Nice summary mate!

In my opinion staying calm in conversations is the best way to talk to people with "difficult personalities" (I do not really like this term at all. Just because it's not the norm doesn't automatically means it's difficult. Often people express there feelings in a certain way and that is fine).

In such conversations I always try to see it in the other guys perspective and as I said staying calm. In the worst case (often they are just searching for someone to verbally fight with) just walk away.