How to Stay in Role When Someone Asks You For Advice
- Ben Jackson
- Dec 23, 2025
- 15 min read
Learn how to maintain your helper role when someone asks for advice. Practical guidance for CPCAB Level 2 students on staying in role without giving answers.
If you're training at CPCAB Level 2, you'll face this moment repeatedly: someone asks you directly what they should do. They look at you with genuine hope that you'll solve their problem. And you'll feel the pull to answer.
This moment reveals something fundamental about boundaries in counselling. Maintaining the boundaries of your helping role isn't just about time limits or location. It's about the entire dynamic of the relationship.
Let's explore what really happens when someone asks for advice, why staying in role actually serves them better, and what you do in those moments when every instinct tells you to fix it.
The Impulse to Give Advice (And Why It Feels Good)
Early in Level 2 training, before boundaries are fully explored, there's often an impulse by helpers to give advice. They feel quite able to share their opinion, share their thoughts.
And here's what's interesting: there's something deeply satisfying about giving advice. It feels like by releasing this guidance you've been holding, you experience some kind of relief. You feel better for sharing it. There's a physical element to this release, as if part of you has been satisfied by it being shared.
Then you get a reward. The helpee receives what you've said. They don't immediately dismiss it. That feels reinforcing. You think: this is working. I'm being helpful.
But there are severe limitations to this approach.
Why We're Always Limited
You don't always have access to experiences the helpee has been going through. You're limited by direct experience, but more critically, you're limited by the helpee's individual and unique experiencing of their situation.
No matter how much life you've lived, there will always be a limit to your ability to offer relevant and pertinent guidance. This only increases as you progress through training and encounter more challenging issues. You'll meet life experiences that simply aren't anywhere near your own.
Think about gender, in whatever form that takes. Think about ethnicity. Before we get into more details, those two are very distinct experiences which are unique to the individual. You won't always be able to map onto them.
You're immediately limited. As tempting as it is, you have to recognise these limitations exist, even though you feel you can always give advice.
Yes, we share some experiences at a certain level. Grief, end of relationships, financial issues. These have some interchangeable or interrelational qualities. But these commonalities become minor when you look at the individual's detailed experience of those situations.
When You Don't Know What to Say
At some point, the helpee will ask for guidance and you won't know what to say. In that moment, you feel ill equipped to support them. You feel you're letting them down.
This is anxiety inducing. That anxiety triggers a whole set of responses. You might go into people pleasing or trying to placate. You might apologise for your lack of knowledge. A feeling of "not enoughness" in some way.
The Shift When You Learn About Boundaries
As training progresses, you begin to realise there's no space for advice giving at Level 2. You're not there to coach people through problems. You're looking to be alongside them as they go through whatever they're experiencing.
But this creates new tension. You're welcoming the idea of giving advice, then you're told not to give advice. You think: what should I do now?
Even with boundaries in place, there's leakage. Temptation squeezes through. You want to be helpful. That desire is powerful, sometimes more powerful than your cognitive awareness.
When someone asks you a question, it feels inappropriate not to answer. It feels rude. You worry you're dodging it somehow. This loops back to feeling unhelpful or not helpful enough.
The Cultural Conditioning
There's cultural conditioning that says we should always be helping and supporting. Religious conditioning that suggests we should offer ourselves without restriction on our energies.
There's also occupational conditioning. Many students come from HR backgrounds, risk management, safety roles. They love procedures and structures and frameworks. They love knowing there's a flowchart that tells people how to move through challenges.
All that conditioning confronts you when you realise none of it is required or necessary in this role, as tempting and familiar as it is.
When You Want to Give Advice (Even When No One Asked)
Here's something fascinating: sometimes the helpee asks what to do. But sometimes, as the person talks and you're not giving advice, you become more and more keen to offer it anyway.
The advice giving doesn't need to be requested. Sometimes you're so committed to wanting to resolve the problem that you push towards it. This opens a whole other question about what you're sitting with in those moments.
What's Really Happening Beneath the Request
When a helpee wants to be told what to do, you need to step back and reflect. What's going on beneath this question? What might you be supporting in an unhelpful way if you do give advice?
The Projection and Power Dynamic
Look at the projection onto you as the helper. The helpee is saying: I believe you have more information and ability than I do. This immediately brings power dynamics and authority into play.
But look also at the underlying message the helpee is giving themselves: I don't know how to do this. What's familiar for me is to believe I don't know an answer or can't resolve this myself. I have to rely on other people.
