By Ashley Wendt, M.A., LMFT

There’s a running joke in the Peanuts comic strip of Lucy offering psychological advice to other members of the gang for a mere 5 cents a session. And if you are familiar with Lucy, you won’t be surprised to learn that her advice is futile at best, and at its worst, blunt and devoid of empathy; the equivalent to “get over it”. As such, her friends appear just as distressed at the end of the sessions as they were when they arrived. Clearly, as this is a comic strip, we aren’t meant to expect that therapy will mirror a session with Lucy. However, I do think it reflects the idea that psychological ailments can be addressed with advice. And perhaps unintentionally, it demonstrates the inefficacy of advice in a therapeutic relationship.

Now more than ever, we expect fast answers. We live in a time with access to an abundance of information at our fingertips. So many of us have grown uncomfortable with wondering. If we have a question, all we need to do is open our laptop and in less than a minute, we have a clear and direct answer (or at least we perceive it that way). And truly, how satisfying it is to be able to bypass the discomfort of the unknown. Thus, it’s understandable that one would want and expect the same to be true in therapy. However, the psyche is complex and the answers not as concrete. Each of us have come to understand ourselves and the world in which we live through our own unique lenses formed by our individual histories. Therefore, prescriptive advice, usually universal in nature, may do little to address the actual issue. 

In fact, well-meaning advice may only leave a person feeling more frustrated and defeated. Intellectually, one might know the “right” thing to do, but something emotionally won’t enable them to make that choice. Alternatively, the advice has been followed, and perhaps after a brief respite, the painful feelings have returned.

An example of this is when Lucy demands that Pigpen clean himself up before returning to her psychiatry booth. Pigpen complies and comes back as readers have never seen him before: clean and kempt. However, despite doing exactly as Lucy instructed, once back at the booth, we see Pigpen’s mess begin to build seemingly on its own, until he is just as messy as before. 

So if advice isn’t helpful in therapy, then what is? Again, it’s complex. But in simplistic terms, it’s about understanding. It’s opportunity to think with someone to shine light on the unconscious elements that impact our symptoms and conscious decisions. In other words, the issue with Pigpen is not the mess. The mess is merely the symptom. What could have actually been helpful would have been to uncover that which is causing the mess, thus making the mess less likely to unconsciously reemerge. And in time, the tension between the intellectual and emotional self may begin to wane, resulting in changes that feel authentic and embodied. 

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