Say Goodbye to Your PDI (Personality Disordered Individuals)

Book excerpt: It’s Not You . . . It’s THEM! Have you ever hung up with your boss and felt like you were nine years old again? Do you get a pang in the pit of your stomach when you see a certain “friend’s” number on your caller ID? Do you find yourself frequently apologizing to a family member even though you know you’ve done nothing wrong? If any of these scenarios sound familiar or you have ever felt bullied, manipulated, guilted, or threatened in a relationship, you could have a PDI! PDI, or Personality Disordered Individual, is a psychiatric term used to identify those people with whom we must interact and who can make us feel miserable in the process. PDIs make “toxic” people look like Santa Clause and often have unique attitude problems and behaviors that we must deal with but do not enrich, improve, enhance, boost, encourage, motivate, or inspire us. Day in and day out, they make us miserable! Stan Kapuchinski, M.D., has encountered numerous PDIs and their victims in his private psychiatry practice for more than twenty-five years. In Say Goodbye to Your PDI, he sheds light on five types of personality disorders and teaches: • How PDIs ensnare us into repeatedly dealing with them • How to spot a PDI at work and in our personal lives • Coping mechanisms to handle PDIs who we cannot eliminate from our lives • Techniques and advice on how to get rid of a PDI for good Say Goodbye to Your PDI will help you stop your misery and will help you deal more effectively with the users, the manipulators, the smooth talkers, and the guilt-trippers out there. Stan Kapuchinski, M.D. , writes the widely read column “Ask Dr. K.” A board-certified psychiatrist, Dr. Kapuchinski has served as assistant processor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut and special psychiatric consultant in Queensland, Australia. His expertise on human relationships has made him a sought-after commentator for hundreds of television and radio outlets.