Advice Columns

People are increasingly turning to others for help and advice. It is the natural thing to do when we are in mental pain, worrying, depressed, sad or feeling lost.
As people have become more accustomed to owning and having instant and easy access to computers and the web it is becoming increasingly popular to turn to websites for information, help, advice and sources of knowledge. There are advice columns, problem pages, agony aunts, relationship experts, life coaches and therapists, all offering to inform you, advise you, support you and help you through your times of grief and worry. It would silly not to take advantage of how easy it is to accept that help.

This is great, especially for those who for whatever reason are unable to go to see someone for advice. You might be housebound because you are looking after tiny children and cannot get a baby sitter, you might live out in the sticks where there are no people to get to to help you, perhaps you have no transport or you are disabled or agrophobia. It may be that you have none of these problems but are very busy and lacking in time and cannot find the half day it takes to get to and from such a person in real life! Hence websites come into their own because we can look things up and find out facts in an instant with no time and expense or inconvenience to travelling or re-arranging our lives. Why spend 3 hours going back and forth to someone when we can speak to that same person on the phone and only spend an hour or less on it?

Most of the sites offer online help in some form and many give a choice. Usually you can choose between using a forum, phoning someone or emailing someone. What do we expect to get from these sites? I have worked as a leading full-time professional agony aunt for over thirty years and am President of The Association of Agony Aunts. I now know for a fact that almost of the clients who go to someone like me for advice are female and most of them are under the age of 25. Many of them are single or dating and are not going through situations like divorce or marriage issues. The usual problems they want help with are long distance relationships, dating a married man, finding out their man is a cheat or unreliable and other similar issues. If they do not have any help or understanding from their family this can be awful for them, especially at such a young age. Some of these girls are very emotional and sensitive and desperately need the right guidance. Which means that it is an enormous responsibility to not only care about them but to be able to give them sound advice and correct information. Most women under the age of 25 have friends and acquaintances or family they can speak to about things if they simply want to let off steam and they can speak to those people for free.

Looking at the three different types of help there are, some sites offer forums where it is possible to go online and give advice to others in similar situations and in return get their feed back on your situation, but the majority of people suffering from indecision and serious problems need more than that and are determined to consult an expert professional because they realise that support is not the same as accuracy.

Unfortunately, it is not legally necessary to be qualified when you offer advice as an agony aunt. Believe me, I, Rosemary Price, qualified therapist and psychic know this and think it is all wrong. It should be but it is not. Even though giving the wrong advice and information can be harmful and upsetting. It is such a huge responsibility and I made sure I was successfully tested by experts, professionals and the Press myself before having the cheek to say that my advice was worth having. But many do not do that. Just as you have people who like to believe they can write, sing, dance, act when they cannot you have people who like to believe they have what it takes to be therapists or an agony aunt.But this is not a guarantee that they are being honest about it or that they are good enough to listen to.

Phoning someone can be best for many because you can interact and think of what to say according to what the other person is saying but remember that the really good ones will not be sitting by the phone twiddling their thumbs hoping you ring, they will insist you arrange an appointment. This would usually be for in a few days, not long.

Email is better if you want to consult the person at late or very early hours when they would not be interested, or when you wish to keep a record of exactly what they said for future reference.

What is best for the person who is suffering and worrying is the most important thing, which is why if someone comes to me for a job as a paid expert and they are not good enough then they do not get in. I do not care how much they are in need of finding a way to earn money from home or bored, that is not the issue. Giving wise advice is far more important. I will only accept people who have been properly trained, if they need training, or have the experience and expertise. I do train up people who have what it takes but need that help to get there. But there is no point if they are simply wanting to do it to suit themselves rather than because they are suited to the job.

There are a lot of different advice columns now. The best advice column will be one that is run by someone with a lot of experience, who is properly qualified, who has been tested to prove themselves and who you know is not doing it simply because they are bored or because it boosts their ego or because they are desperate to earn a few dollars. I am at http://www.webclairvoyant.com.