There are a lot of situations where you may be frustrated by the seeming inaccessibility of a thing you want. A thing that you’re sure would improve your quality of life a whole lot.

Could be a financial thing like “get a raise” or “get a better job”….could be a medical thing like “gender affirming care” or “ADHD treatment”… could even be a social thing like “get free from having to live with people who mistreat you, and find people who respect you for who you are instead.”

And maybe you feel, quite reasonably, that the goal is inaccessible because society is gatekeeping it behind an endless maze of social, bureaucratic and economic steps that all seem designed to find ways to deny you, while constantly draining more and more and more of your precious and already scarce time and energy and money… and often, you just can’t imagine how the goal could even be possible without having been born into a kind of privilege you can only dream of.

And so… it can be extra frustrating, to see others saying and writing and posting things that seem to be aimed at people like you, trying to encourage you toward that far-off goal–

–and yet, talking as if your main obstacle wasn’t anything in this well-known, screwed-up labyrinth of societal gatekeeping–

but was instead something like… “you don’t believe you deserve it,” or “you’re doubting whether it would really be that good anyway.”

And all the “encouragement” is just arguing with you against that.

See enough of that kind of pep-talk, and you can start to feel like the world is twisted against you. Like everyone else is living in a different reality, and pretending the obvious one doesn’t exist.

Like…. Of course I know this is what I want! Of course I know I’m good enough to deserve it! The problem is out there! The problem is everything out there that’s blocking it from me! Stop telling me it’s all in my head!

It’s infuriating.

But one thing that’s helped me mitigate the frustration a little bit…. is thinking about who’s the intended audience for whatever someone else is saying.

Because there ARE also plenty of other posts and essays and thinkpieces out there, talking about those same obstacles that are familiar to you! In nearly all cases, they are well-known and much-protested-against obstacles. You’ve got a lot of sympathetic allies on your side already– even if many of them do feel just as powerless as you, and can’t do much more than sympathize.

The thing is, their rants about your obstacles are not directed as advice. They’re not directed anywhere– except maybe to raise some awareness among outsiders who are unfamiliar with the struggle at all.

It’s not advice to anyone who can do anything, really. See, the people ranting know it’s vastly unlikely that their rants will ever get seen by anyone who has the power to change any of this.

The words of others who express the same things you feel about your obstacles, most of the time, are undirected rants. No plans or solutions, just venting for the sake of a vent. A release valve in the absence of anything to actually fix the problem.

Similar to the feelings you yourself might express about the same thing.

The reason that the actual constructive advice tends to target problems you may not even have– like doubts and feelings of personal inadequacy– is because those are often the only problems that a person on this low rung of social power can do anything to help fix.

And, if you are someone who doesn’t have those specific problems… then maybe that advice isn’t meant for you.

Maybe it’s meant for the people who do need to move past that first step, the step of realizing, “yes I want this; yes I deserve this; yes I am good enough for this and it will be good enough for me”-- before they can even begin to try and tackle any of the other steps.

And those people do exist. And like you, they have a very, very long hard road ahead of them.

But no one gets anywhere on that road without that first step. Sometimes the advice that feels wrong, even insulting, to you, may be what someone else needs just to begin the journey.

Worth giving it the benefit of the doubt, anyway. People do all need different things.

…Not gonna lie though, it IS still incredibly frustrating when people who ARE actively trying to advise you– like therapists– still keep focusing on the “all in your head” type of problems, because that’s the only thing they have any idea how to fix. No matter how much you try to tell them that isn’t the problem you have.

But I get why…. because if they admitted that wasn’t the problem, then they’d have to admit there’s nothing they have the power to do about it. And that’s a hard thing to admit.