Giving and Receiving Advice

How to do advice better.

A few years ago, a client came in and told me that he’d tried meth for the first time over the weekend, loved it, and was thinking of doing it again. While he wasn’t explicitly asking for my advice, permission, or opinion, I knew that he cared about what I thought—that he was telling me to see my reaction.

We spent a few minutes talking about what he liked about the experience, why he wanted to try it again, and what he thought about wanting to try it again. It was important that we treated the topic the same as anything else, which is to say, with nonjudgmental curiosity. But it was also important that I didn’t tell him “no.” That I didn’t beg him to stop, or react with alarm. Instead, at the end of session, I said: “Well, I want you to know that I’m concerned about this, but I’m not going to tell you what to do. Whatever happens, I hope you feel comfortable talking about it.”

Most readers know that therapists try not to dispense too much advice. The logic is captured by the old saying: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” Because life is a series of decisions, each person should develop some comfort and familiarity with their own judgment. Outside of therapy, people exchange advice much more freely. All the time, really.

Although the situations are different, the same mechanisms underlying the exchange of advice apply to both. Understanding these mechanisms can help therapists and laypeople become better at giving and receiving advice.

What is advice, and why do we seek it?

At its most basic, advice is a recommendation for how to act. ‘Act’ should be taken broadly, of course, because sometimes advice is just about how to think of something differently: “Try to think of weeding as a challenge, not a chore.” (Nice try, Mom.)

We are constantly seeking and sharing advice. It is merely one way that humans, as “inescapably social” creatures, check in with and keep tabs on each other. Other examples include gossiping, people-watching, and news-binging.¹ Why do we do these things? One reason is the second pair of eyes benefit. Generally speaking, it’s a good bet that if someone sees a situation roughly the same as we do, then our perception can be trusted. Is it chilly in here, or is it just me? This can also be an excellent approach if you suspect that you’re hallucinating:

How about you? No? Okay, I might have a problem…

A second, related benefit is having a different pair of eyes. This is based on the recognition that people have blind spots when it comes to their own circumstances. The notion that others might have a less biased perspective underlies the American Counseling Association’s suggestion, in their Code of Ethics, that counselors use an ethical decision-making process that can “bear public scrutiny.”² How would others view this, from the outside looking in?

As social creatures with complex language, humans have the ability to learn from others without having to take any lumps themselves. A third benefit, then, is experience. Typically, people who give advice are more seasoned in the subject the advice is about—whether it be career, travel, or grief—than the person they are advising.

When the subject is “life in general,” we call the expertise wisdom. In my opinion, one of the greatest tragedies of modern life is that older people aren’t sought for their advice that much anymore. This is because, due to the pace of technological change, the elderly don’t have much experience in anything current. Your grandma isn’t going to help you navigate dating apps or teach you Excel macros. For most of human history, though, the world remained stable enough in the course of a lifetime that elders were consulted on a wide range of things, from the immaterial—what is love?—to the material—can I eat this berry?

Giving Advice

The above benefits help explain why advice is such a common product in the marketplace of human affairs. But what can be said about each side of the exchange? Let’s discuss Givers first. What might seem odd about giving advice is that many people do so for free—to anyone, at any time—often without being asked. If advice were valuable, though, wouldn’t we expect people to be judicious in sharing it? Don’t I hold my wallet close when I’m in a crowded area because I care about where my money goes?

To understand this, we must recognize that Givers are getting something in the exchange. First, as Rob mentions in Warm Fuzzies, the knowledge that you’ve helped someone that can someday help you back. Second, the opportunity to live vicariously through another person. In fact, giving advice can be fun. Think about it this way. How much of our lives are spent wondering what we should do? How much of that is a never-ending calculation of the risks and rewards? How lovely, then, in contrast, to spend some time speculating about a situation that is not our own?—fantasizing about options whose consequences we won’t have to face?

Advising others can be a sort of virtual play, and because of this, it is all too tempting to discount the risks and inflate the rewards. “Go ahead and talk to her,” I tell my friend. “What do you have to lose?” Actually, I am the one with nothing to lose. Either my friend will fall in love, in which case I can take credit. Or he’ll crash and burn, which will be fun to watch and make for a great story. I have no skin in the game.

In general, we should be very mindful of the difference in risk tolerance between those who have to live with the consequences and those who do not. This mismatch is a Theme of social life. People are always encouraging others to “put themselves out there,” “go for it,” “seize the day,” and all that. When therapists get together to discuss their cases, one of the more common conversations is about pushing clients to be honest, courageous, and assertive in their lives—to be “advocates for themselves.” At some point, the persistent difference in risk tolerance between those dispensing advice and those in a position to implement it can undermine sanity…after a while, a person might begin to wonder if their assessment of the downsides is real or legitimate, given that everyone else (who won’t have to suffer the consequences) discounts them so aggressively.

