Someone Keeps Venting Their Problems On Me.

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It makes me feel powerless when this person vents their problems on me. I am not expert on the problems. I am not skilled socially and the problems are social problems. I find myself getting overwhelmed and I end up worrying about that person's problems and I become obsessed and do research to find solutions.

When I see them later, they say, "Oh, that was solved" and read a magazine and do their own thing and I am still left shaky and upset. They said that they were just venting.

I can't take it anymore (not to vent). What a hypocrite I am being to vent on this site but is it wrong to tell the person, "Stop telling me about your problems all the time".

People will continue to do this to you until you stop responding.

Just say "I'm sorry to hear your having difficulties. I hope things get better for you soon."
and walk away.

if they follow you say "f**k off!"

I'm serious you have to cut them off.

PS I learned this the VERY hard way.

This is probably naive of me, but couldn't you explain to them what you just said? It'll be frustrating for them, but I think they'd take it way less personally than "f--- off" so you could actually keep their friendship...
Tell them you're not very good at understanding when they're just venting or not, so maybe next time they could tell you before they're going to do it so you won't try to find answers for them...

Thank you for your responses. I liked both responses, especially the f-ck off response; it made me chuckle!

I know what you mean. I use two standard replies:

"I am sorry xyz but I have no idea what you are talking about, and if I did understand, I am sure that I would not know the answer anyway". (This reply works every time in all sorts of situations!).

or

"I don't understand, please do not ask me."

Those are good responses!

I remember this one person told me that she'd say, "Oh, you shouldn't waste your time telling me about your problems because I am really shallow and don't care. No, seriously, I couldn't care in the least. I'm shallow". It really surprised people who wanted to dump on her!

I listen politely for some time and ask a few questions, if I have any to ask. If I don´t, I simply say, that I wouldn´t know, what to do myself, so I actually can´t give you any advice. Simple as that.

Tell them you are not good at giving emotional support and don't know what to say to make them feel better or tell them you don't know how to help them or what the solution is to their problem.

Most of the time people only want emotional support and they don't really want a real solution. I think after a while they will give up on you and vent elsewhere.

I used to fume about this all the time. The problem is I do give them solutions. My brain is super good at coming up with them. But they don't listen. They'd rather complain and waste my time. You either have to give up those relationships, or slowly and painfully increase your understanding of each other. I had to do that with my mom because I can't give up on her. There's some improvement. I now tune out when she complains, browse the net or something, and she tries to listen to my suggestions. Just last night she spent a whole 15 minutes describing her frustration with a lamp in her house that keeps turning on and off by itself, and freaking her out. I listened as well as I could while typing stuff on my computer, finally told her "Just go and unplug that stupid lamp." She was like "ooh brilliant idea, why didn't I think of that." So yeah she's starting to listen, once I have tolerated the ranting long enough. For other NTs I don't care about they just have to put up with my obvious lack of interest.