Don't bother

Sooner or later in life you have to realise that some people enjoy the act of complaining more than they do finding resolution.  Some people hold onto their problems because there is an identity that they associate with those problems and that is how they identify themselves.  If they were to actually find resolution and their problems were to be taken away, they would have to find a new identity and redefine who they are in their minds.

I recently had an experience which reminded me of why I formed this belief in the first place.  As with most beliefs I form, I hold them for some time, long enough to allow the events that formed them to pass away or become less poignant, at which point I begin to question those beliefs and whether or not they are still valid.  I recognise that the world is forever changing, and that new environments emerge and circumstances can become more or less accommodative leading to that which we believe being further validated or even invalidated as a result.  This experience was part of that ongoing process where I put to test what I already know in order to prove that what I expect to happen will still happen.

The experience itself isn't relevant here, the details are insignificant.  What is relevant however is that I was aware that someone had formed an identity for themselves based on problems that they had, and that there were solutions to those problems that they could pursue, and as I should have expected, they did not want to pursue any solution whatsoever, finding a sense of security in the familiar and choosing to hold onto the identity they had created for themselves instead.

Age is irrelevant in this conversation because even those who are older than I am can be just as stubborn when it comes to change.  There are lessons in life that we have the opportunity to learn as we grow, some people learn those lessons and take them to heart, whilst others reject them entirely.  There is growth which comes with age and experience that is therefore not universal.

What I find frustrating about this whole experience however is the fact that those people who hold onto their problems and close their mind to solutions ultimately cause their problems to grow.  Any underlying truth in the cause of their problems diminishes over time, being replaced instead by their own beliefs.  That, yes negative things did happen to them, but the true extent to which those things impacted them was minimal by comparison to the impact they create through their own negative, self destructive mentality.

We like to think that we can help people, but you can't help everyone.  If you spend your life trying to fix other peoples' problems then sooner or later you'll either realise that some people just create more to replace them, or you'll waste your life trying to help people who deep down underneath it all don't actually want to be helped.  Some people just like to have negativity in their life that they can blame everything bad on, so that they never have to take responsibility for anything they say or do, instead blaming it on that negativity.

I have experienced great trauma in my life, and I have met many people who have been through similar experiences and others who have been through far worse.  What remains common to all of these people is the recognition that if you let them, those traumas can come to define your life and invade every single thing you say, do, and think.  Those who manage to progress to a point where they become highly functioning once again are those who realise that you can confine past experience to the past.  This isn't something that is always possible through thought and positive mental attitudes alone, sometimes it requires a lot of therapy, and it can require drugs such as antidepressants in order to reach a point where you can process something inherently destructive without being destroyed in the process.

If you are a person who is sentimental, or if you are someone with an intimate link to the person who is struggling, then there can be a desperate desire to "fix" the person who is struggling.  This desire is insidious because unless you are a trained professional you will not be able to do it alone, and arguably even if you are a trained professional it is highly unethical to try and treat someone you know personally or someone who you share an intimate relationship with - romantic or platonic.

Recognising and accepting that other people are not your problems to solve can be incredibly hard if you form sentimental attachments to other people easily.  It can be incredibly hard even if you don't form these attachments easily but the person in question is a rare exception or is someone it took you a long time to get to that point with.  There is a mentality that evaluates the investment that has already been made in someone else and spurs you on to making that much of an investment again to save them, but through the nature of this mentality, as each revaluation occurs, the sum total of all investment is cumulative and you get stuck in an infinite loop where you give more and more until you have nothing left to give and then you yourself feel like a complete failure because you couldn't save them.

The idea that you need to disconnect from the world, from other people, and to detach your sentimentality is something which you may react quite vehemently against.  Whilst age has little relevance here, there is a tendency to believe with greater optimism at a younger age that you can save everyone, it's just a matter of how much effort you put into that endeavour.  Unfortunately that belief is not something I nor anyone else can disprove for you, if you hold it, you will have to learn for yourself the hard way that this is fruitless.  If you do manage to save every single person you try to save, you will be the first person in history to manage that feat.  That in itself is not an argument to prove it is impossible, it is only an expression of the improbability of succeeding.  Even if you truly believe it is possible, sooner or later you'll realise that even then, the amount of effort you would have to invest would never be worth it for some people, not because they are not worth saving but because of the reality that they don't actually want to be saved, and that is a mentality you can't change.