The Complainer, the Whiner and the Sniper...

What kind of difficult person are you? I mean, how do you deal with the difficult people in your life? Be careful answering. How can you answer without complaining, whining, or sniping?

This article is about all the self-help books about dealing with difficult people. I'll bet the difficult people themselves are buying a lot of them, don't you? I'm thinking that what makes them so difficult is that they think so many other people are difficult.

Anyway:

Several authors think it is useful to characterize infuriating people into types and prescribe ways to deal with them, as Robert M. Bramson did in 1981 in “Coping With Difficult People,” one of the first popular books on the topic. Its overarching lesson is to find a way to communicate with these people because they are not going away. Dr. Bramson lists seven difficult behavior types: Hostile-Aggressives, Complainers, Silent and Unresponsives, Super-Agreeables, Know-It-All Experts, Negativists and Indecisives.

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