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Worth Repeating: Finding Your Path Forward with High Conflict Parents · It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People

• 0:04
  Megan Hunter: Welcome to It's All Your Fault on True Story FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those that involve someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co host, Bill Eddy.
• 0:22
  Bill Eddy: Hi, everybody.
• 0:24
  Megan Hunter: We are the co founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California, where we focus on training, consulting, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. So, Bill, today we're going to talk about the state of young people. And I know there's lots in the news all over the world, and there are many, many world events happening that have people on edge again. And we're increasingly seeing and hearing from parents who say their young people are floundering after high school and maybe even during high school and into their 20s and 30s. And, you know, while there might be many contributing factors, we've noticed an uptick in those who may have one or more parents with a high conflict personality or traits of one of the five personality disorders that we focus on.
• 1:16
  And this can really have a big impact. So we'll talk about that today, but first a couple of notes. Send your high conflict related questions to @highconflictinstitute.com or on our website at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Alright, Bill. So, I know we both have kind of been struggling with colds right now.
• 1:42
  So audience, our listeners, you'll have to forgive us a bit if we sound a little stuffy. We'll try to keep our energy up, as well. But here we are, and we're so happy that you're listening. Thank you for for being there and and supporting our work. Alright, Bill.
• 1:58
  So what I'm what I've been hearing, and I know you've you've you've, kind of been hearing this as well, is that we have some young people who seem to to be if you looked at them from the outside, should be just thriving in life, thriving in university, thriving in relationships, you're having good romantic relationships and friendships, and coming home on weekends to see mom and dad and, you know, whoever, and just having life, getting ready for life, and launching life. But what we're hearing from many is that they're just floundering. They have a whether it's, mostly from divorced or, you know, families, but sometimes also from intact families. And, kind of what we're seeing is kids who just don't seem to have a a direction or an aim and can't seem to get it together, and they they they kind of refer to it as being in a funk. And I just can't get it together, and I feel guilty.
• 2:57
  I don't know what to do about it. My my parent is upset. So that's kind of the precursor. What do you think, Bill?
• 3:04
  Bill Eddy: There's so many different factors. And so much of this is today's world culture that in one way kids are exposed to all the bad news from around the world every day. And it's destabilizing, I think, to go, well the grown ups don't have it together, what are we gonna do? But also I think aside from the culture is our connections are weaker now. Our family connections are weaker, our community connections are weaker.
• 3:40
  And one thing that's that stood out to me recently is thinking about kids in trouble, kids who are doing things, and I'm talking about kids like young adults, like about 18 to 20, who don't have a place, haven't found a place for themselves. And I think that our culture doesn't give you the feeling that there's many places you could belong. That it's interesting, this may just seem like it's irrelevant, but I think it's relevant. School shootings. School shootings mostly happen not in the most urban areas, but more in suburbs and smaller communities.
• 4:23
  Why is that? Well it seems to be when you're in high school, in smaller communities, there's kind of one in group. Whereas in big cities, I remember I lived in New York City for a year when I was 22, you could be part of any group. There was a group for you. There was the skateboard group, there was the punk music group.
• 4:47
  There was the art group. There was a place for you and people that wanted to be with you and get to know you, you could belong. And I think because we're exposed to this worldwide culture, which has a lot to do with looks, with appearance, you know, social media is depressing for teenage girls, and I think a lot because what's valued isn't something every teenage girl has. Not every teenage girl is the most beautiful person in the world, and yet the brilliant teenage girls, the artistic teenage girls, etcetera, there's a place for them, but it may be harder to find. We kind of have this larger culture that says there's a narrow range of what's good to be.
• 5:38
  And if you're not in that narrow range, you don't matter as much. I think that that's part of the cultural impact and it's quite destabilizing. When you're 20, it's right when you're launching into adulthood and there's two really important things you're trying to figure out. One is what's my identity? And the other is what's my community?
