Dealing with someone who is covertly aggressive is always a challenge — and especially so in the workplace, where we can feel trapped. Here are four tips to help cope with this kind of manipulative behavior.

Learn how to recognize the weakest point in the vicious cycle of distress. Whether you’re managing anxiety and panic, or in relationship with a disturbed character, stop the cycle before it escalates out of control.

True psychopaths are neither as common nor as easy to identify as the popular media would have you believe. But many do go unnoticed or are totally misperceived. Avoid victimization by those devoid of empathy, remorse, and conscience by understanding more about this personality type.

In my work as a therapist, I find that lying — to oneself and to loved ones — is a major obstacle to change. For many, the advice “just tell the truth” misses the myriad causes of lying and the skill set necessary to tell the truth even when the stakes are high.

Who could have predicted that a website that restricts posts to 140 characters each would become a top-tier social media property? Twitter’s success has a lot to do with how it shapes our communication styles. Couples seeking to polish their communication skills would do well to examine what makes tweeting so compelling.

Humans are social, relational animals. We need each other. But do we perform tasks better when we are alone? Does thinking about how other people perform them raise our anxiety levels and take our energy away? And is it possible to act just as effectively as if we were alone, even with others around?

Sometimes the simplest words have the most complicated meanings. The word “anger” is certainly a member of this linguistic club. Here are three very different presentations of the not-so-simple emotion we call “anger.”