Advice Giving

Jen over at The Pursuit of Sassiness made a post about advice giving that got me thinking. Oh my goodness I am so guilty of giving advice to my friends! As I was reading through her post I was struck with how often I do this when my friends are talking about their issues. Now I am not saying that I always do this but there are some instances in which a friend has been talking non stop about the same issue/problem and I have resorted to "giving advice" mainly because I was tired of hearing the same issue over and over again without seeing any action on the part of the person to make changes (lord I am sure they can say this about me as well!). Just think about how easy it is to give advice. Most of us do this automatically without really thinking about the what we are saying, basically we are on auto pilot and we assume that our friends want to hear what we have to say......they probably don't. Instead they probably wish we would just let them vent as sometimes just verbalizing a problem can help. I know it does with me.

Thinking about advice giving and what separates a counselor from some person on the street who is willing to offer advice at the drop of a hat I came upon this illustration:

I wonder how many counselors would agree with this? Does this make it seem to simple? As counselors should we never really give advice? The article that this illustration came from located here actually helps with these questions. Bascially it boils down to giving advice is basically telling the person what they should do instead of letting them figure it out for themselves and feeling empowered that they do have choices.

So what I am going to do with this information? I am going to make a conscious effort to not give advice of course! If your a friend of mine and your reading this post...please remind me (gently of course) if we are talking and you feel like I am giving you advice and not really "hearing" what your saying.




All images from Google.com