• 6:04
  Where do I belong and what do I do? That's so much harder to find when we have this kind of media culture that's got such a narrow range. Know kids at their twenties, I remember ten years ago, now they're 30, and they're depressed because they're not a multi millionaire and have their own TV show.
• 6:27
  Megan Hunter: Right.
• 6:27
  Bill Eddy: That's how you measure success in today's culture as compared to someone who's really on the road to maybe inventing something, helping people, being a teacher. A lot of helping professionals have been weakened by our culture because helping other people has lost its value in many ways. Social work, nursing, doctors, lawyers and such. We need to value everybody more. And we need to put out the message, you don't have to be this way, you can be this way, you can be yourself.
• 7:05
  But one last thing, I think there's a lack of mentoring for 20 year olds. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood, and there were people through the church, there were men through the church who said, you know, we've got a train, an HO train set, we want to come on over and we'll talk about things. The music, I remember being in the band in high school. I was not on the football team, I was not Mr. Popular, I was one of the wallflowers in the band, but there was a band director that loved us.
• 7:42
  Those people make such a difference and we minimize that. Coaches, teachers, volunteers. There's so many people that now might be home watching TV that could be out in the community mentoring people in their twenties. I like to think that teaching, you know, teaching law students, many of whom are around 22, 25, is a good way to pass things on. And that it's easy for us to lose track of that.
• 8:14
  Megan Hunter: Yeah. I think what you're saying is is so important, Bill, particularly community. Because I I you know, I've been around communities in which there are a lot of aunties. Right? So there's lots of aunts and uncles.
• 8:26
  Everyone's an aunt even if they're not really an aunt. And they they it feels like family, and you get pressure, both good and bad, from that whole community and and the mentoring from the whole community. And you can have those connections with different people and feel feel like you have some some roots and a firm foundation, like a firm footing to stand on. And then let's let's, you know, kind of think about then another level of this is beyond the social media and the larger cultural, you know, age that we're in is the, you know, this topic of bullying. Right?
• 9:03
  Bill Eddy: Right.
• 9:04
  Megan Hunter: If you have someone that's, you know, maybe not feeling very connected anyway and maybe feeling like that wallflower and is, you know, I guess there've always been bullies. However, it's, now so much easier to bully with social media. Right. And to really, really put people young people in such terrible positions and having having, having their emotions and self esteem just battered.
• 9:32
  Bill Eddy: Yes. We don't have the protections against that. And like mentoring parents, teachers, etcetera, help give people resilience. Know, talking about resilience is having assets of people that that care about you, that love you, etcetera. It's it's really sadness.
• 9:51
  I'm gonna I'm gonna bash the media again.
• 9:56
  Megan Hunter: Go for it.
• 9:56
  Bill Eddy: But I think that the media gets attention, and today when I say media, I'm talking about television, movies, social media, all of this, that it puts the worst behavior in the front. That shakes people up. It grabs your amygdala and you can't reflect as much and go, Oh, well that happens one out of a billion times. That's not something I need to be worried about. Instead of, Oh my goodness, you know.
• 10:26
  So with bullying, bullying has more power than it used to, and it has more multiplication. So like there was a fist fight in the Italian legislature six or twelve months ago, and that made it to the evening news. And it's like, if you want attention, have a fistfight. And it's like, we've lost our balance somewhat with that. And with all the media competing with each other for eyeballs, we're really getting the wrong impression that the world is an extremely dangerous place, that you're not safe here, that bullies abound and you never know when it's gonna hit you.
• 11:10
  And it's it's an exaggeration. We have problems for sure. And I go back to when I grew up. So I grew up in a suburban community outside of Philadelphia, and in our neighborhood we knew about problems. We knew, you know, somebody got arrested, somebody had a car crash.
• 11:28
  But we didn't know about every single thing in the world that went wrong, and so we had the ability to recover and to reflect on things. And so it's this constant bombardment. It's really not healthy for our brains. We need time to reflect. Most people know that the internet shortened our attention span, but they don't realize it also shortened our ability to reflect.
• 11:53
  Megan Hunter: Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. That's important. Yeah.
