TikTok Hates My Face. No One Asked You: Why Unsolicited Advice Is a Trauma Response
Unsolicited Advice Isn’t “Being Helpful.” It’s a Trauma Response.
This blog is for both sides of the dynamic.
If you’re the one who gives unsolicited advice, meaning you jump into fixing mode, feel responsible for other people’s emotions, or get uncomfortable watching someone struggle, then this is for you.
And if you’re the one who constantly receives unsolicited advice, meaning that you feel unseen, second-guessed, or subtly controlled even when the other person “means well,” then this is also for you.
Because unsolicited advice isn’t about being helpful, it’s about nervous system safety, control, and survival patterns.
The Question No One Wants to Ask Themselves
Do you ever wonder why you just had to give your friend advice even when they didn’t ask?
What if I told you that the urge to give unsolicited advice isn’t about them at all, but about you?
We’re about to uncover the surprising truths your well-intentioned advice is actually hiding about your own life.
Because if you constantly give unsolicited advice, it’s probably not because you’re helpful. It’s because your nervous system can’t handle someone else’s feelings.
This is for you if you:
Jump into fixing mode without realizing it
Feel compelled to help, guide, or correct
Feel unappreciated when people don’t take your advice
Have even had people tell you, “I didn’t ask for advice.”
Today, I’m breaking down why unsolicited advice is a trauma response, where it actually comes from, and how it quietly damages relationships, even when intentions are good.
Why I’m Talking About This: TikTok Hates My Face
I grew up receiving constant unsolicited advice, starting with my mother and continuing well into adulthood, attracting more of the same kind of people who did the same thing. And the reason it always bothered me is that my feelings were never explored, my experience wasn’t trusted, and there was no space for me to feel what I felt or experience what I was experiencing.
There is a quote along the lines of “Nowhere in the history of being told to calm down has anyone ever calmed down.” Just like telling someone to calm down, only riles them up, the chances of someone acting on unsolicited advice are very small because it causes a similar response in the receiver.
For whatever reason, I get dragged a lot on TikTok for my skin damage. I’m 45 years old, I live in Hawaii, I surf every day, I don’t use filters, and despite regular sunscreen use and a skin care routine, I don’t have the perfect face. I don’t know what else to tell you, TikTok-ers.
Lately, I have been getting a lot of comments telling me that I need to wear sunscreen. I do, but even if I didn’t, a stranger in the comment section on TikTok telling me I need to wear it isn’t going to influence any decision I ever make about my life at all. My own mother criticized my face my entire life, so there is absolutely nothing a stranger on TikTok can say to hurt my feelings or change my decisions.
But I have compassion for why people do it, because once you heal, the pattern becomes obvious.
Unsolicited Advice Is Anxiety Looking for Control
Unsolicited advice is trying to soothe your anxiety by finding a way to control the situation.
A lot of people say, “I’m just trying to help.” And sometimes that’s true. But very often, unsolicited advice shows up when you are dysregulated.
When someone shares pain, confusion, or uncertainty (or their unfiltered face), instead of staying present, your body panics.
So you:
Offer solutions
Give instructions
Jump straight to “Here’s what you should do.”
Not because they asked. But because you don’t feel safe sitting with someone else’s experience.
Advice becomes a way to regulate your nervous system. This doesn’t make you bad. It makes you a human being.
Where This Pattern Actually Comes From
Nobody is born with these behaviors. They were formed in childhood.
Some of us were raised in environments where:
Emotions weren’t processed
Problems had to be solved quickly
Uncertainty wasn’t tolerated
Being “helpful” was how you stayed safe or loved
So you adapted. When we are 0–18 years old and under the care of caregivers, having no other choice but to live or who to surround ourselves with, we have to find ways to psychologically or even physiologically survive our environments. It’s actually very intelligent.
But survival strategies don’t serve us in adulthood when we don’t need them anymore. The problem is, our nervous system doesn’t understand that, so when we can feel the same triggers in our body, our behaviors are the same.
In adulthood, these same patterns create control, disconnection, and resentment, not safety.
Why “Helping” is Not Compassion
Unsolicited advice skips:
Curiosity
Listening
Respect for autonomy
When advice comes before understanding, it communicates: “I don’t trust you to navigate your own life.” Even if it’s well-intentioned.
Compassion isn’t fixing. Compassion is creating space for other people to feel how they feel.
The Cost of Unsolicited Advice (Especially in Close Relationships)
Even with good intentions, unsolicited advice:
Makes people feel unseen
Undermines their intuition
Creates emotional distance
For children and teenagers, it can instill beliefs like:
My experience isn’t valid unless someone confirms it
Other people know better than me
I can’t trust myself
These beliefs create people-pleasers who outsource their worth.
