Dealing with irrationality and/or dysfunction in someone else's behavior toward you

Whenever you are dealing with a person who is irrational or has some sort of psychic disturbance or a personality disorder, you are likely to become aware that this individual is marked by several typical behaviors.  The indicators will often be that the person is:

• high maintenance...taking more energy than all of your other relationships put together,
• constantly disturbed about different issues... an endless moving target....a parade of offenses....first upset about one thing, then another, etc., and 
• has controlling expectations of you...either expressed or hidden...and thus is constantly irate or angry with you for not falling in line with his or her control, fiercely and continually projecting false guilt on you.

A good strategy for dealing with such a person is two-fold:

• strive to be less reactive
• expect turbulence
• initiate dodgeball in your brain

It helps to think that if they are not wasting their adrenalin/tears on you, why should you waste your own adrenalin on them?  Simply refuse to spend your private energy on it.  Wrench your mind off from it and onto something productive for yourself.  We each have our own private cathedral within our own mind and what we do there needs to be nourishing and healthy.

See the interchange coming a mile off BEFORE you get into it.  Don't agree to meetings, meals...etc.  By avoiding the bigger events, you avoid the little interchanges that would come up within that event.  This way, you survive with  one awkwardness ahead of time, instead of ten awkwardnesses once into the quicksand.

Over and over again, act like the last ten minutes didn't just happen.  Serve up new psychological tea/new pleasantries, change the topic, divert the challenge, do something nice for them....etc.

• don't take the bait
• just let the other person be "wrong"
• agree with them that you fell short and often do fall short; express an "it's just hard to get good help these days" demeanor 
• back out with whatever it takes; righting your reputation with them or defending yourself, or getting the issue right or...or...or....because it will never be right...one conversation will lead to another....you will never satisfy someone who is "tilted" to begin with....predisposed to be offended....or difficult... and lastly to determine the health of the person relationally look at all of their OTHER relationships to determine what percentage is you or them.  A disturbed person will be disturbed in other relationships as well.

For more on this, read the popular e-Book on How to Relate with Love to a Controlling Person.