My wife is fairly neurotic, having problems with anxiety, anger, self esteem etc. she becomes very uncomfortable when things don't go her way and demands that the world should be as she wishes it to be. She complains endlessly about everything. The problem I have is that trying to get her to challenge this unhelpful and unrealistic thinking (in a CBT or REBT manner) usually just annoys her. What she really likes is sympathy and confirmation of how awful everything is. I can play the sympathy role (and often do) but I feel that this is only helping to validate her unhelpful world view and ultimately is not useful to her -or us for that matter. Any thoughts are most welcome as I'm struggling to find an approach to help her help herself.