She's still cute as hell though

I have a work-friend who I've known for years - bitch is crazy. Seriously. But she's smart, nice, a hard worker, and over the years I think each of us has checked out the other and gone "huh" on occasion. However, she's come to me as a counselor-friend many many times. Many. She is always having work-coworker problems, boss problems, and generally interpersonal and personal-neurotic problems. She's more negative than me (I know, I know) and is so used to defending herself that the only time she is happy is when she has won a defense against an attack. She's happier than she was, but still kind of constantly unhappy with her situation (even after 2 job changes).

Yesterday I tried to talk to her about my work problems. I'm fine and my issues are manageable, but I thought it would be nice to vent and perhaps balance us a tad. Didn't work. First, she was too nervous to sit so we walked in circles around the courtyard. Cute, awkward. However, she couldn't really listen. She tried, but everything I said was changed into a talk about her, her boss, her impression of people I know with as they are important to her...and how she was going through or had gone through something similar herself (with no pointers on how to do it). Her only feedback was her thoughts about who was a suckup or what x's agenda was.

She's so hurt herself that she can't help me.

It's cool, I don't feel like any less of her friend - she means well. I do feel a bit disappinted though. I've never gone to her with problems of my own, but I always felt like I could. I wonder if, or perhaps how much, I have come across like this. I know the last year or so has been crappy, and I'm not by habit a great listener - but once again seeing some of my negative traits amplified in others may help me steer away from an unfortunate result. We all have bad patches, but you really have to crawl out of them. She might be disappointed in the world around her, but her disfunctional cycle may be that she is so hurt she isn't able to do a thing but lick her wounds - so no one is going to help her as long as she can't do anything but SUCK THE LIFE out of those around her. It's hard to heal on your own, so I'm not sure how you balance having genuine needs with the fact that people reasonably don't want to be friends with people who solely make demands and can't bring something to the table themselves.

I'm glad I have the friends I do.