Finally, as if the picture weren’t muddy enough, providing advice can be an opportunity to signal virtue or grandstand. One of the perverse motives of the Giver might be to advertise risk-taking, bravado, cunning, or competence. It can be difficult for the Receiver to parse all this information, especially since the Giver themselves might be unaware of the full extent of their motives.

By the way, most people find that being asked for advice is a wonderful thing. It means that someone values their opinion. As Thoreau says, “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” How much better when the topic is one of great importance to the person asking.

Receiving Advice

While the motives for giving advice aren’t always clear, the motive for seeking advice very much seems to be. “What to do, what to do,” Edward Abbey writes, “that same old question.”³ In other words, the advice-seeker faces some dilemma and wants to know how to act. Their most common question—“What would you do?”—is ostensibly because they are going to consider that course of action for themselves. The first and most obvious benefit of asking the question, then, is to acquire novel ideas and perspectives, as discussed above.  

But it doesn’t stop there. A second reason people solicit advice is for the opportunity to “talk it out.” To engage in a dialectic about their predicament. We have plenty of metaphors for why this helps, from “getting things off our chests” to “bouncing some ideas off” someone else. Clients routinely tell me that speaking their problems aloud is more illuminating than thinking them through or writing them down. But what exactly is going on here? Why does opening up to another person provide such a powerful effect? The big-picture answer is that when an individual’s misery is shared among—and accepted by—members of a social group, its power is dissolved, or at least diluted, in the same way that a drop of poison is less potent in more water.

The small-picture answer is that many discrete mechanisms contribute to this larger sense of interpersonal support. One such dynamic is that an interlocutor serves as something of a “memory extension,” an external hard-drive. When we say something to someone, we sort of move that thing off our mental plate; they hold it for us while we continue. This allows for deeper travel into the nature of the problem, where people often find additional insight.

A second mechanism at play is that conversation requires us to follow certain rules in order to make sense to others, such as presenting our ideas one at a time, speaking grammatically, sharing the conversation, and so on. A seemingly unlimited amount of mental material is thus funneled into something sensical by the requirements of conversation. These requirements tend to slow the train of thoughts preceding speech, thoughts which can otherwise run amok.

These are only two examples of how conversation brings emotional relief and conceptual clarity, and I must say, after seven years of being daily involved in this process, I am still discovering more.

many roads of thought becoming a single road of speech

Speaking of the socialization of individual dilemmas, I think there is a final, hidden motive for advice-seekers in the question: “What would you do?” I think many advice-askers are probing for permission. They are testing the social judgment waters, often with a dim, yet substantial preference for a certain option. As Camus says, “We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen.”

When a friend says, “I would do X,” doesn’t that provide us permission on some level to do the same? Can’t we take some sort of cover under that? Likewise, if we tell a friend what we plan to do and they don’t respond too negatively, isn’t that an adequate proxy for how the average person will respond? Can’t we take that as some evidence that the backlash won’t be as bad as we fear?

Put another way, the hidden question in advice-exchange is often: “Would you condemn me if I did this?” As long as the answer isn’t a resounding YES, we walk away somewhat relieved. Which brings us back to my client.

Advice in Therapy

Seeking asylum from judgment, or permission for some course of action, is a common dynamic in therapy. When it operates under the surface, my job is to bring it to conscious attention: “Are you wondering what I think of that?” “Are you asking my permission?” “What are you hoping I’ll say?”

The concept of ambivalence is necessary to understand why laying everything on the table is helpful.⁴ Ambivalence means having strong opposing feelings about something or someone. Most people have strong positive and negative feelings toward their romantic partners, parents, or jobs, for example.

What most discussions about ambivalence miss, in my view, is that conflicting feelings toward something often reflect the very normal, and inevitable, conflicting motives of human life. Sometimes this conflict is between short-term and long-term goals (“I’d love to lose weight, but this fried chicken looks delicious”); other times, between individual interests and group interests (“I’d love to graffiti this wall, but the police might arrest me”). Psychotherapy in general has a habit of over-complicating things, of assuming that deep and mystical forces are at work, and ambivalence is no exception. But really, I find it fairly straightforward.

