Some people habitually respond to a lover’s pain and confusion with an intense desire to fix something. Fix-it messages can feel like invalidation to the person who is trying to express an emotion. “Why don’t you just do this … try that … forget about it … relax!” sends the message that the person expressing the emotion has overlooked some obvious and simple solution and is an idiot for feeling bad in the first place. Such messages are disempowering and invalidating.