Ciggyfree Blog

Recently I came across a great wikiHow article on how to deal with impossible people. I’ve had a few impossible people (bullies) that I used to feel inclined to deal with on a regular basis on Usenet, but after reading this article it was apparent to me that the insights and steps for dealing with these types is some of the best information available on the Internet today.

I occasionally work in a professional capacity with victims who are bullied online. It is interesting to note that most online bullies posses varying degrees of a personality disorder. WikiHow states:

Ways to detect if you’re dealing with someone with a personality disorder:

• People either really love the person or really hate him/her (the former may even be the majority, in which case you may feel “crazy” or begin doubting your judgment);
• You, and everyone else, note the person’s “oversensitivity” and feel like you must walk on eggshells around that person;
• The person rarely, or never, accepts responsibility for his/her own actions;
• The person talks behind people’s backs all the time and tries to pit people against each other, causing rifts (or splits);
• The person appears unable to see the “grey area” in people–people are either good or bad (and one little thing can toss someone into their “bad books”);
• The person over-compliments you or other people all the time (tries to create alliances);
• The person has trouble with personal or professional boundaries (over shares, pries, dresses inappropriately, etc.);
• The person has trouble holding an opinion–many people with personality disorders don’t possess their own “personality” and you will see their opinions shift according to their environment;
• The person is highly influenced by external, environmental factors–their mood is a barometer based on goes on around them (for example, they interpret someone looking at them askew and it “ruins their day”, but then someone compliments them and they are suddenly having “the best day ever”, but then they misplace their keys, and their “day is ruined”, etc.);
• The person might complain about having trouble “being alone” or perpetually feeling “empty”;
• Drama always surrounds the person because the person creates it and constantly lives in a state of chaos. Sound brutal? It is. So be sure to bail on that situation ASAP.

Seventy per cent of parents are not aware of the extent of the cot death risk posed by smoking in the home. A poll(1), conducted for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (FSID) during the first two weeks of the ban on smoking in enclosed public places, found that 70 per cent of parents of young children (aged 0-3) either significantly underestimated or did not know how much more likely cot death was if a baby is exposed to tobacco smoke for one hour every day.

A baby who regularly spends one hour a day in a smoky environment is twice as likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) - or cot death - as a baby who lives in a smoke-free home.(2) Forty-seven per cent of parents polled, however, thought that there was either no risk or a much lower risk than is in fact the case, while 23 per cent couldn’t estimate the risk from the options given.

The poll also found that a greater proportion of families on lower incomes than higher incomes (76 per cent as opposed to 56 per cent) were unaware of the extent of the risk. A greater proportion of parents in the North of England (75 per cent) and the Midlands (74 per cent) than parents in the South (65 per cent) and in London (60 per cent) were unaware of the extent of the risk.