Why Our Advice Goes In One Ear & Out The Other

In any helping profession you often hear the frustration of the clinician wondering why time after time their client continues to disregard advice after they are asked. Most chalk it up to the idea that most people do not want to hear your opinion, they just want validation for the decision they have already made. A recent article discusses how this might be more indicative of the fact that advice givers and choosers view situations differently. While those on the outside tend to see situations much more impartially, those who are making the decision also must confer with their own sense of self within the decision. There is also a noted section referring to those who think of why versus how actions are chosen. When you are more focused on the why, you can be more abstract in reasoning. What is important to take away from this is that as professionals our role is not to actually give advice, but to help our client come to terms with their choices. We must remember that our impartiality could be detrimental at times since we do not have to live within the person’s own code.

So how do we integrate this into practice?