Tag: advice

Recovery is a personal journey

Posted on by philipdodson

Recovery from anything is a long road and one that needs to be taken at our own pace.

Well-intentioned advice from others is all well and good, but it is personal to us all and we need to feel in control.

There is no set pattern, no blueprint to follow, even if it is recovery from illness or physical injury, it is still the head and mind that needs to recover as well.

The same with depression and mental illness, it is at our own pace and the more people allow us to recover at our pace through empathetic support rather than autobiographical stories of how they did it or how others did it the better we feel.

We all feel vulnerable when we’ve been physically or mentally ill, we need to be listened to and understood, we need help when we ask for it and we need our time to get well.

The more we understand this the better we can be equipped to support others as often we all need someone to listen rather than fix.

The temptation to fix

Posted on by philipdodson

When someone close to you is suffering, or perhaps in your opinion, not making the right choices, then there is a well-intentioned temptation to fix them.

We base a good deal of this on our own experiences in life and feel the need to impart our lessons to others, as Stephen Covey would say, in an autobiographical way.

However, others rarely want to hear our stories versus being able to tell theirs. They even more rarely want you to tryto fix them, especially as most often the case is, we haven’t even listened to them. We’ve simply based our ideas looking at it through our lens, so entirely from our perspective.

We all have uniquely different journeys and sets of experiences and the only way we can even provide any useful advice is to first listen and understand and secondly avoid the ‘well, when I was doing…’ type of advice.

People aren’t broken, listen without judgement and with empathy to understand them and give advice if asked.

Washing machines and cars need fixing not people.