago

I work with a couple of rather novel/unconventional treatments/“medicines” (kambo and ayahuasca). I find myself biting my lip hard at this topic because most folks have never heard of them and demand some kind of research backing the wild anecdotes surrounding them. They’re both incredibly potent and can treat a wide range of maladies, but are very demanding ordeals to actually go through. I’ve come to terms with not giving advice, and tell myself that he/she must want to be healed and they will ask if/when they want it. Often I simply want to bring them up, just to raise awareness, but even that very difficult considering just how “out there” they are (usually getting dismissed or raised eyebrows). Any suggestions for how to talk about these unconventional things without offending sensibilities?

athriren 6y ago
I think close family relations and friends, you should ask if they want advice. For this type of recommendation, I (personally) would want to know the person so I could guess at what their reaction would be. This is also more unconventional than typical, no one ever recommended I take ayahuasca, so for me personally it would be novel enough that it wouldn’t be frustrating to get recommended it by an acquaintance. This is my perspective. I would caution against the mindset in the middle of your paragraph though (“they must want to be healed”). I wanted nothing more to be healed, it’s just after 36 months of being poked and prodded by medical professionals it always struck me as a little haughty that someone else I didn’t know at all would presume to know enough about my situation to think their advice would be useful. But this is just my experience, and I only ever got useful unsolicited advice a couple times. I just think people need to be emotionally in tune with their conversation partners, and if you don’t know them well enough to read them then you probably don’t need to be giving them advice anyway.