Giving advice, telling what to do or simply supporting

[epath13]

The name of the post might not be very good but hopefully it's good enough to get some attention

When I was younger I had absolutely no clue what to do when somebody comes to you with their problems. I only knew one way to deal with those kind of situation: if person comes with a problem - give advice and tell him/ her what to do weather he/ she wants it or not, because that's what my mom did and I just sort of copied her method because I couldn't quite grasp a concept of emotional sharing in general. Moreover I learned that I should never share my personal problems with anyone and should always show the outside world (besides my family) that I was happy. It sounds kinda dysfunctional, but I'm not going to blame anyone for teaching me to behave that way. Some time in the past I read a book and discovered (believe it or not, to my surprise ) that when people share their problems with others they usually don't ask for advice but for emotional validation, emotional support of a sort. And if they do need an advice they usually ask for it. It made complete sense to me, even though learning how to support people emotionally was hard (and I'm still learning). The thing is many NTs are unable to provide emotional validation either, all they can do is to tell you what to do, because for some reason they feel obligated to do so. I was so used to that kind of behavior, it was almost impossible to get rid of it. The difference between me and let's say some other people that I knew, is that I usually didn't believe in what I was saying or even cared about people's problems.
Now when I'm slowly becoming more open, and capable of sharing some personal stuff, I know how hard it is to deal with people who instead of just taking your words as they are, trying to understand who you are, what your position is, tell you what to do because they think that they know who you are and what you need. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it also seems that women feel more obligated to save, if I may call it that way, as well. Usually when I complained to men they would just nod, smile, or say something like "really?". Now I'm thinking, maybe they just weren't listening. A little off topic, there was a study showing that men seem to be unable to pay good attention when female speaks, but it had something to do with high voices. I told my husband, "but I have low voice, you should be able to pay attention to what I'm saying" he just laughed anyway...moving on...
one day I met a woman and was shocked to her incredible ability to always say the right thing and actually paying attention and remembering what I was saying. I think this is something I would probably never be able to do... I personally consider it being a gift.

my questions are:
How do you decide what to say (whether it's in person or on-line) to people who seem to be in trouble, or share some sort of issues?
And when you talk about your problems, what do you expect people to say to you? Or I should probably say: what do you want them to say to you?

 

[King_Oni]

I don't really consider the entire "what should I say?" thing... usually I'll have an answer or two ready from the start and work from there. That usually works out fine. Often I'm the first option people turn to if they need stuff sorted out, because I have a rather rational approach on how to solve something.

I don't expect people to say anything to me, they apparently want me to say something otherwise I do not see what the relevance is for them to come up to me and talk about problem X or Y.

 

[Gomendosi]

Usually epath13, I find people are telling you so they don’t feel so alone in their problem or so they have someone else acknowledge that they are a real trooper and battling on through the tough times. I usually try to find something similar in my life to draw attention to and while they are thinking on that we just talk calmly until the most obvious answer swirls into their now uncluttered mind.
Unless the problem is out of my scope of experience, in which case I just act incredulous and ask if they have asked so and so for their opinion yet LOL

As for myself, I usually like to hear anything anybody has to say in relation to any problem I have as I will take all the data I can get on the subject, correlate it and finally formulate the best answer to see if it matches what I came up with by myself, then I implement the winner and I still have a backup ; ]

 

[epath13]

I usually have no problems with simple conversations like: where did you go on vacations, scammers on the phone, I don't now - do you like muffins or something, I also can talk about education system or Autism help, but people start talking about relationships and emotions, or even some general difficulties in life, bloody hell! in the past I could easily avoid expressing my personal opinion, because people often asked spread the cards for them instead. But when they didn't, it was usually torture. It seemed that everything I said was wrong, sometimes they would litteraly stop talking or even stop being my friends my personal overlook on life seems to be too different from most of the people I know.... I don't know maybe I'm missing the point. Even here on the forum, where most of the people are on he spectrum, I see in many cases how conversations flow between people. I've asked a few people that I know if they think that I'm communicating fine, because for some reason, some people get annoyed by me when I talk. Well... They haven't given straight answers... They've just told me something like, "oh, how can they be annoyed by you!?" yeah... I guess they just don't pay attention to those things. Anyway, I've noticed that a lot of people here can communicate just fine and they don't even put a lot of thought or planning into it, like you guys, right?
Maybe I should just be a fish swimming in shallow water - having conversations that don't require a lot of emotional involvement and just stick to it, I'm not a deep diver and shouldn't try to be one

 

[Gomendosi]

ummmm, actually to tell you the truth it is very rare that i will post without having checked it over in a Word document as i ahve a tendancy to mispell things LOL
also i have to watch what i say cause a s i type sometimes i put down everything i am thinking and that isnt what people want to hear/ read
I am actually typing this direct now and wnated to tell you that i do tend to put a fair amount of thought into wahat i am going to say as every post here is persoanl and open to scrutiny just the same as speaking in anyy conversation in the reral world ; ]

 

[King_Oni]

Apparently I rarely get emotionally involved with anything... pretty much like I told my therapist a few weeks ago "to me, all those notes you make about me are raw data... there is no inherent identity to it until you put one with it". So in general situations of people are like a math equation to me, calculate a bit of the surprise elements in it, stuff that might happen as a result of X... and in most cases I apply it pretty well. Of course, it's people I know personally, so I know more about them, and I might think more constructively to their situation.

There's some stuff people just can talk to me about for hours and I'd still give them the same rational answer.

As to personal opinion and personal experience, I mix that in a lot, because afterall, they're asking me. If they don't want that mixed in, ask someone who is blank and has no personal experiences instead of me. That just comes with the "service".