Unsolicited Advice Giving is Disempowering in Counselling

In clinical and rehabilitation counselling, unsolicited advice giving can disempower and harm clients in a variety of ways. To begin with, counsellors are not experts on their clients or on how others should manage their lives and solve their problems. A counsellor's values are often different from the client's, and therefore, their advice may not align well with the individual's unique needs and preferences.

Counsellors need to be committed to a belief and trust in the client's capacity to manage their own problems. Instead, if they believe they know what's best for the client, this can create dependency, transfer responsibility, inhibit the right to make choices for autonomy, and lead to frustration or resentment.

When counsellors give advice, it often serves their own needs for control, power, and self-esteem. This undermines the client's abilities and teaches them to distrust their own inner wisdom and personal resources for deciding the best course of action.

Sustainable, lasting change is based on a person's readiness for change and on factors that include motivation and self-determination. Counsellors may fail to encourage and promote a person's innate capacity and power if they do not assist people with recognizing their own strengths and resources. This includes helping them identify and set actionable goals to achieve.

Advice giving disregards the knowledge people already have about themselves and their problems. It creates dependent expectations about the counsellor's role and responsibility for solving problems. It interferes with the process of strength-based reflection and inquiry, which empowers the person to listen to and trust their own voice and perspectives.

When counsellors give advice, it can be a form of rescuing. Specifically, it gets in the way of client independence and being able to develop the problem solving skills necessary to deal with challenges in life and to grow. It is a delusion and a fantasy for a counsellor to believe that they can rescue or save their clients. People do not need saving; they are not helpless victims. They are capable and resilient human beings. One of the most disempowering aspects of this approach is that it can minimize feelings and needs. It can also communicate judgment, which may be detrimental.

All of this can lead to a variety of defenses from the client, including avoiding contact or ending communication altogether. If and when this happens, the counsellor may have mistakenly decreased a client's capacity to respond to the demands of life. They may have ignored a client's diverse needs and preferences. They may have disregarded a trauma-informed approach, missed out on applying effective skills and strategies, or risked ending the relationship with a poor outcome.

I encourage all counsellors and therapists to listen and consider the impact of giving unsolicited advice. For clients in counselling, please know you can speak up to communicate assertively and set your boundaries with counsellors who try to give you unsolicited advice.