I think that sympathizing with how someone feels -- like sympathizing with an abuse victim who falsely believes that they need their abuser -- does not require validating their conclusion as actually true, and we should seek to change their minds, we should have things we can say, even if we need to be careful and respectful and also the answer changes in different contexts (with the stay/go example, where there often is a right answer but it depends a lot on the person's circumstances, and taking the position that there is a right answer is not the same as trying to force them to follow that answer).

I apologize for the run-on sentence.