"They can't do anything about it anyway"

This is the belief that makes telling seem pointless rather than costly. Your sister can't change the scan result. Your friend can't pay the bank. What would be the point of loading them with a thing they can't fix?

The point isn't fixing. Very few worries get fixed by the person you tell, and if fixing were the test, nobody would ever tell anyone anything. What a listener does is three things, and none of them is fixing.

The first is the thing in Lepore's study. A supportive listener took a distressing thing and, by hearing it and responding as though it mattered, reduced how often it came back uninvited and how stressful it was to meet again. The researchers called the response validation, and it's a plain thing. "That sounds frightening." "No wonder you've not been sleeping." A person who says that has done nothing about the scan and something about the fortnight.

The second is the size. Chapter 6 said the private version has no edges. A listener gives it edges, by asking questions you haven't asked yourself, by not reacting the way the private version predicted, by being a second person in a room that had one. The scan result is still Thursday. But it's Thursday now, and not every Thursday at once.

The third is the request, and it's the part that people who carry things alone forget exists. You can ask the listener for something specific, and the specific thing is often available. Come with me on Thursday. Look at this letter with me. Ring me on Wednesday night. Tell me if you think I'm mad about the marriage. None of those is fixing and all of them are help, and Zhao and Epley's finding is that the person asked will be gladder to do it than you expect.

There's a fourth thing, quieter than the others. A listener knows. From the moment of the telling, there's one person in the world who, when they see you tired at dinner, knows why, and doesn't need to ask, and can put a hand on your shoulder without a word. That's not fixing either. It's the difference between being alone in a room and being alone in a room with someone who knows what the room is.

So "they can't do anything about it" is true about the scan and false about you. The scan is one thing. The person waiting for it is another, and the person is the thing a listener can do something about, and it's the person who's been alone for a fortnight.