Difficult people can make life hard, but a select few can make it hell. The boss with nonsensical demands. The spouse who explodes at nothing. The overly emotional coworker, hostile neighbor, or friend who frequently bursts into tears.

Marriages, families, friendships, careers, businesses—crazy people drag them all down with their manipulation, volatility, and inability to see the world rationally. You can’t win by just ignoring the craziness or trying to reason with it. But you can stop it cold.

Top-ranked psychiatrist and communication expert Mark Goulston shows you how in Talking to Crazy, a life-changing book for everyone trapped in personal or workplace relationships that feel confusing, stressful, or downright hopeless.

Goulston unlocks the mysteries of the irrational mind, and explains how faulty thinking patterns develop. His keen insights are matched by a set of counterintuitive strategies proven to defuse crazy behavior, along with scripts, examples, and exercises that teach you how to use them. You’ll learn how to:

• Activate the powerful Sanity Cycle—which changes you from a threat to an ally

• Gain more control of interactions by identifying the person’s modus operandi (their strategy for acting out and making you feel crazy)

• Lean into the person’s crazy—since being rational won’t work

• Neutralize your own crazy (we all have a little) and stay calm in any situation

• Deploy 14 simple, effective techniques for talking a person back to sanity, including assertive submission, flattery, the kiss-off, and more

• Use the 8 tactics that specifically target the behavior of partners, teenagers, aging parents, and other important people in your life

• Call in reinforcements when you’re facing a serious disorder

You shouldn’t have to suffer through people’s crazy behavior. When the weeping, condescension, whining, withdrawal, or attack-dog antics erupt, Talking to Crazy arms you with a psychiatrist’s perspective and potent communication tools for handling the problem. Almost instantly, you’ll transform difficult encounters into productive conversations and forge workable, even warm, relationships with people who once drove you nuts.

Mark Goulston, MD, is a top psychiatrist, consultant, coach, and business adviser. Author of the bestselling Just Listen and Get Out of Your Own Way as well as other popular books, he blogs for Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and Psychology Today; cohosts a weekly radio show; and is featured frequently in major media, including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, CNN, Fox News, and the TODAY show.

“If I had known that “‘talking to crazy’” could be so simple, I wouldn't have driven myself crazy all these years trying to do it.”—Keith Ferrazzi, author, Never Eat Alone and Who's Got Your Back

“This book is life changing. A must-read for dealing with the uncooperative and stubborn people in your life.”—Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times and global bestseller What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

“Dealing with the irrational and impossible people in our lives is an idea whose time has come—and not a moment too soon. Talking to Crazy is the playbook that will show you how.”—Peter Guber, CEO, Mandalay Entertainment, and author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Tell to Win

“Simply brilliant! As human beings we’re fully capable of rational thought—and yet every day we deal with people who seem to be behaving quite irrationally. Whether it’s in our personal life, our work environment, or during our day-to-day activities with the general public, all too often we talk to someone and find ourselves shaking our heads and thinking, ‘This person is crazy!’ But now, with this breakthrough book, Mark Goulston has given us the ultimate key to finally understanding how to make sense of the ‘crazy’ and effectively handle the irrational people in our lives. On behalf of the entire human race: Thank you, Mark!”—Ivan Misner, Ph.D., New York Times Bestselling Author and Founder of BNI®

Let’s face it, we all know people who are irrational. No matter how hard you try to reason with them, it never works. So what’s the solution? How do you talk to someone who’s out of control? What can you do with a spouse who yells, a teenager who locks himself behind slammed doors, a boss who humiliates, or a know-it-all who annoys you whenever he opens his mouth?

In his book Just Listen, Mark Goulston shared his bestselling formula for getting through to the resistant people in your life. In Talking to Crazy, he brings his communication magic to the most difficult group of all: the irrational people.

As a psychiatrist, Goulston has seen his share of crazy. He knows that you can’t simply argue using facts, or tell someone irrational to calm down. When people are irrational, they can’t process that. Instead, the key is to lean into the “crazy”—to empathize with it. That radically changes the dynamic, instantly turning you from threat to ally. Talking to Crazy explains this counterintuitive process—the “Sanity Cycle”—and reveals:

• Why people act the way they do

• How instinctive responses can exacerbate a situation—and what to do instead

• How 9 common personality types act out their crazy

• When to confront a problem and when to walk away

• 22 techniques for halting irrational behavior, including Time Travel, the Fishbowl, the Belly Roll, the Split Second, and Coup Contrecoup

• And much more

You can’t reason with unreasonable people, but you can reach them. When meltdowns, hostility, intimidation, or other tactics of impossible people are making you crazy, use these powerful techniques to bring the behavior to a quick, merciful stop.