[Rilfeu]

Do you have any example of the advice they gave you that you "benefited immensely from?". Because I got this kind of advice a million times and it only made me feel worse.

Also, when this kind of advice came from my family, they were trying to minimize my problems (so they wouldn't have to do anything to seriously help), not help me.

[dougmwne]

Yes. A coworker once told me I talk too fast on the phone. After getting angry for a moment that someone would think they can tell me how to speak, I realized they were right and that other people were having trouble hearing me and following what I was saying. I worked on it, and now people compliment me on my phone skills. For the past 5 years I've worked from home and am on hours of calls a day. Immense benefit, and I will always be grateful they said something.

[roflc0ptic]

One really interesting aspect of empathy is that it seems to have evolved as a pain avoidance tool - you see someone else burn their hand, see them react by saying "Ouch!", and you feel a shadow of the pain they're in, and don't make the same mistake. When we feel too much empathy for people - e.g. someone we're close to is in pain - often people give advice that is selfish - you're in pain, and it's hurting me, so while I want to help, what I'm really doing is trying to minimize my own suffering by (often inadvertently) minimizing yours. Helping other people is hard, both because we often don't know what to do, and because even our best intentions can get distorted by our ape brains.

And to be clear, the advice in the comic is bad advice when it's given in those contexts. For good advice that's shaped kind of the same way, I'd suggest reading "Peace is Every Step" by Thich Naht Hanh - lmk and I can send you a copy (It's on libgen). Alternatively, reading the stoics (as someone else suggested in this thread) would be a good place to start.

[Rilfeu]

The core of my beliefs is stoicism, although I never looked into their original works, my therapist told me that what he taught me is stoicism.

I basically make peace with the fact that hardships in life are unavoidable.

[searchableguy]

People should avoid giving advice to others suffering from mental health issues. It's reasonable to point that out and refer to a professional. That said,

Be more than words. If I am telling someone to seek professional advice, I would help them with the task in a meaningful way such as contributing financially, finding information for them, being their speaker or support for coming out to others. Ask them what they would need help with instead of guessing or provide options when they can't come up with something.

If you are close or live nearby, you can help with chores and food. Good food helps and it's easy to end up eating garbage when you are down.

[Rilfeu]

This is exactly what I do, now that I've climbed out of the hole, I extend my hand to help others come out.

I'm very open about things that I went through, and it validates people's feelings, and hopefully gives them some optimism when they see it's possible to overcome this.

I've got a few of my friends to actually seek professional help (and it helped all of them, at least a bit). And the way I go about this is first telling of the issues I had, and then saying that every single person (even the most normal person) would have a lot to benefit from occasionally going to a therapist. I also compliment my friends when I notice change in their behaviour.

I'd love to be able to help them financially as well, but as a student that is not an option.

[codemonkey-zeta]

Yoga was the one that resonated with me. The best piece of advice I ever got (though not explicitly criticised here, but along the same vein) was to take deep breaths to control my emotions. Most of the time my mental health problems were not physical, but stemmed from my own emotions, so these exercises were very effective. Unsolicited mental health advice drove a lot of my mental and emotional development as a child. Maybe I'm an anomaly, but I suspect others shared my experience.

[Rilfeu]

Hey, yoga is actually awesome, I have to agree there. But I always ignored that advice until I came up with going to yoga class on my own.

I think this is important in understanding the issue here. It's not that the advice is bad, it's that it is usually tone deaf and timed wrongly, making it hard to be received.