Boundary setting has more than simply a supportive role. It brings the dynamic of the relationship into play. What's systematically normal for the helpee might be feeling incapable of resolving things themselves while thinking another person can do it.
You've got a power and authority issue going on.
What Happens When Advice Fails
The helpee becomes potentially reliant on the advice. Then what happens when the advice inevitably fails?
The helpee projects that disappointment and failure onto you. "You told me this was what I should do, and look what happened."
In that very small instance, the helpee has reduced their autonomy and agency and placed it onto another. That's at the heart of what you're not trying to do. It's more important to support the individual with their autonomy and agency, not get caught up in their abdication of those roles to another, however familiar it might be for them.
The Reinforcing Behaviour
Sometimes people ask for advice because it's a reinforcing behaviour that sustains a belief about themselves: I am incapable. I'm unable to do this on my own.
It feels unfavourable to tell another person what to do. It doesn't feel like counselling. It feels like advice giving. You're playing out the same roles that keep them stuck.
Maintaining boundaries isn't simply about time or location. Boundaries are fundamental to the therapeutic experience for both helper and helpee.
What Staying in Role Actually Means
Your role as a Level 2 helper is distinct. It's not advice giver, not friend, not expert.
The Most Common Ways Students Step Out of Role
The most common way is through unwittingly offering advice. Students often frame their advice through questions rather than direct statements. "Have you considered this?" "How about that?"
These questions perpetuate a form of advice giving because you're giving the person a choice between A and B. You're leading it.
How to Shift Back Into Listening
Go back to the absolute core basics you learn on Level 2. Pay attention to all the language the helpee is using. Pay attention to your own experience.
Return to those core skills and techniques: reflection, paraphrasing, clarifying. Avoid interfering or adding your interpretation.
You're looking to develop the autonomy of the individual. That's why you stay within their frame, within their language.
The skills and techniques applied at the beginning of the course continue throughout in order to develop and sustain the autonomy of the helpee.
When you start adding your interpretations, layering your thoughts and feelings, that's when it gets tricky. You're layering your experience, your frame of reference, into theirs.
When someone is seeking advice and guidance, avoid that as much as possible. Stay within their language, their autonomy, their agency.
The Person-Centred Frame
This comes back to the person-centred approach developed throughout our courses. How do you support autonomy and agency in the individual? Through those core skills.
You don't over-interpret through your own language. You offer what you hear as reflection, so it stays within their frame of reference, not interpreted through yours.
Exploring Together Without Directing
Imagine you're sitting beside that person, looking at the same environment. Noticing the same things. Noting them might evoke conversations or awarenesses the helpee hasn't seen.
But you're avoiding pointing things out or directing them to look at certain things. Directing means you're controlling the direction of their looking, controlling the direction of advice or guidance. It's not coming from the direction of the helpee, which is what you're trying to promote.
The Person-Centred Frame
This comes back to the person-centred approach developed throughout our courses. How do you support autonomy and agency in the individual? Through those core skills.
You don't over-interpret through your own language. You offer what you hear as reflection, so it stays within their frame of reference, not interpreted through yours.
Exploring Together Without Directing
Imagine you're sitting beside that person, looking at the same environment. Noticing the same things. Noting them might evoke conversations or awarenesses the helpee hasn't seen.
But you're avoiding pointing things out or directing them to look at certain things. Directing means you're controlling the direction of their looking, controlling the direction of advice or guidance. It's not coming from the direction of the helpee, which is what you're trying to promote.
What Happens to the Relationship
When you become the expert, several things happen:
Transfer of power and control
Shift in expectations
Potential resentment from the helpee
Authority that the helper starts to feel (and gets aggrandised by)
This is detrimental to what should be a therapeutic space.
The Attitudinal Qualities
What you're developing throughout all levels isn't so much direct skills or techniques, but attitudes. You're operating from an attitude of respect and understanding.
That means respecting the person's need to seek advice. Respecting their need to want guidance. Recognising this is what's familiar for them. That doesn't come with judgement from you. You simply recognise it as being what's familiar.
The Confusion Between Helpful and Directive
There's an overriding belief that being directive is more helpful than accompanying someone in their search for resolution. I don't think there's confusion. There's non-application. Direction is just far more comfortable for the individual.
But that comfort raises questions about the helper and what they're okay with, what they're not okay with, their anxieties. That's what's most revealing. We'll explore this more in future posts about noticing what's ours.
What to Actually Do in Those Moments
When you feel pressured to fix, rescue, or advise, here's what works.
