When emotions are dressed as wisdom

All advice is not good advice.

Some advice from some people is emotionally driven and dressed as wisdom.

As social people, we naturally want to help each other. But sometimes the advice we give isn't necessarily good advice, or even the right viewpoint for that person's specific life or situation. Sometimes people give heavily emotionally driven advice because their own emotions are too tied into the situation. It contaminates the advice.

A lot of this happens with relationships.

Someone is going through something in their relationship and asks a friend for advice. But that friend has also had a string of bad relationships. So that friend gives their emotional experience instead: “You should leave them.” “This is how things always go.” “It's better to just be alone.”

And if the person seeking advice is already stressed or emotionally vulnerable, that advice can sound like wisdom in the moment.

Religion is another one. Money. Family. Gender roles. All of these subjects are at risk when the person giving the advice has unresolved feelings about their own experiences.

Sometimes people can't separate what happened to them from what is actually happening to someone else.

Can we say, “Yes, I've been through this. I've experienced this at its worst. But let me be mature enough to give you my unbiased, uncontaminated opinion or point of view”?

Not everyone can step outside of themselves enough to do that.

We now live in a heavily social media-driven world where everyone has an open platform and a point of view. Some are mature. Some are toxic. But they all have a platform to either uplift someone or infect them with their personal experiences.

And those experiences do play a role in how people react because a lot of people go through some of the same things.

Relationship problems. Money issues. Home life. Questioning spirituality.

People influence other people with carefully worded statements that can easily sound like wisdom because those words speak directly to what someone else may already be going through.

The most common advice and discussions I see on social media involve relationships.

The division between men and women always seems to run rampant.

A number of men will say all women are gold diggers, want their bills paid, or will always go find the next man to support their lifestyle.

Then a number of women will say all men are cheaters, undercover, or even hate women.

And although sometimes those things are true and those situations do happen, that doesn't mean it is every man or every woman. But the majority of voices can organize their wording in a way that makes it sound like it is.

Another one I constantly see is religion or spirituality.

Some people may have had bad experiences at churches. Sometimes you see bad representations of churches. And then someone will say, “Don't go to church. It's a money grab,” or paint a picture that all churches are the same.

The wording is organized in a way that sounds like wisdom.

But it can actually be emotionally driven advice dressed up as wisdom.

And that can rob another person of experiencing an actual good relationship, a good church, or even a good life in general.

Because not enough people are willing—or able—to step outside of themselves long enough to give quality advice without dressing their own emotions and experiences up as wisdom.