I'm sure they wanted to help, but it was a very direct, blunt experience
The key observation is that, as far as I can tell, you never actually asked for help.
I call the behaviour you're commenting on "inflicting help". This is a very, very common mistake that even very smart people make. One of the basic tools in a good consultant's toolkit is to be able to recognize actual requests for help, and fulfill those strictly within the bounds of what has been requested.
The good news is, this is a community of people who want to be skilled at updating on the evidence. Hopefully this negative result will be counted as evidence and people here will, in future, tend to refrain from inflicting help.
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