• 11:56
  And I I I I sense this living in a fear state about things that young people shouldn't be, think even thinking about, let alone being worried about. Big world problems. And I I I suspect it's because their brains are that that amygdala has been grabbed so many times that they're just kind of living in this perpetual fear state, and it's driving them into into some conflicts of their own or into a lot of depression, which I guess you know? Okay. Well, let's pivot here into the parenting aspect of this, so more of a micro level.
• 12:30
  You know, as we talk about every week and we, you know, we talk we think about all day every day at at High Conflict Institute is is this problem of high conflict behavior. Right? And, if you have a parent who is you know, has a high conflict personality or has the traits of a of a personality disorder, there's going to those are interpersonal disorders. Those are those are just make it really hard to have good relationships with people. So if if you're in a family with this, and this is what I'm seeing a lot of, is families who or young people who had a parent, that has really shown some bad behaviors for a long time.
• 13:15
  And the kids report that, you know, I just I felt lonely growing up. I felt alone. And it's because I just tried to just make myself invisible so I wasn't a bother, because I didn't want my parent to explode or disrupt erupt and and disrupt my life, so to speak. So and then you add in bullying and things like that. So that's what I we're hearing a lot about lately is kids who just you know, they're trying to make decisions about this trans such an important transitional period of their life in that, you know, 20, 22, getting through college, graduating, getting into a career, making those decisions.
• 13:54
  And yet they're so worried about a parent. Do I have to take care of this parent? How do I have a relationship with this parent? Should I have a relationship with this parent? Do I have to be their caregiver?
• 14:04
  Do I have to give in all the time? Do I have to be the one that's that's always the nice person?
• 14:09
  Bill Eddy: Really good questions. Yeah. And that's a lot of pressure, because the roles have been reversed. But people don't realize, you know, the statistics say about ten percent of the adult population has a personality disorder. And characteristics of personality disorders include difficulty caring about the needs of others.
• 14:33
  So when you grow up as a child around a parent like that, it's harder. Now many people have someone else in their life that can care about their needs. It may be a grandparent or maybe the other parent, all of that. But it's very confusing. People are trying to weigh these big questions instead of not worrying about their parents.
• 14:57
  All the time when I was a therapist with adolescents and then doing divorce work as a lawyer and mediator, is the kids are worried about, you know, who should I live with and this and that. And I keep saying, tell your kid not to worry about that. Parents are gonna take care of that. Kids should not be thinking and worrying about that. You should not be deciding which parent you care about more.
• 15:21
  And to take that pressure off so they can be themselves and develop into themselves. Another thing is, I think it really helped growing up was getting a job. I delivered newspapers since I was 13. Interestingly, a job gives you some grounding. It wasn't that my career goal was to deliver newspapers, but my career goal was to be a responsible person who made some money and had to be organized and had to be on time and had to get up early, things like that.
• 16:02
  And so I think that when you're 20, you're trying to decide what should I be? I was having this conversation with a law student two days ago and asking what her career goals were, and she wasn't sure. And they said, Well, don't worry about that. Find something to do after you get your degree and get experience, and then see from experience what you like and what you don't like. Because if you don't have experience, it's real hard to say what I like and what I don't like.
• 16:36
  And I'll just say for myself, I didn't know I was gonna become a lawyer. That wasn't on my radar until, you know, I was a little bit older. I won't say how old. That was not when I went to college, that was not one of my goals, and yet that's been my most foundational career now that I've done thirty years. So we don't know what we're gonna be and it's okay.
• 17:03
  And when you have a job, you usually have other people and that helps people feel centered. So I think mentors, having a job, even a part time job, and tuning out some of the world craziness, you know. Don't disconnect from the world, but don't spend six hours in front of the TV looking at today's news. That's gonna the research says that's gonna drive your heart rate up and not be healthy.
• 17:29
  Megan Hunter: But what about those who are who can't even get it together enough to think about these things? They're just I mean, truly floundering. Like, how am I gonna get through this semester at school? How am I even going to get signed up for school? I can't get off the couch.
