Incidentally I trained my parents out of giving that kind of non-advice after I decided I was just going to openly have mental illness and Trauma around them. It became too exhausting to pretend otherwise. I wanted them to understand and continue to like me even if I was actually weirder than they thought. And I also just thought it would be more productive if they actually learned how to deal with people who aren’t perfectly well adjusted.

I thought maybe they could also use a dose of realizing that people who are not well adjusted included someone they had had a hand in raising.

But anyway I trained them out of “You just have to not let that upset you,” by responding with, “ I am already upset/worried/ scared/ thinking about the thing. I am already beyond the point of preventing it.”

Literally absolutely every time they told me just to not let it upset me I told me that well it already had and that’s why I was talking about it. And then they would just kind of get quiet and you could hear them kind of rewiring their thought patterns around this kind of advice giving.

I don’t know whether it has reshaped their approach to this with anyone else or if they have just decided that I have become thorny in this regard and should therefore be dodged but either way they no longer suggest this.

And now when they complain about people at their jobs who seem to be exhibiting symptoms like mine, I just bring it up. Like hey maybe Debra is upset because she has an anxiety disorder. Maybe that person in front of you in traffic is unfamiliar with the area or really nervous or got in an accident recently and that’s why they are going slow. I hope it makes them more thoughtful to consider other people through the lens of potentially having some of the shit that I have.

As a disclaimer, my mom and my step dad are on the whole really loving people and they have both made a lot of effort to understand me now that I’ve stopped making the effort to pretend that I’m normal. My dad and stepmother were the actively abusive people, but my mom and stepdad both seem to have come from really emotionally stunted families also so it’s me and my brain worms making people confront stuff.

Weirdly enough I think that this combined with me having been disabled for 2 years really did a lot for the way we all relate to each other. I can hear in my mom’s voice that she is physically restraining herself from questioning every decision that I make but I really appreciate that she listened when I told her that it upset me to be questioned and grilled about everything I did.

Either way they don’t tell me just to not let it bother me anymore.

So if you’re in a position to do it I recommend just telling people “well I’m already upset or worried or thinking about it” and see if that changes anything for you. You might make some gears turn a little bit if nothing else.