You are right....you can't say or do anything to change the situation he seems to be trapped in.

He is the ONLY one who can change. Yes, the job environment might be bad but unless he puts resumes out there he will be guaranteed to miss any possible opportunities to leave that company.

The other thing goes well beyone mindful meditation if he chooses to stay. He definitely needs to change his attitude toward his position. Not easy but DBT calls it Radical Acceptance. Basically that is accepting the current circumstances UNTIL something can change.

The other option is what happened to me in my aerospace computer engineering career. I tried to hang in there excelling but hating the position I ended up in. I ended up having a breakdown & was never able to go back to my career. This is NOT a good option based on personal experience.

As for blaming childhood circumstances on adult success there is plenty of proof out there with individuals who have succeeded in spite of their bad & abusive childhoods.

My Ex -H tried to blame his lack of career success on the fact that he went to a state university instead of Cal Tech....but I pointed out that his lack of good GPA was because of his attitude not the university we went to. Also pointed out the fact that his younger brother got his masters from the same university & was excelling & had moved up to associate director of the company he works for. My EX was irritated that he didn't get promotions too but he didn't have the ability to move into the position of management (the next level of promotion) It was in fact his own abilities (though he was good at the technical work) that limited his promition while he blamed it on company politics. I knew all this because I worked in the same career as he did & knew exactly how it all worked even though he tried to BS me as if I were not knowledgable.

Sometimes just encouraging them to make the best of their situation is all we can do even if they think it is not being supportive. I never believed in blowing sunshine up anyone's rear because we have to learn to deal or not with REALITY.

Yes, he is my EX-H.....but for a lot more reasons than what I said here. This was just the tip of the ice berg.