“He loves me, he loves me not.” - The ambivalent daisy

Likewise, some have theorized that in order to maintain an emotional homeostasis, and preserve the interlocking balance of feelings toward something, a person must inwardly counter whatever is being outwardly expressed or emphasized. So, let’s say someone wants to lose weight. They might feel nervous and excited, or optimistic and pessimistic, about the process. If one of their friends says—“You can absolutely do it!”—the idea is that the person might inwardly respond—“No I can’t.” Similarly, if I were to say to my client, “Are you nuts? Meth can kill you!” then his inward response might be: “F*** you, I’m gonna do it right after session.”

While I agree that emphasizing one side of the ambivalence prompts a defense of the other, I do not think this is because the balance of opposing forces is comfortable. Rather, I think it reflects the reality of the situation. I don’t think people need or want to maintain an emotional equilibrium as much as they are caught in a very real predicament, one in which no perfect solution exists. With my client, the short-term pleasure of meth is just as real to him as the long-term consequences. His individual urge to self-destruct is just as compelling as the guilt he would feel if his family found out.

Here's the interesting thing, though, and why it is important in therapy to lay all the cards on the table: the outer world often has a uniform response. Most people, for example, from a sense of politeness and decency, are going to support your expressed goal of losing weight. If other people are encouraging you all the time, then inwardly you are going to spend a lot of time contemplating the difficulties. That is going to be the wolf you end up feeding. This is precisely where therapy and therapists can do better. Part of a therapist’s job is to avoid mindlessly repeating the given line, and instead try to think about what they are trying to accomplish. That is why the questions I opened this section with, in inviting both sides of ambivalence a seat at the table, are much better than the society’s knee-jerk reaction. They eliminate the need for an automatic opposing reaction from the client.

As another example, last week a client came in and told me she was engaged. Instead of popping champagne and shooting confetti into the air, I smiled lightly and asked: “Are congratulations in order?” If she had no ambivalence whatsoever, then great—no harm, no foul. But if she did, then wouldn’t an automatic, effusive response strengthen her predicament, deepen her isolation, and all but guarantee that she couldn’t talk about it with me?

Of course, this isn’t something that only therapists should practice. People from all walks of life can be better listeners and supporters if they pause for a moment and recognize that most important elements of a person’s life are undercut with ambivalence. This isn’t a bad thing, or a fixable thing, often, but rather the result of conflicting motives, which tend to lurk around anything of significance.

Conclusion

Human social life is complex, and advice is but one example. We are going to receive advice all the time, some of it good, some of it bad. We have to be ready to accept the good and ignore the bad; to strike a balance between gullibility and close-mindedness. We all know people whose lives could turn around tomorrow if we could just deliver an outsider’s view of them today, and we all know people who are too eager for advice, who don’t seem to have any intuition or judgment of their own.

The first step to striking a better balance is to recognize the role of misaligned incentives and conflicting motives. In fact, these are both major themes of evolutionary studies. Trivers even showed that the incentives between parents and children are not the same!⁵ Misaligned incentives exist between advice-givers and advice-receivers, as well, meaning that sometimes therapists and even strangers have better footing to provide advice than family and friends.

But even in therapy, the situation is rarely perfectly aligned. Once, knowing that therapists can sometimes (intentionally or subliminally) foster dependence to keep clients coming back, I asked a client who had been in therapy for a while if she wanted to continue. She was quiet and noncommittal, but emailed me after session, heartbroken that I was trying to kick her out the door. I learned a valuable lesson that day, but the reason I said something in the first place was in light of the possibility that she and I might have different goals.

Conflicting motives, meanwhile, are an inevitable part of human life, and lead to the feeling of ambivalence. Therapists and laypeople can help others (and themselves) by allowing the full spectrum of feelings, rather than short-circuiting the process with a mindless social line which requires an automatic defensive response.

Hopefully, this article provided readers with a framework for understanding the dynamics of advice exchange both inside and outside of the therapeutic context. As always, with advice, feel free to take it or leave it.

1. “Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner,” Thoreau writes, “but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What's the news?’ as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinel.”

2. The pencil-pushers at ACA are surely unaware of this, but that advice basically sums up the entire moral predicament of human life, which is all about the tension between what we’d like to do and how others will judge what we will do. Humans are constantly having to assess the tradeoff between selfish interests and group reputation. Everything must “bear public scrutiny,” or at least be undertaken with the knowledge that one day it could.

3. The Monkey Wrench Gang

4. Most of my understanding of ambivalence comes from Motivational Interviewing by Miller and Rollnick, a must-read for therapists.

5. Trivers, R. L. (1974). Parent-offspring conflict. American zoologist, 14(1), 249-264.