• 17:42
  I'm depressed. I felt so responsible for my parent and their needs because it's been all about them my entire life. Right? And so that like, how what what do we say to to young people like that? My advice is take a lot of these these tips you've already given, like getting a mentor and that.
• 18:00
  But there's also, you know, if you're in in school, go to your school's counseling center and try to get some support. Get a good group of friends. You know, if you have some friends, get, you know, tighten that group up with healthy relationships. Go to counseling. Get dialectical behavior therapy if you need to.
• 18:18
  Because what I'm hearing is a is a lot about a lot of self harm. Yeah. It's it's some some young people who are truly floundering and can't pull it together enough to just even take a step.
• 18:30
  Bill Eddy: Yeah. Well, that's really when they do need counseling and to find resources. And especially when you're in school, there's school counselors, there's some resources you can connect with. And some of the talk about DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, a lot of that is in groups. And when you're 20, you really want to be in groups feeling the group love, feeling the group connection.
• 18:56
  Just all of that is so so important. So you have to feel connected to other people to feel connected to yourself.
• 19:05
  Megan Hunter: But healthy people.
• 19:07
  Bill Eddy: Healthy people. Yes. Right.
• 19:09
  Megan Hunter: Right. Because there are folks who are really, you know, young people struggling to a level where they're, you know, kind of reaching out to the people where they're feeling accepted, and that isn't necessarily a healthy place. Right? So I hope it's not a tsunami of young people. I I don't know.
• 19:25
  Am I being extreme, Bill?
• 19:27
  Bill Eddy: Well, no. Because I've I've heard from university counselors saying that we're seeing a higher incidence of depression than they can remember. And so you're absolutely right, this is happening. But there's also resources, and there's knowledge, and there's things you can do. I guess our culture says it's hopeless, you know, everything's crazy and chaotic and stuff like that, and that's not true.
• 19:56
  There's things that are difficult, but the world isn't hopeless. We actually have a lot more going for us than we realize, and we need to think about that. There's a program I saw for high school kids that actually had them list good things happening to them. And that as they did that, and these were kids who were depressed, they felt better. And it's like you get more of what you pay attention to.
• 20:23
  So pay attention to the good stuff, write it down, You know, just one through five. Five things that make me feel good that are happening in my life now. When you look at those, you feel better and have more energy to go collect some more.
• 20:39
  Megan Hunter: Yeah. Print that out. Write it out. Put it on your wall. Put it somewhere.
• 20:43
  Just those encouraging statements or and and good things that are happening in the world. And to remind yourself that all I have to do is worry about what's happening today. Yep. Right? I don't need to worry about the future.
• 20:55
  You know, like the old the old saying, don't borrow trouble. Right? Don't borrow trouble from the future. Instead, just get through today what you need to do. Focus on one thing at a time.
• 21:06
  Instead of this overwhelming list, which research tells us when we it it's the it's not one big event that that causes tons of stress for us. It's that constant to do list that puts so much stress on ourselves and and a lot of anxiety, producing things. So just just one thing at a time and and make life manageable. And, you know, if you have a parent that you don't feel like has has a listening ear, right, and is just going to criticize you instead, we'll find the parent or the grandparent or the mentor who who can be a healthy healthy resource for you. So good.
• 21:45
  Well, I hope that's been helpful to our listeners, and we'd love to hear from you if you've noticed young people struggling with this or if you're a young person that's that's kind of had experience with this as well. Next week, we're going to talk about whether ear statements of you who have listened for a long time, you know what those are. If they're for all high conflict types, it's a question I've been getting, a lot lately. So we're gonna break that down. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute dot com slash podcast.
• 22:23
  And we'd love it if you'd tell all your friends about us, and we'd be grateful if you'd leave us a review so we could keep growing and helping more people around the world. Until next time, keep learning and practicing so you can be confident in your human interactions in high conflict situations. As you do, your world and your life will become more peaceful.
• 22:46
  Megan Hunter: It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, transcripts at truestory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider that for our show.