full-quack webbed developer

The difference is that reframing an issue BY YOUR OWN CHOICE allows you to flex your creative muscles and take ownership of something that might have previously felt like it was out of your control.

Having someone else TELL YOU to reframe something is like them telling you that your problems don't matter and something is wrong with you for not just keeping quiet.

I assume a lot of people giving that advice heard it themselves but don't know how to communicate it in a way that actually helps.

The trouble with "good advice" (i.e., advice that most people can get some benefit from) is that, almost by definition, you don't need to know anything about the person to whom it's being given for it to still be "good advice." As such, people who are in the business of selling advice, especially people living with the sort of parasocial asymmetry that makes a meaning understanding of any individual in their audience impossible, tend to default to advice that has broad appeal and sells well, resulting in a mix of highly generic good advice and deeply seductive bad advice, all conveyed with similar smarmy confidence.

All of this runs contrary to the social contract implied by giving advice. The advice giver has a responsibility to try to understand the receiver's situation and to give advice that actually helps the receiver where they're currently at. The receiver, in turn, needs to trust the advice giver enough that, should the advice involve some discomfort or some mismatch with their experience, they are nevertheless willing to consider it. When glib influencer assholes give any advice, the correct reflex is to trust nothing they say because they don't know you and have no stake in seeing you thrive. And if you'd be a fool to trust them, all advice falls flat even if some of it coincidentally would be helpful.

Much is made of how we only learn lessons when we are "ready to learn them," and that much tragedy stems from people being ready "too late" to avoid some misfortune. But not enough is made of how constantly we are being hammered with advice given in bad faith by people who care more about making a sale (or even worse, on social media, weirdos just looking to dunk on someone) than they do about whether we thrive. We need that social armor to navigate the world as it currently exists. So, I would argue, it is essential to cultivate an inner circle of people who know us and who we trust enough to call us on our bullshit, for whom the armor can be set aside and whose advice can thus land when it is given.

Yeah I feel like every time i start to sort of, deeply understand something about mental health I realize that it is something that was once packaged to me as generic advice that i fucking hated. And then of course I start to think about how I could possibly phrase that idea to someone who isn't where I'm at to get them to understand it and I end up at a complete loss. So I'm just like. Is there really any way to pass this on. I don't know

....though as said in previous comments, I guess the answer there really is, you can give this advice but you have to really know the person you're talking to and understand them first and help them apply it. Otherwise you're just telling them to not be sad anymore.