How to Hug a Porcupine: The Art of Loving Difficult People Without Losing Your Mind, Your Dignity or Your Sanity

Is there someone in your life whose arrival changes the weather?

A parent who criticises your tie. A partner who goes silent. A boss who is charming one day and impossible the next. A friend who feels like an enemy. You love them, or you used to, or you’re expected to. And every attempt at closeness ends in the same small, sharp, avoidable pain.

How to Hug a Porcupine is a warm, funny and practical guide to loving difficult people without losing your mind, your dignity or your sanity. Starting from Schopenhauer’s famous parable, it goes one step further: not just finding a safe distance, but finding a method.

Inside you’ll find:

• A field guide to ten porcupine species, from the Defensive and the Corporate to the Silent, the Victim and the Mirror, each with a signature line and your first move
• Real tools for family, romantic, workplace and friendship conflict: how to translate before you react, set boundaries that work, disagree without starting a war, and know when to walk away
• A frank chapter on the difference between “hard to love” and “harmful,” with guidance on safety and asking for help
• A final section that turns the mirror around: What if you are someone else’s porcupine?
• The Porcupine Personality Test, a light-hearted two-part quiz about who the porcupine in your life is, and how prickly you are

Understanding someone doesn’t mean giving them permission to hurt you. Love is not the absence of boundaries.

Perfect for anyone who has ever rehearsed a conversation in the car, or suspects someone else has rehearsed one about them.

(Reader note: this is not a clinical book. It is not a substitute for professional advice.)