Step 1: Tune Into Your Own Responses
Connect to your own feelings and what's evoked in you. Watch out for what feels familiar about giving advice and guidance.
Become aware of your physical reactions, your mental reactions to those questions. As we've covered in previous posts about your own stuff, put that to one side.
This helps you focus on the dynamic of the relationship. You start thinking: how is it that they need to ask me for advice?
Step 2: Reflect What's Happening
You could call it out and state it. This is a form of reflection. "I hear you're asking me to give you guidance and advice."
Reflection is often thought about as reflecting the emotion or feeling, or what the individual's describing. But reflection works at different levels. Think about concentric circles of conversation. You have an inner circle reflecting the emotion. You have a wider circle reflecting the overall interaction.
You're drawing direct attention to the actual action or request of the individual.
You could extend this by reflecting back the question: "You've asked me what I think about this idea."
You're distancing yourself from your frame of reference and advice giving whilst bringing into awareness the individual's desires.
Step 3: Explore the Meaning Beneath
Explore what it means for the helpee to receive advice. Don't look at the specifics of what they're requesting. Don't get pulled into their desire for resolution. Look to understand what's going underneath.
One of the key aspects you learn on Level 2 and throughout all courses is staying curious, staying open to understanding what's happening for the individual.
It's not really about whether to make a cup of tea or not. It's about the underlying message. The questions and guidance needed are often sometimes a cover or supportive way of maintaining the condition the individual feels they have of themselves: that they aren't able to do something.
Step 4: Inquire From Their Perception
You're looking to develop their internal capacity and capability. Ask questions like:
"When you ask that question, what immediately comes to mind?"
"What sensations do you notice?"
"You said X, Y, and Z. What are your thoughts about those?"
"What do you think? What feels right for you?"
"What has worked in the past for you? What hasn't worked?"
You're drawing on their own resources. You're helping them explore their own options through their own frame. That's more useful than you adding things into their frame of reference that they're unaware of or don't have access to.
Explore their sense of that question. Look at the meaning for them. Stay curious about how they relate to the suggestions they're coming up with.
Step 5: Remember Your Role
You're not expected to have answers. There's no expectation of answer giving.
Wind it back down to the basics, to the core skills you've been trained on.
If They Push Hard for Answers
If the helpee is demanding answers, loop it back to them:
"I hear you really want me to give you an answer. What's it like for you to feel that?"
"What's it like for you, me not sharing advice?"
"What's coming up for you in me not giving you guidance?"
These questions reveal something about their process. They open up further conversations.
If That's Still Not Enough
Go back to the boundaries and contract. "Let me revisit the roles we have here and make sure this is still a fit for what you're after."
The helpee might want advice giving and guidance. Maybe that's what they expected. It's not what they're getting. They might want to end sessions at that point. That's fine. Just as we explored in the confidentiality post about contracting.
But I'd encourage you to stick with the process of exploring what it's like for them to have advice refused. What emotions are coming up? Disappointment or anger will be material worth exploring further.
Another Approach
Rather than asking what's coming up for them, you could say: "Tell me what it would mean to you for me to share something."
That's another way of exploring their process, what's going on for them.
A Qualifying Question (Though Discouraged at Level 2)
You could say: "Do you really want my personal advice on what you should do?"
If they say yes, by asking that question you're still getting autonomy and agency clarified by them. They're still participating in the action. You're not directing or leading it. They've mandated you to give advice.
The way you approach it keeps it person-centred because they're directing what they want, not you.
You could then share something. Remember that sometimes people won't action what you suggest. They might dismiss it and think it won't work. It's more that they want the question answered.
I wouldn't be terrified of telling a helpee something, as long as you've worked through all these other things to clarify the situation and maintain their autonomy and agency.
The Core Truth
Often we get looped up in the idea that we should be doing something, that it's our role to do something. It really isn't to do anything. It's more to be alongside.
You're being a companion to that individual's process, not the leader of it.
At Level 2, you're looking to accompany someone on their journey as they think through their thoughts and feelings and connect further with their experience. You're trying to reveal the layers beneath the behaviours, what's the person experiencing.
You're working with them to identify what that is, not identifying it for them.
Identifying it for them becomes diagnosis. That's not your role.
Why This All Matters
Go back to setting the contract and the role, the boundaries of that role. Trust the process of the things you've put in place: the dynamic, the agreement at the beginning about establishing your role. This is why all those things are important. Why things are time framed. It all comes together to define your role, who you are, what you do, and what you don't do.
