Today someone asked me for advice in dealing with a difficult person who was being frustrating. I thought about it, and gave the advice that has worked best for me.
My two handy tips for not strangling the colleague/other who deserves strangling: remind yourself over and over that they’re not actually doing it at you, and figure out something that you have in common with them (same book series, same TV show, same attitude toward snow?) and try to build up some positive interactions based on that commonality so you have good thoughts about the person as well as bad.
If that fails all you can do is avoid the person whenever possible, take lots of deep breaths, and reply very slowly with multiple reviews of your language and tone.
