Some people are genuinely convinced that others have a different sensory perception than they, or somehow see/feel the world entirely different. It’s almost more of a solipsism problem than it is a condescension problem.
Nah, my wife just thinks everything I complain about must be because of something I did.
Nah, I think a simple “take care of yourself” is good. It’s when people start reminding you of all the things a women’s magazine would tell you to do that it becomes a problem. 
The year was 2010. I desperately wanted a baby, but my husband, who was overwhelmed by his Ph.D program, did not feel ready.
“He doesn’t want children with you. A normal woman would just divorce him and find somebody who wants children.”
“You’re not a real social worker, you’re a dilettante. If you really want a baby you should just quit graduate school and have one.”
I now have my husband, a master’s degree, a ten-year career in nonprofit development, and a baby.
Incidentally that one incident taught me how full of shit people can be in relationship threads. They just filter the situation through their own biases to ridiculous degrees.
Runner-up was a good friend of mine telling me to take Vitamin D to cure my biologically based, recurrent, severe depression.
Ooh, and then there was the guy who suggested I could kick it if I add more red to my home decor.
God, that’s terrible.
On the subject of toxic positivity I submit to you one of my favorite writers, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich.
Her book Bright-Sided goes into this in depth. She traces the roots of the self - help movement back to the massive corporate layoffs in the 90s and the corporations actively pushing a narrative that placed the blame on the unemployed.
(Sorry, I have no idea how to multi-quote on mobile.)
Oh, I don’t know - there were times in my life where “Just give up”, “Just do what they said”, “Just ignore them” or “Just walk away” was exactly the advice I needed. Sometimes, it really is just not worth it.
As one of the biggest supporters of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on the SDMB (you can find my posts about it going back to 2008), I am shocked to see people criticizing it or saying that it is not helpful.
But I realize that my problem is one that I see every day on the Internet - people not understanding that their experiences and worldview might be completely different from someone else’s. So while CBT has been tremendously effective for me and totally changed my life, I acknowledge that it doesn’t work for everyone. I would still recommend that people who are struggling with anxiety or depression give it a try, because when it does work, it can be amazing.
As for bad advice, I recently attended a women’s empowerment meeting at my company. The speaker was a woman with a very high level position in the business. Among other things, she told us that we shouldn’t ever go to the boss and ask for a raise or a promotion, because our work should speak for itself, and we would be given any advancement that we deserved without asking. After the meeting, my boss and co-workers agreed with me that this woman was horribly anti-feminist, her advice was toxic, and she should never be allowed to speak to a women’s group (or really any group) again.
Randomized controlled trials demonstrate that CBT works for most people most of the time. It may not be effective for everyone, but it is actually quite good advice for anyone experiencing mild to moderate depression or anxiety.
A long, long time ago, I was so depressed I had to leave my university. I was not functioning in daily life - barely able to get out of bed, not eating, not showering… Just really, really depressed. I had experienced a lot of ineffective therapy, and my husband (then boyfriend - he has always had an evidence-based theoretical orientation) begged me to try CBT. He was even willing to pay for it. My therapist at the time tried to talk me out of it. “Your issues are way too complex for that.”
Well, the therapist was giving me bad advice. CBT gave me the basic tools I needed to get up every day, take a shower, go to work, and take the needed steps to get back into school. I still struggled daily with depression and anxiety, but I was able to function for the first time in my adult life. I went back to school and aced my final year.
18-ish years and many therapy sessions later, CBT is still a tool I keep in my arsenal.
Oooh! Oooh! I remembered a possible winner! Technically the advice wasn’t being offered to me; but I was in the audience when it was offered.
It was a few years ago, at our beginning-of-the-school-year convocation. Our superintendent, who knew her days were numbered (because she was terrible), got up and tearfully declared, in front of ~750 staff, that we needed to be careful about criticizing her, because nobody in the room cared about our children as much as her. Remember, this was to a roomful of educators.
Then the motivational speaker she’d hired got up. He started off by talking about his long friendship with the superintendent, which mostly demonstrated why she’d given him so much of our district’s funds to come speak that morning. Then he got started on this happy flappy bullshit motivational speaking.
I tuned most of it out. But here’s the winning advice, offered as part of a scolding rant about female teachers not dressing appropriately:
“Women: how can you expect your students to make As and Bs, if they can see your Cs and Ds? I like that, so I’m gonna say it again! Women: how can you expect your students to make As and Bs, if they can see your Cs and Ds?”
Jesus fucking Christ.
These descriptions of medical-related advice have prompted me to remember a bizarre pair of incidents from a few years ago.
Background: I have ulcerative colitis. When it flares up, the abdominal pain is severe, and causes me to walk slightly hunched over.
One day, I was walking in to work from the parking lot when a man of Asian appearance and accent (this is relevant–bear with me) addressed me. “Sir? I noticed that you’re walking bent over. You shouldn’t do that. It will cause you problems later”.
I stared at him incredulously, astonished that someone would feel comfortable commenting on a stranger’s posture, and further, assume that an obviously painful condition could be fixed by simply straightening up.
I ignored him and walked away.
Even more bizarre (and embarrassing): about a year later, again on the walk in to the building in the morning, an Asian man addressed me and initiated almost the same conversation.
Smiling, he asked, “Walking hunched over?”
I cut him off and barked, “Haven’t we been through this before? I’m not interested in your medical advice!”
Taken aback, he replied that he’d never seen me before.
