I am an oldest child. I am an Enneagram 1, the “reformer.” These two personality traits alone make me a natural advice giver. (I’m also a Projector in Human Design, an INFJ, a Cancer sun, Cancer rising, and Virgo moon.) Then add in that I navigate complex trauma in my day-to-day life, which means I have extra sensory perception of the energy in the room, and years worth of therapy that’s offered me the emotional language to describe people’s experiences in ways that allow them to see situations more clearly. Did I mention that I’m a communications strategist and writer by profession? That I am a leadership coach by vocation? So many opportunities I have created and that I’ve capitalized on to allow me to give advice!
The words that drip so easily off my tongue at any given moment are often born from the clarity of black/white thinking that allowed me to survive the violence of my childhood. You see, I swim below the surface of what most other people see, looking for the motivations, correlations, and dependencies that others don’t notice, perceive, or deem important. It can be a lonely place, below what’s “acceptable” and “accepted.” Perhaps my advice is a way of bidding for human connection, asking others to join me in what I see and experience.
Truth is, most of the time now as I get older, I have little interest in other people changing. Slowly but slowly, I have learned that people will so rarely do what I think is best for them anyway. They may listen to me, agree with me, even consider what I have to say about their lives, but whatever advice I offer is just a small seed I plant within a vast ecosystem.
Seeds need fertile soil, sun, moisture – in just the right amounts. Some seeds are found in archeological digs 400 years later, and only then are given the conditions to grow. Some seeds don’t germinate at all. So if advice is a seed, then this farmer* must understand that I can do my best, but I’m never fully in control of if and when a seed will sprout.
(*Oh ya, I’m a farmer now, corn and soybeans. I inherited farmland from my aunt when she passed last year. I bought crop insurance this year. #ThingsWeDoInNebraska)
What if the love, the connection, the devotion, the togetherness between people is the soil, sun, and water that the seed – the advice – needs to flourish?
To understand advice within an operating system of white/male/human supremacy means understanding how superiority can operate within all of our relationships. What if advice can only be received in that system – how matters – with care, with consideration, with consent?
This consent piece is the tricky, tricky thing. It’s what’s forgotten or rendered unnecessary in the default of hierarchy. Someone will always have “power over”, so no need to ask permission. Consent is not yet established in so many of our cultural constructs, so we have to learn.
Advice is a great place to start.
Some of us are more inclined to think we know what’s best for other people and thus our advice arrives. Others may so desperately want others to be like them so advice arrives to urge them to “get with the program.” For whatever reason people may casually offer our thoughts – readily, easily, judgmentally – they can often contain the threat of consequences or shame if there is not compliance that follows. In so many ways, the social good sector is a formalized advice delivery system for people who are marginalized, and donor funding is the compliance enforcer in big and small ways.
Within a culture of compliance (required by white supremacy, patriarchy, and settler capitalism to continue), information and ideas are not neutral. Advice very often carries with it a positioning, a distancing, an othering, and overing. “Should” or “must” energy carries with it a code. In a culture where people are constantly instructed to outsource their inner authority, “should” establishes and reinforces hierarchy. When my own inner signals do not match with the advice given, I resist. And when I cannot for whatever reason, I resent.
This is why if I try (!) to offer my advice to others – carefully as I can with the limited perspective and love that I have – it can still harm a relationship. What will render my advice useful or not is not the advice itself. It is whether or not it is welcome. And only the person receiving it can determine and declare that. For all of my supposed intuitive prowess, my advice could be unwelcome and even harmful, particularly if there’s not enough trust or no shared or explicit context. Because of how I navigate the world, there is often a sequence that seems obvious to me that other people would order much differently. That is because they may have learned to rely on compliance, or the appearance of “normal”, to get their needs met. “Normal” was never something I identified with per se, but I for sure understand the temptation.
Advice is so rarely the help needed or requested. So rarely. Beyond survival and material needs, people first need to be seen and heard, to be connected, to belong. Violence and the potential for violence occurs in the disconnection, when we expect and demand things from people they cannot give or even offer. Violence occurs when we deny people’s experiences of their own bodies and lives.
I now understand advice as a form of toxic positivity, and/or as desperate and unconscious attempts to deny responsibility for others. “If that other person would just do what I say, then they’d be fine.” If only. Without consent, advice can serve to push people away from me, reinforcing hyper-individualism and disconnection.
Consciously and unconsciously with advice I’ve given and received over the years, violence is offered when what people really need is care. Living under/among/within oppressive systems teaches us to do this. “Do it like I would do it” or “Be like me” is supremacy in action.
Care – collective care – requires consent.
Advice – welcome advice – requires consent too.
With consent, only then can advice be transformed and offered as care.
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