c&p alert 
I've been brushing up on my people skills Deb
The High Art of Handling Problem People
Dealing with difficult people is a special skill—and an increasingly necessary one.
She totally lied to me," the Vancouver doctor recalls. "Afterwards, I was so upset that the degree of my reaction troubled me. I'm a general physician with some training in psychiatry. Yet I couldn't put my finger on exactly why I was so bothered. I thought it was a flaw in myself."
Eventually, she identified what set her off: "You think you're in an innocuous situation—a typical doctor-patient encounter. But the woman took complete advantage of my compassion. Then, not only wouldn't she acknowledge the lie, but she looked at me blankly and demanded, 'Can't you just move on and give me my prescription?' She made me feel that I was the problem."
Ever wonder how an encounter goes so quickly awry? Doubt your own perceptions? Feel thrown totally off balance by another person? Find yourself acting crazy when you're really a very nice person? Manipulation comes in many forms: There are whiners. There are bullies. There are the short-fused. Not to forget the highly judgmental. Or the out-and-out sociopath. But they often have one thing in common:
Their MO is to provoke, then make you feel you have no reason to react—and it's all your fault to begin with! Feeling deeply discounted, even totally powerless, while having to jettison the original aim of an interaction is a distressing double whammy of social life—and a cardinal sign you're dealing with a difficult person. No, it's not you. It's them. And it's the emotional equivalent of being mowed down by a hit-and-run driver.
It doesn't take a sociopath; anyone can be difficult in a heartbeat. "To a great extent, the problem is in the eye of the beholder," says Topeka, Kansas, psychologist Harriet Lerner, author of the now-classic Dance ofAnger and the just-released Relationship Rules. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201204/the-high-art-handling-problem-people
Flashie