The first incident had only been for a few seconds, and It had been so long ago, that I didn’t remember much about the guy, apart from the fact that he was Asian. So I had assumed that this was the same guy. But it wasn’t. A second man, of Asian appearance and accent, had seen fit to call attention to a perfect stranger’s posture. And presumably would be dispensing advice on how to correct it.
I later discussed this with a friend who suffers from multiple sclerosis, which causes him to walk stiffly. He said that over the years, numerous strangers have advised him to ‘loosen up’, as if that would cure his serious lifelong disease.
Fucking people.
OTOH, I went to years and years of CBT which was worthless for me until I went to a trauma specialist who helped me overcome the crippling problems which I wasn’t able to solve in CBT as I was getting triggered too quickly.
Different people find different methods to be effective for them.
That reminds me of condescending advice Nora Ephron received and recounted in one of her early books. As a young lady she was talking to the mother of some guy she was dating, and was told that she should be on top during sex as her breasts were small and would look larger in a female superior sex position.
I think I’m one of those people who respond to CBT when it isn’t overtly CBT. Like, I’m not gonna fill out work sheets. If you tell me my homework is filling out a work sheet, well, I’m just not gonna do it. I stopped doing worksheets when I graduated elementary school.
If you’re listening to me speak and you tell me to replace a certain phrase or a sentence with another one to see how it “fits”, I’ll probably gonna do it but I’m going to be cringing inside. Cuz again, reciting phrases and sentences makes me feel like I’m back in elementary school again.
But if you tell me to change my behavior in X or Y way just to see what happens, I’ll be inclined to do it.
I’m not good with “Think this thing whenever you’re thinking or feeling a certain way” kind of CBT. But I do respond positively to “Do this thing whenever you’re feeling a certain way” approach.
This is exactly why I didn’t stick with CBT, even though I believe that principles behind it are sound. I couldn’t deal with the worksheets.
I did benefit from my brief foray into CBT; I’ve learned to take a step back, look at my emotional reactions objectively, and figure out the problematic thinking that got me into that state. But I’m not going to pull out a worksheet and start filling in those boxes. It’s just not happening.
Some of you may find ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) more helpful. It’s more behaviorally oriented, and it’s about identifying your values and acting accordingly. Yes, I have these unpleasant feelings, but in order to create meaningful experiences I actually have to do stuff. It’s different from CBT because you’re not spending time arguing with your thoughts, just working on accepting them. And I had one of the most liberating experiences of my life with my ACT therapist, who cut through the toxic positivity bullshit and said, “Look. All signs point to you having a biologically based mental illness. You’re probably going to be dealing with these issues for the rest of your life.” Maybe not everyone would want to hear that but for me, I was so relieved that I could let go of my tireless search for a cure. I think ACT is especially good for people struggling with chronic illness.
Another great one I did is behavioral activation. That just dispenses with the focus on thoughts altogether and is purely behavioral. But there’s a lot of homework with that - you have to track the things you do and identify whether they made you feel better or worse, and then do the things you can to feel better. That one also focuses on values and trying out new behaviors that are more in line with what you really care about. I had success without therapy - just using a workbook on my own at home.
As for homework, I don’t mind it. We start with worksheets but eventually we can do it all in our head.
I think I would like behavioral activation, @Spice_Weasel. I don’t know what I’m thinking all the time. And I can’t always describe what emotion I’m experiencing other than to say I’m not feeling good. It stresses me out to have to diagnose myself when I’m in the throes of something. But behavior is something concrete to me. So something that programs me to do X when I feel bad would totally work for me.
I used to experience intense suicidal ideation. Sometimes it would be so bad that I would call my therapist outside of work hours. I’d call her quietly hoping she’d give me assurances that everything was going to be alright. But she wouldn’t give me assurances. She wouldn’t do any kind of “there there, don’t cry” stuff with me on the phone (in her office, yes). Probably because she knew comforting me would only make me more needy and then she’d never be able to get me off the phone so she could go back to watching 60 Minutes. Instead, she would just tell me to wash my face. It was always the same advice. Go wash your face in cold water, monstro.
I hated this. Like, how you gonna tell someone who is fixin’ to kill themselves to go wash their face?! How heartless! How cruel! I wanted her to kiss my boo-boos and tell me I wasn’t the evil robot I thought I was, but here she was treating me like I just had a mild case of acne! But I would thank her, apologize for disturbing her, and go do what she said. The cold water on my face would always make the super bad feelings go away for the time being.
I learned from that experience that sometimes the advice we think we need isn’t the best advice.
This is good to know. I’ve been thinking that I needed to talk to someone, and I don’t do it at home. I hate to burden my family or feel like I’m wallowing in negativity. I need help though, processing things and learning how to work within my limitations.
Sorry for dragging up old subjects, but I ended up pretty invalided from chemo and other issues.
The crap in the 70s english classes were horrendous. Honestly, “My Darling, My Hamburger” ?! I didn’t mind The Red Badge of Courage, or even To Kill a Mockingbird, but the teen angst twadddle is useless. Hell, give them a copy of the unexpurgated Canterbury Tales, at least how to divide a fart 8 ways would keep their interest.
“I wouldn’t date (so-and-so), she’s got big breasts and those things are going to sag like hell in about 10 years”
I’ve heard this a number of times, it’s like what makes you think I’m going to spend the rest of my life with this woman first off? And second, who gives a shit? Everybody ages. Why does it matter?