From the Boston Globe:You're in your boss's office and he keeps doing his e-mail, never looking at you. Do you assume he hates you, or the project you're working on? Do you keep trying to get his attention? Shut up? Skulk out?
You're cornered at a party by a woman who will not stop talking. She barely even stops to breathe. You try to say something about yourself. It doesn't penetrate. You withdraw eye contact, edge away, finally move to another room. She follows. How can you escape?
You've just done several nice things for your mother. Within minutes, she says, ''Why don't you ever do anything for me?'' Your blood pressure soars. What do you do? Ignore her? Fight back? Flee?
The world is probably no fuller of toxic people these days than it ever was. But the idea that it's possible to learn how to deal with difficult people is moving from the ''pop psychology'' fringes to the mainstream.
To be sure, within the academic mental health field, the emphasis is still on traditional therapeutic goals like understanding a patient's history, emotions, and behaviour. But in business, education, and in some therapists' offices, the idea that it's possible to learn ''emotional intelligence'' — the ability to monitor one's own and others' emotions and act sensibly from that knowledge — has become a booming business.
''It's growing like wildfire,'' said Daniel Goleman, the psychologist and former New York Times reporter whose book a decade ago called ''Emotional Intelligence'' helped spur the movement toward teaching emotional skills in schools and businesses.
Cary Cherniss, director of the organizational psychology program at Rutgers University, says that teaching people emotional intelligence skills can have objective payoffs in performance. Cherniss, who, along with Goleman, co-chairs a group called the Emotional Intelligence Consortium that promotes the teaching of emotional intelligence skills in organizations, noted that when the US Air Force used emotional intelligence assessment tools to select recruiters, the service increased its ability by threefold to predict those who would be the most successful.
In education, Roger P. Weissberg, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has found, in a recently completed meta-analysis of pooled data from more than 300 studies that children who are taught emotional intelligence skills do better academically and behaviourally than those who don't get the training.
Weissberg, the president of Illinois-based CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, found that the students enrolled in a social and emotional learning program ranked at least 10 percentile points higher on achievement tests than students not enrolled in such programs, behaved better in class, liked school more, and had better attendance records.
But you don't have to take a special course to get better at dealing with people and, in particular, spotting people who may be toxic to you.
At the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Judith Orloff, assistant clinical professor of
psychiatry and author of ''Positive Energy,'' points to a number of easily identifiable personality types she calls ''energy vampires,'' people who leave you wishing for a nap.
There's the ''sob sister,'' for instance, the person who complains all the time. ''She rejects offered solutions. She's not interested in solutions. She's just interested in casting herself as a victim.'' To her, suggests Orloff, try saying, in a firm but loving tone, ''I love you, but I can only talk for five minutes tonight because I am learning to take care of my energy.'' If she gets testy, you can add, ''I'm sorry. But I'm learning to take care of myself and I hope you understand that.''
For the constant talkers, ''nonverbal cues never work,'' Orloff says. ''If you clear your throat or move away, that never works because constant talkers are verbal, they don't respond to subtle cues.'' Try saying, ''I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have to go read now,'' or ''I have to have some time to myself.''
At the University of Iowa, psychologist Julie Corkery has developed a training program designed, as she put it, for ''dealing with difficult people.'' For bullying types she calls ''Sherman Tanks,'' the key is to stand up to them without being drawn into a fight. One trick, she says, is to ''give them a little time to run down.'' With emotionally explosive people, too, giving them time to run down can help. If they don't wind down on their own, you can gently say, ''Stop'' or ''Quiet, please.''
The key to handling many difficult interactions is often to not take personally what is probably not personal and to not get ''emotionally hijacked'' by the other person, says Patricia Clason, director of the Center for Creative Learning in Milwaukee. You can teach yourself to notice when you've being ''hijacked,'' she says, by paying attention to bodily cues like your heart pounding or your palms getting sweaty. Then pause, take a deep breath or two and start thinking (as opposed to feeling).
If the boss is dissing you, for instance, remind yourself, silently, ''This is my boss, not my father. I don't know why he's so upset. I could ask.'' Or if the boss is doing e-mail and paying no attention to you, you could ask if he's willing to go talk in the conference room, where there are fewer distractions, or ask, ''Would it be easier if I came back later?''
As for mothers, nobody ever said it was easy being one or having one. But with an unappreciative mother, what you could do, suggests Clason, is remind yourself, silently, ''That's mom being mom.''
If you've done her many favours and she asks why you don't do more, ask her whether there is something specific she wants you to do, or say, ''What, specifically, didn't I do, mom?'' Getting into specifics, instead of global generalities, can often defuse the situation, Clason says.