Whether you're qualified or still a student, the first step is to look at yourself. Figure out what's going on for you individually. What feelings are getting in the way?
Get clear about what your role is and what it's not. That comes back to contracting. The contract isn't just for the other person. It's also for you to establish your role and boundary lines around that.
The Beautiful Range of Inquiry
The temptation for advice giving opens up a whole beautiful range of inquiry for both helper and helpee, if you're courageous enough to go looking. You'll find a lot to learn about yourself as much as about supporting the helpee to learn more about their experience.
It feels like a moment of tension because it's a kind of polarisation: give me advice, no I won't. You've got a yes/no.
But if you look below the surface of that interaction, you'll find something far more revealing, far more useful for everyone involved. It offers potential learning that's invaluable for the helpee to recognise their role within this, why they need help with advice giving.
Think about it as an anecdote. If we didn't desire advice giving, we'd have far fewer books in the self-help section. There's a desire for someone to shortcut our thinking. If you tell us what to do, we don't have to engage and think about it.
That's not horrendously awful at certain times. Sometimes we employ people to have things done for us because we don't wish to be upskilled in those particular services.
Yet that trips to the other extreme: being devoid of autonomy or agency. That's what you're actually looking to develop more. Recognising some of those things.
The Helper Role at Level 2
At Level 2, you're working as a helper with a helpee. This terminology is deliberate. It demonstrates the limits of ability at this level of training and defines that there will be material beyond the helper's role.
As you progress to Level 3 and beyond, you'll move towards identifying as a trainee counsellor working with clients. But at Level 2, this distinction is important. It frames the boundaries of what you're trained to hold. This links back to recognising your limits discussed in a previous blog.
Ready to Progress Your Training?
If you're navigating CPCAB Level 2 and learning to stay in your helper role, resist the pull to fix and advise, and recognise that maintaining boundaries serves people better than giving them answers, you're developing the professional maturity that underpins great therapeutic work.
When you're ready to progress to CPCAB Level 3, where you'll continue this development as a trainee counsellor working with clients in supervised practice, we'd love to support your journey. Our approach values autonomy and agency, clear boundaries, and the person-centred philosophy that respects people's capacity to find their own way through challenges.
About The School of Counselling
The School of Counselling is a CPCAB-approved training centre and BACP member organisation, specialising in person-centred counselling training. We support students through their journey from Level 2 helper skills through to qualified practice, with experienced tutors who understand that staying in role isn't about withholding help, it's about offering the kind of help that truly serves. We're committed to developing the attitudinal qualities that make great counsellors, not just teaching techniques.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do I do when someone directly asks me for advice?
First, tune into your own responses. Notice what's evoked in you. Then reflect what's happening: "I hear you're asking me for guidance." Explore what it means for them to receive advice rather than getting pulled into the specifics of what they're asking. Ask questions like "What immediately comes to mind when you ask that?" or "What feels right for you?" Stay curious about what's beneath their request rather than answering it directly.
Why does it feel so uncomfortable not to give advice when someone asks?
It feels inappropriate not to answer a direct question. It feels rude or like you're dodging it. There's cultural and occupational conditioning that says helping means giving answers. You might also be experiencing your own discomfort with not being "helpful enough." But giving advice takes away their autonomy and agency. Staying in your helper role, even when uncomfortable, actually serves them better by supporting them to find their own answers.
How is not giving advice actually more helpful?
When you give advice, the helpee reduces their autonomy and places it onto you. If the advice fails, they project disappointment onto you. They become reliant rather than capable. When you stay in role and help them explore their own thinking, you're developing their internal capacity. You're working with them to identify what's happening, not identifying it for them. That builds their ability to navigate challenges independently.
What if they get angry or disappointed that I won't give them answers?
Bring it into the space. "I hear you really want me to give you an answer. What's it like for you to feel that?" or "What's coming up for you in me not sharing advice?" Those strong emotions are material worth exploring. They often reveal something about the helpee's process and patterns. If they continue pushing, return to the contract and clarify whether your role still fits what they're seeking. Some people genuinely want directive advice, and that's fine, but it's not the helper role.
Is it ever okay to share my thoughts or advice?
At Level 2, your primary role is to stay within their frame of reference, using core skills like reflection and paraphrasing. If you've worked through exploring what's beneath their request and they still want your perspective, you could ask a qualifying question: "Do you really want my personal advice on what you should do?" This keeps their autonomy intact because they're directing what they want. But remember they might not action what you suggest. The request itself often reveals more than the answer ever would.
