When it comes to solutions for my chronic pain, I've heard it all.
"Have you tried yoga? What about wheatgrass? This vegan diet I'm on will fix you right up. Green juice is the answer to your problems, I guarantee it. Probiotics will literally save your life."
My fellow chronic pain sufferers and I like to share stories of the unsolicited advice we get, which can range from hilarious to downright insulting - like the time someone told me my dying brother needed to stop treatment for his tumor right away and instead put avocados topically on the site of his cancer.
I can't blame people for wanting to share their knowledge, I'm guilty of it too, but even if we mean well, offering unsolicited advice to someone in pain can actually cause them more pain. Not only would I be horrifically ill if I tried some of the "cures" people suggested, the offering of advice itself is emotionally triggering.
- annoyed at the lack of space I have to simply talk about my pain without being told I need to fix it,
- hurt by the assumption that I haven't already tried everything I can to stop the pain,
- insulted by the assertion that you know more than I do about how to care for my body.
If you catch me on a bad day, an unsolicited piece of advice on how I can "fix" myself can send me into a downward spiral of shame over how broken my body feels.
We live in a strategy-based society that teaches us to offer solutions when someone approaches us with a problem. That can be great if someone is looking for strategy, but more often that not people are simply wanting someone to listen to them, empathize with their problem, and send them love as they try to find solutions themselves.
Before you offer advice to someone in pain, think about these four things:
1. Giving unsolicited advice to someone in pain is tantamount to saying, "I know better than you how to care for your body."
Even if you are a medical doctor with a specialty in this particular type of illness, you will never be able to fully understand and experience what is going on in someone else's body. When talking with chronic pain sufferers (or people in general), assume they are the expert when it comes to their body and their pain, not you.
2. Chronic pain sufferers need space to say "I'm in pain," without being inundated with a list of things they should do to stop that pain.
Chronic pain sufferers are constantly battling their pain, and therefore often exhausted. We don't need someone to point out all the weapons we have yet to use and the wars we have yet to fight. We need space to rest and someone to sit with us in the pain until we are ready to go back out there and keep fighting for ourselves.
One of the best techniques I've found for supporting my friends comes from my Bawdy Love Podcast interview with chronic pain sufferer Kate McCombs. When someone comes to you talking about their pain - or any problem in life - she suggests asking them "Are you looking for empathy or strategy?"
I felt awkward at first using this phrase, but now my friends and I use it often to set the tone for our conversations. A strategic chat is very different than an empathetic one, and knowing what the other person needs ahead of time can make sure you are supporting people in the way they need to be supported. I even find that knowing someone is looking for empathy allows me to relax and simply listen, instead of working to come up with solutions for them.
3. If they are looking for strategy, ask them what they've tried already before offering your advice.
Even when we're looking for help, chronic pain sufferers don't want to be given a list of all the things we've already tried. It exhausts and insults us. If you suggest probiotics to me for my stomach issues, I'm probably going to laugh and/or get defensive. Probiotics is Stomach Issues 101; I'm in graduate thesis territory over here.
Asking someone what they've tried before shows empathy and respect for the fact that they've already tried things before asking you for help.
4. Remember, no one owes it to you to be "healthy."
When you offer unsolicited advice to someone who is ill, it often can come across as shaming them for not being healthy.
When we as a society deem "healthy" bodies as right and worthy, and "unhealthy" bodies as gross, wrong, and something that needs to be fixed, we set us all up for failure. Because like it or not, all health is temporary. Not only is all health temporary, but most people cannot and will not ever attain these subjective standards of health that society tries to put on all of us.
By offering to "fix" someone, you're insinuating that they are broken, that they owe it to society to be healthy, and that they would have more value if they weren't ill. You probably don't mean to say all of these things, but they're often the unintended emotional consequences a chronically ill person feels when someone gives them unsolicited advice.
Does this list feel exhausting or strange to you? That's totally normal. We're very much steeped in the "fix-it" culture and learning a new way to interact with people can be exhausting. But think of it like this, instead of coming up with answers to people's problems for them, you can now simply sit back and send them loving, empathetic support until they ask you for strategy.
Lauren Marie Fleming takes the guilty out of pleasure. An audacious storyteller, she wrote the book Bawdy Love: 10 Steps to Profoundly Loving Your Body and leads the #BawdyLove revolution, a movement to banish shame and fill our lives with decadence, delight, and joy. For more from Lauren, visit LaurenMarieFleming.com.