Dear Sam,

I’m emotionally tired and really needing a place to vent, but if anyone has any advice about how I should handle them, that would be great.

I don’t know if you’re reading this, since you haven’t responded to anita, but I understand your frustration. You’re trying to help your family members, but they refuse help, they refuse your advice, even though just days earlier they were complaining to you, even raging, about somebody mistreating them.

I know the feeling: my mother complains a lot about having so many chores, and she is already elderly and gets tired easily. But when I suggest she could hire someone to help her occasionally (she can afford it financially), she refuses. She rather complains, portraying herself as the victim. This is just a small example, but she has been doing that forever, always finding reasons to be unhappy, and yet never doing anything to help herself.

I’ve learned to let go of trying to make her happy and help her, because it’s in vain. She’d rather be miserable.

With you, I believe you too would need to learn to let go of trying to help, because it seems like your family members prefer to remain in their anger and rage, portraying themselves as victims, rather than do something to help themselves. You’d need to let go of the urge to help them, even though it’s a normal urge – to help the people we love and care about. But sometimes it’s just impossible, and the only thing we can do is to disengage – for our own good.

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Tee.