Many of these people do not want advice. The victim-type mentality, "I'm suffering, I will always suffer, there's nothing I can do to get out of it". It's self-pity on a massive scale. As I say in the regular retreat, "Even if these people are told methods and techniques of how to solve their problems, they will refuse to listen or to try the methods and techniques. Many times these people will claim, 'Oh, that might work for someone else, but it does not work for me' -- even if they have not yet tried it."
So there's often not much we can do directly with this person, but what we can do is work with our reaction to them. In a similar way to someone who's consistently late, as I mentioned a minute ago, can we open our hearts for this person who is in that victim/self-pity mental state? Can we open our heart for their pain, so that we don't have an adverse reaction to them, so that we're not angry at them, so we don't get upset? We may be able to listen better if we don't have aversion. In the final talk of the regular retreat, Rosemary says a little saying which is kind of nice in the sense of opening to others. She says something like: "They may be in need of an ear to hear their fear."
People who are caught up with self-pity like to talk a lot at you. Okay, can we listen sometimes? Can we give them a bit of attention without encouraging their self-pity, by being somebody who maybe they'll grow to trust? If they grow to trust us, then they might actually listen later on, when they're not too caught up in the self-pity. So, this is important, your reaction to them is the key.
Whether you can be there for them or not, having aversion toward them does not have to come. Again, open your heart to this person who has a mental problem. Most, if not all, of you have been on the streets of Bangkok. You've seen lepers on the street, missing fingers, missing a foot, whatever. You see that person and most, if not all of you, can open your heart to them. You see a person who has physical problems, and you can identify what it would be like to be missing your fingers, or missing your foot. That's pretty easy to open your Compassion for them. Opening Compassion for people's mental pain is a lot more difficult.
Sometimes we can see this inward pain manifesting in how they act, for example being consistently late, procrastinating, aggressiveness, wallowing in self-pity, etc. Are we going to get upset with an outward manifestation, or can we identify with what's causing it, then open our heart with Compassion for that person?
Now, opening your heart with Compassion for this other person depends on how well you can open your heart for yourself, when you sit on the pillow, because if you've never identified some of your own self-pity, then you won't be able to truly understand it in other people. If you've never identified when you're the late person; or you're the angry person, or you're the jealous person, or whatever the case may be, if you've never identified with it within yourself, it's going to be harder for you to open to other people who have the same problem. So, in any case at all, whether it's someone who's a "victim" that you know, whether it's a person who's late, a lot of your reaction to this person is going to depend on how well you open your heart in the Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation.