A client of mine has a father who is extremely difficult to deal with. He’s belligerant, stubborn, argumentative, defiant, bigoted, and just generally negative about everything all the time. If you say Up, he insists on Down. If you suggest Right, he’ll argue that Left is best. If you give him what he asked for, he’ll complain that it wasn’t enough – too slow, too fast, not enough this, too much of that, etc.

You just can’t win with this guy.

And here’s the thing: he’s 70 years old. To the best of my client’s recollection, this guy has never once behaved any differently. Unlike other contrarians and disagreeable people, his father is exceptionally consistent. Whenever you need predict his behaviour, about any situation, you need only say, “He will be resistant” and you’ll be right 100% of the time.

I’d like to suggest something radical. Guys like this – the rare ones who are always difficult to deal with – have a Personality Disorder. But not one of the known disorders.

I’ve encountered guys like this before during my work as a Probation Officer in Corrections. Such guys were infamous among the staff as being the worst to deal with. An interaction with them always had problems.

As you can imagine, there are a fair amount of difficult and disagreeable people in prisons and on parole. But most of them had at least some exceptions – periods of time when they were chill, or they only kicked off around certain people, or you could slowly treat them with therapy. The guys I’m talking about made the rest look like meek little lambs. Even as a trained professional, your anxiety would spike any time you were about to deal with one of them, because you were guaranteed a hard time.

And here’s the thing: we couldn’t get them assessed by a psychologist – they were too resistant to even be diagnosed. One guy I worked with issued suicide and death threats on a frequent basis – I’m talking almost daily. Due to legal conditions, psychologists must end an interview if someone makes such a threat. So you can imagine how well his sessions went. They simply couldn’t happen.

There’s someone in my personal inner circle – I’ll keep them anonymous but anyone who knows me well will instantly guess who I’m talking about – who is literally impossible to reason with. Everything must be a battle. Everything you do will provoke unsolicited criticism. They are always right, everyone else is always wrong. Every point of difference is a war to the death. If you dare to give them advice, they’ll deliberately do the opposite. They’ll even oppose their own ideas if you tell them the same thing. And like my criminal friend, this person is simply impossible to diagnose, because if you can even get them to a psychologist, they’ll deny anything is wrong.

We already have recognised Personality Disorders for difficult people: Oppositional Defiant / Anti-Social; Narcissistic; Borderline, and so on. But I’ve worked with people who have these official diagnoses, and while they are indeed tough to get through to, they are still easier to work with than these other exceptionally resistant people.

So I believe there is a secret disorder that I would like to claim first: Persistent Resistance Disorder.

This is a person who only has one setting: resist.

It doesn’t matter who, what, where, why or how, they are literally incapable of agreement. They respond to nearly every piece of information directed to them (and many pieces that aren’t) as if it is a personal attack of a serious nature that requires a full counter-strike.

They are particularly disagreeable when it comes to advice, opinions, and the principles people choose to live by. Their first reaction to anything is beyond mere skepticism; it will be active criticism, discouragement, heated argument, insults, and outright hate.

They are so utterly resistant that diagnosis is actually impossible. The Persistent Resistance Personality Disorder will forever be just a hypothesis, because by its very nature it cannot be confirmed. Even a tool that diagnoses their resistance would require them to participate in using the tool, which they won’t. They will either simply walk out of the interview, or they will fight to derail it completely, or they will lie and obsfucate to the point of being unable to get a straight answer from them.

They are fascinating people to deal with. There’s a kind of purity to their difficulty. It’s so inevitable that they are actually incredibly simple people, and you can predict their behaviour more accurately than anyone else with a Personality Disorder… or any person, really. Even severely intellectually disabled people are more likely to surprise you.

It’s simple: whatever you suggest, they will fight against it. Whatever is popular, they will hate it. However someone else lives, they will criticize it. Whatever you want, they will discourage it. Whatever they claim to want, they will contradict themselves. If there’s a rule, they must break it… but if you break a rule – even the same rule – you are wrong. They are unbelievably hypocritical, and will abuse you for doing the exact same thing they did.

And above all else, there will be a complete absence of personal responsibility and self-awareness. They will blame everyone but themselves for the inevitably bad consequences that come from them being like this, and indeed they will completely deny being this way. They’ll refuse to accept any evidence that their suffering is self-caused. And they’ll deny your accusations about them being resistant more than anything else.

There are two reasons I wanted to write about such people.

Firstly, like with all disorders, many of us are somewhere on this spectrum. Do you resist good advice just because it wasn’t your idea? Are you reluctant to hear about evidence that you might be wrong? Do you feel yourself assuming that “your way” is right and the way other people live is wrong (if it’s different to your way)? Do you take pleasure in being the contrarian – do you enjoy disagreeing when everyone else agrees, disliking what is trendy and popular, and rebelling against mainstream ideals? Does your first reaction to someone else’s opinion nearly always begin with, “Yeah, but…”?

There’s being skeptical in a healthy way where you carefully screen information for truthfulness and usefulness, and then there’s being unhelpfully oppositional. If your resistance exceeds the point where it improves your life, then we must label it as dysfunctional. And if you’re resistant just for resistance’s sake – that is, your primary motive is to be different and resistant – then you must admit that your primary motive is not to create the best possible life for yourself.

So I would challenge your ego here. If being resistant denies you access to better education, helpful information, and increased wisdom, then you are unintelligent. Why would you pride yourself on ignorance? When I hear someone say, “I don’t use all this new technology bullshit,” I just hear someone either too stupid or scared to keep up with complicated developments. When someone scoffs at advice from an expert who’s clearly doing better than them, I feel like they should be getting out a piece of paper and taking notes instead. And I hold myself to this standard: if I resist something that might improve my wisdom, then I’m a loser.

The second and perhaps more important reason I write this is for my client, who’s example I used earlier. He’s struggling with the hard truth of this: his father is impervious to change. His father’s belligerence and defiance are inevitable… for all time. My client will never have a positive impact on his father, and no tactic will get through his defense. In the same way a psychopath simply cannot feel empathy, Persistant Resisters simply cannot cooperate.

My client has tried his best for his entire life. He tries to work with his father. He offers different options. He hears him out. He complies with his demands. He compromises. He’s patient. But he struggles to see the horrible truth: not once in his entire life has anything he’s ever done actually worked. Nothing he’s ever done has been good enough. No approach has ever been met with harmonious agreement. No gift has ever been appreciated. No advice has ever been welcomed. No responsibility has ever been taken. No empathy has ever been demonstrated.

And by “ever” I do mean ever. As I said before, we’re not just exaggerating the case of a regular run-of-the-mill difficult and defiant person. We’re talking top-shelf opposition with no exceptions.

My client has to face the facts: there is no point in trying to reason, negotiate, or cooperate with his father. If my client wants something done that involves his father at all, he will need to go through him or around him. Working with him is out of the question.

Except…

Even the most difficult people have an Achilles heel of some kind. And with a Persistent Resister, you must ask yourself the question: how do I turn their resistance against them?

I’m not recommending manipulation here. If I had the choice, I simply wouldn’t engage with such a person, and move on with my life, working around them as needed. But if you insist on collaborating with them, or they are an obstacle that can’t be avoided (e.g. when my client wants to do something with his mother then his father gets involved), then you need a strategy of some kind.

Strangely enough, it’s incredibly simple, to the point of being a cliche: use “reverse psychology”.

They will resist everything, right? So suggest the opposite. Put the Resister into a position where in order to resist they’d have to actually agree with what you want.

For example, if you want to go out for ice-cream, say, “It’s too cold for ice-cream today, we can’t handle this temperature. We’re not going, and that’s that!” The Resister will then accuse you of being too soft and demand you go for ice-cream. “OK, if you think that’s what we should do, fine.” Say it as if you lost the argument.

If you want to advise them to get a job, tell them, “I think you just get on welfare. I’m sure you’ll agree – you don’t quite have the skills or courage needed to handle a real job.” Then walk away and let them decide for themselves. Next week, if they still don’t have a job, you smirk, roll your eyes, and say, “I knew it! I’m always right about you. You’re so predictable!”

Play into it rather than against it. Pull out the Uno-Reverse card instead of trying to convince them of anything. If you’re planning an event when they’re in the room, you jump in before they can object and say, “Wait, there’s no point in us doing this, you know Paul will just have to disagree with everything to get attention.” Now Paul is forced to choose: if he resists, he proves you right, and you can say again, “See? Paul couldn’t help himself! He’s like a toddler – he cooperate if his life depended on it. He’s just too emotional.”

When they criticize other people, like my client’s father who’s racist and bigoted against homosexuals, just laugh and point out that they’re also like that. When he yells, “All these fucking immigrants stealing our jobs,” you can respond with, “I know, right? And guys like you refusing to work are just handing the jobs over to them. You’re as bad as each other.” When he complains about “fags”, you can frown and say, “You know Dad, you seem to think about gay dudes a lot. Is there something you’re not telling us?” Then you repeat this every time he says something derogatory, “Ha! There you go again. I tell you guys, Dad has gay guys on the brain. I’m glad he suppressed it long enough to have kids or I wouldn’t be here!”

Of course, all of this is fairly combative, and there will be conflict. But as I said, if you insist on including these people in your life and not just ignoring or overriding them, then you’re going to have to level up your applied psychology skills. Just always remember: you cannot beat them, you cannot convince them. Your only chance is to put them in a position where them resisting looks like they’ve surrendered to you. They must win above all else, so position your preferred outcome as their win.

Remember, they don’t actually have their own stable moral code or hard preferences. They will change on a dime so long as they get to argue and defeat their imagined enemy. Let them “win”.

And if that doesn’t work, then do what I do: act as if they don’t exist. Do whatever you want regardless of their thoughts, opinions, and interference. Do not plan anything that requires their cooperation, support, or a good attitude. Withdraw attention and privileges as needed to live your life. Refuse to absorb their negativity – treat them like they’re severely brain-damaged and nothing they say can be taken seriously. Just nod, give them the flat-line “you’re obnoxious but I’ll be polite about it” smile, and then talk to someone else for a while.