I’ll start with a quote from Marcus Aurelius. Generally speaking, Marcus Aurelius from the Antonine dynasty was, of course, a very extraordinary person. His reign from 161 to 180 AD went down in history as the “Golden Age” of the Roman Empire, and his aphorisms, although almost 2000 years have passed, have not lost their relevance to this day and will probably never lose it. So, the Roman Emperor Mark Aurelius, from 121 to 180 AD, once wrote the following in his diary: “Today I will meet people who talk too much - people who are self-centered, selfish and ungrateful. But this does not surprise or bother me, since I could not imagine a world without such people.” The world is structured in such a way that it will probably never be ideal. And there have always been, are and, most likely, there will be people for a long time, communication with whom is completely psychologically exhausting. What should a person do when such “heavy characters” are present in his environment? The ideal option is to stop communicating with them. Christ, by the way, was talking about this when he said: “Do not think that I came to bring peace to earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword, for I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” (Gospel of Matthew 10:32-36) and also “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul? Or what ransom will a man give for his soul?" (Gospel of Matthew 16:26) However, ideal options are often like a dream of an ideal world. More often, it happens that for a person it is either extremely difficult or even unrealistic to end a relationship with some “difficult to communicate with” people. For example, it is psychologically scary to end relationships with some work colleagues, it is impossible not to communicate with the boss, there are no other suitable options to quit. Or, what are these “difficult to communicate with” people? - these are close relatives with whom, despite the fact that communication with them is exhausting, it is not possible to completely break off relations. So here I would give advice to act selectively: If you feel that communication with a person is destroying you psychologically, then if you can, stop communicating with him, and if you cannot stop communicating with him due to some objective or subjective reasons, then here are the three simplest “safety techniques”: 1. Reduce communication to a minimum if you cannot avoid such destructive things. For you to communicate, it is better to reduce it to an inevitable minimum. It’s better not to destroy yourself unnecessarily by communicating with such people. Decide that, for example, you will not communicate with such a person more than once a week for more than a couple of hours.2. Never pour your heart out to them or share your secrets with them. The fewer unique details such a character knows about you, the better. Remember: everything he knows about you, he can use against you. This does not mean that you should not tell anything about yourself and behave like a fanatic captured by your enemies. You can talk a lot about yourself, just tell about yourself only things that are not a secret and that may well be known to everyone. Don’t be afraid to tell similar individuals the same thing 100 times. It’s better to have a reputation as a dull bore than to give a “heavy comrade” a weapon against you.3. Consider each episode of communication with a “difficult person” metaphorically as a psychiatrist going to work in a psychiatric clinic. Well, that is, figuratively speaking, as if you are a “psychiatrist”, and a “difficult to communicate” person is your “patient”. (For example, I now work part-time, including in a special prison-type mental hospital, where severely mentally ill people who have committed serial murders are kept, a sort of “Hannibal Lectors,” so I know very well what I’m talking about.) Well, really: if you joined Once again when communicating with such a “difficult character”, imagine yourself as a good professional psychiatrist. The fact is that mentally completely healthy.