Why doesn't advice work?

If you know someone tends to want to vent, well, let them vent and only later offer, rather than give advice - if even that. They just like to vent. Fair.

If you know someone would love support that actually listens to the problem and thinks and offers words beyond the cliché. Well, then it will be well received. Fair also.

The problem is when you think venting is the only thing people do. Because then you can't be supportive in the way someone wants who is not venting. Or when you are oblivious and venting never came to your mind because that's not your communication style. And it shocks you when your advice is received with annoyance or anger.

Different people are different.

So now you can read the rest of the comments with a different perspective. Let's pick one: "Smart people want to solve their own problems." Well, actually... SOME smart people would love some support now and then even while they are smart. It's possible to be smart enough to understand that a different viewpoint or experience can be valuable. Most likely what the smart person doesn't want is the most bog standard cliché in response to their distress: they are smart, they found that cliché in their first google search a few years ago.

One of my favorite feelings is the one I get when I have an opportunity to change my mind because someone has better information about a topic than I do and is willing to share it with me so I can come to the same conclusion they have, rather than the one I had because I was ignorant of certain information.

I always hope professionals, whom I expect to be experts in their subjects, enjoy their subject enough that they are better informed than I am about it, so I tend to ask a lot of questions. It is extremely rare that I find one who takes this well.

My mechanic is a glowing exception on this front. He actually specializes in my kind of car (old Priuses, not something fancy), and when he tells me X, Y, and/or Z are wrong with it and what he needs to do to fix it, if I ask questions, he can easily identify what knowledge I'm missing, and happily just explains it to me. As an intelligent, curious person, I love interacting with experts like this and will happily pay more to do so. And he seems to enjoy talking about his subject, even with someone who knows a lot less about it than he does.

But my doctors? Especially "specialists"? Absolutely opposite experience on every front. They loathe my questions, and treat me with contempt for daring to question their authority, even when I'm trying to ask about recent research papers and have previously read all their citations. I'm not a doctor, but I do know how to read papers, and especially for a chronic condition I have, I've read a lot. I'm not some random person coming in with a file of advice from "Doctor Google." If anything, I know quite a bit more about my condition than I do about my car, even though my history with each is about the same length.

I don't know if it has to do with the respective systems the two kinds of experts operate in or what (my mechanic's education was not as long or as arduous, and since he operates independently, it's up to him to decide how much time he wants to spend with me and what to charge me), but it's a disappointing world for an inquisitive critical thinker.

If you contradict them, they get upset.