And relationally? People stop sharing. Or, even worse, they stop coming to you altogether.
Emotional Maturity Is Tolerating Uncertainty
Not everything needs to be solved. Not every problem is yours. Not everyone wants guidance.
Real emotional maturity is being able to sit with someone else’s experience without controlling it.
When you stop giving unsolicited advice:
Relationships deepen
People feel safer
Your nervous system learns that uncertainty isn’t dangerous
You don’t become less helpful. You become more trustworthy.
The Bigger Pattern: Approval, Control, and Self-Abandonment
I work with women who come to me because they are chasing love and approval in everything outside of themselves, because their emotional safety lives in external validation.
My GLOW Method teaches them to ask different questions:
Do I like who I am?
Am I living in alignment with my values?
Do I trust myself?
When they become focused on who they are, and doing the inner work, and if they are being the best version of themselves at any given time, they stop giving a sh*t about other people’s opinions of them because they like who they are and are living in alignment with their values.
That same concept applies here. Because if you are focused on yourself and you are happy with your own life, then you don’t have the time, energy, or concern to want to tell someone else how to live their life.
And if you feel compelled to control someone else’s life, I challenge you to consider: What part of your own life are you avoiding by focusing so hard on the other person’s life?
Usually, the people who crave to control everything outside of themselves are out of control internally.
And if that is you, that’s okay. A lot of us have been there.
Awareness-Based Action Steps (Before You Try to ‘Fix’ Anything)
1. Awareness
When you feel the urge to give unsolicited advice, notice it. That’s it.
That alone is massive. Many people never get this far because they’re not even aware they’re doing it.
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself, that’s growth. Do a happy dance celebration to celebrate how amazing it is to have that level of self-awareness.
2. Identify the Feeling
Before speaking, ask: What am I feeling right now?
Nine times out of ten, it’s anxiety.
3. One Question That Changes Everything
If someone is venting and you feel the urge to give advice, simply ask: “Do you want advice, or do you just want to vent?”
If they want to vent, your job is to give them space to feel how they feel, whether you like it or not, or agree with it or not.
And if their emotions make you uncomfortable, that’s your responsibility to manage, not theirs. And if it makes you too uncomfortable, set a boundary.
4. A Note for the Receiver of Unsolicited Advice
If you’re on the receiving end, you’re allowed to say: “I just needed to vent. I’m not looking for advice.”
Awareness works on both sides.
Glow Tip:
From Fixing to Self-Trust
If you feel an automatic pull to help, guide, correct, or “save” people, even when they didn’t ask, it’s not because you’re insightful or generous.
It’s because your nervous system learned that being useful was safer than being present.
Unsolicited advice isn’t something you were born with. It’s a regulation strategy to manage your discomfort about other people’s experiences.
When your nervous system doesn’t trust that people can handle their own experiences, or that you can feel safe while they struggle, advice becomes a way to stabilize yourself, not support them.
Growth comes from feeling safe in your body while experiencing the discomfort.
When your body learns that your worth doesn’t depend on being helpful, useful, or right, you stop inserting yourself into other people’s problem-solving and start respecting both their autonomy and your own energy.
Grieving the version of you who stayed safe by fixing others is part of becoming someone who no longer needs control to feel secure.
When you stop trying to control other people’s lives and start taking accountability for your own survival strategies, everything shifts — your relationships, your nervous system, and your identity.
That’s what it means to shine from the inside.
If This Hit, Here’s Your Next Step
If this landed, there’s a good chance this belief is running your life more than you realize:
“My worth comes from what I do for others.”
That belief is the engine behind people-pleasing, fixing, over-functioning, and yes, unsolicited advice.
It’s why sitting with uncertainty feels unbearable. It’s why being needed feels safer than being known. And it’s why slowing down can feel like you’re failing.
I break this belief down step-by-step — where it comes from, why it sticks, and how to dismantle it — in two places:
🎥 My YouTube video on this exact mindset, where I walk through the belief in real time and give grounded action steps you can practice immediately: https://youtu.be/-zcL6C3YH00
🪩 The People-Pleaser to Powerhouse Masterclass, where we go deeper and actually rewire the nervous system patterns that keep your worth tied to performance and usefulness: https://www.runninginslippers.com/masterclass
You don’t need to do more to be worthy. You need to stop organizing your life around earning permission to exist.
When you’re ready to stop proving and start trusting yourself, that’s where the work begins
✨ Let’s turn your light back on without abandoning yourself to do it.
With love and fire,
Angie
