You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

Today we're talking about how to deal with unwanted and unwarranted advice.

Now, what's that old expression?

Opinions are like adrenal glands.

Most of us have them and we tend to think ours are the best, which is to say a lot of people have strong opinions about offering advice and opinions.

Oh, I love giving advice.

Unfortunately unsolicited.

See what I mean?

That was NPR's Brittany Luce, by the way.

If you don't know her already, she's the host of It's Been a Minute, and every week she does a deep dive into what's going on in our culture and helps listeners make sense of it.

So it makes sense that she would have hot takes on things, and I would trust them.

But I do seek advice.

I'm comfortable with not being an expert on something and not knowing something and going to somebody to be like, can you help me with this or what do you think I should do? The thing is, there is a difference between someone attempting to be helpful and just straight up judging or criticizing you. I'm someone who's like, if you have wisdom, like, I'll learn from it. I'm happy to learn from it. But I do think it's different if you're like,

no, I'm going on just fine and I don't need your opinion that might be judgmental or like you're

doing it wrong. Like that advice is generally like nobody likes, nobody likes it. That's clinical

psychologist Adia Gooden. You might recognize her from our episodes on how to be a good

loser or how to stop hurting your own feelings. She's all about embracing unconditional self-worth,

a very useful skill to have in your back pocket when it comes to today's topic. On this edition of

Dear Life Kit, the advice series from Life Kit reporter Andy Tagle, Brittany and Adia are going to give you advice about advice.

They'll talk you through how to handle hurtful in-laws, overly curious onlookers,

and those family members that mean well, but can't seem to quit with their lofty expectations.

...