This is a handbook for verbal self-defence. It describes the techniques for protecting and defending oneself effectively in challenging communication situations, and how to shorten hostile interchanges, and to stop provocations. It gives constructive alternatives to being tongue-tied and feeling powerles in the face of aggression, teaches how to shorten angry interchanges and how to gracefully exit an argument, how to give a verbal riposte without getting emotionally too involved, and how to build an invisible mental "shield" that serves to protect our integrity.