I'll add a few suggestions of potential validating statements to use:
1. That must be hard to deal with. 2. It sounds like you're really discouraged. 3. What a frustrating situation to be in. 4. That sounds terrible. 5. I wish you didn't have to go through that.
Validating isn't an agreement or an extension of offers to "help" necessarily, at least in a DB situation IMO. You want to provide a brief response and be the first to exit the conversation because as Kind suggests, you're GALing in some way. Keep working, Rock.
