Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / When Home Hurts: Managing High Conflict's Impact on Your Career
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): 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 involving high conflict situations, and the people involved in them. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:24): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:25): We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the impact inside the workplace when high conflict is happening outside the workplace. But before we start, please send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links for today's episode. So Bill, how's it going? What have you been up to this week? Speaker 2 (01:11): Well, this week, getting ready to take a vacation for three weeks in New Zealand, but I want to mention that a week ago I was in Hawaii for work, so I want you to empathize with me. Speaker 1 (01:25): Oh, sorry. Sad Speaker 2 (01:28): I hear you. No, it was beautiful. It was beautiful, it was wonderful, and the people are great, and as I told them there, the temperature in Hawaii is just like room temperature all day and all night. And I said, how can I get any work done here? But we did. We got work done, good group of therapists and was fun speaking to them in that great environment. Speaker 1 (01:56): Look, a great environment just helps. I was talking to someone in New South Wales in Australia a couple days ago and I said, oh, it was fairly shoeless, fairly close to Newcastle where both of us have been a few times. I said Newcastle is probably my favorite training location. I think it's Noah's on the beach is the name of the hotel, and it's right on a cove. There's windows in the training room, you're right at ground level kind of overlooking the bay, and while you're training, you look out and there's dolphin hording in the water and there's no better training space than that. So anyway, yeah, so that's fun. So Hawaii, it would make sense to sort of travel directly from Hawaii to New Zealand. It might've cut off some time for you on an airplane, Speaker 2 (02:44): But there was work back here, so we're getting it done. Speaker 1 (02:48): Getting it done. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I was in Y neck of the woods in San Diego last week. It was kind of an inspiration for the topic we're going to have today. I did another training along with one of our speakers, Sandra, just from Colorado. We trained in a school district in California for school psychologists and other mental health professionals and educational professionals who are really struggling with some difficult things. I think their school district has the most children in care, their district has the most children who are in juvenile probation and the most with English as a second language. Speaker 2 (03:31): So Speaker 1 (03:31): I think a lot of opportunities for conflict, and they're just a really wonderful group. So it was a lot of fun. Speaker 2 (03:40): It's just amazing how every setting, every profession, occupation, every culture, every geographical error has high conflict, high conflict people, high conflict behavior. But what's great is the patterns of behavior are predictable and the ways to manage them are predictable. So I'm so glad you got to be there and give them a hand. Speaker 1 (04:05): Yeah, yeah, it's great group of people. I was also thinking about Hawaii and new training therapists. I was flying to Australia once, I dunno, 12 years ago or more, and flew through Honolulu instead of straight to Hawaii and going from the plane to baggage claim, I had to recheck my bag. So I think I was staying overnight actually, and flying out the next morning and just walking to baggage claim. The woman next to me, we were walking together, we started talking, and it turns out she was a therapist there in Hawaii and she's been trying to get us to come to Hawaii since that meeting. I told her a little bit about what we do and she loved it. So I'm hoping maybe she was in your training, but who knows. Okay, so let's get to the topic at hand today, and that is the impact of in the workplace, when high conflict is happening at home, what this looks like, what to do about it, whether you're the person involved in this, you're the employee or you're the employer. So high conflict, if you could say in a nutshell, bill, what does high conflict at home feel like for the person involved in it? Speaker 2 (05:25): Basically from consulting and counseling is people absorb a lot of stress at the home environment where you expect to be stress relieving, supportive, empathetic, relaxing is the opposite. It's really super stressful because then you're going out into the world having to be on ready to deal with things at a high level without that kind of foundation of daily support or battery recharge. I really think that's what you think of as your home, your family life, your outside of work life is a battery recharge and if your batteries run down and now you're back at work and you have to perform, it's nearly impossible at times. But I think one of the biggest things that I hear about and see is the loss of self-esteem that people really doubt themselves if they're getting drained at home. And that may mean being criticized, could be criticized by an abusive partner, could be criticized by teenagers who are going through their own stuff, be criticized by an ex, a co-parent that calls you in the evening when you're at home or texts you, smells you, and really escalates your frustration level. So that's tips away at your self-esteem. People doubt themselves, then they go to work in a self-doubting mood and it really can impact their productivity and really sap the joy in life that many people bring to work when they have a good, comfortable, happy home environment. Speaker 1 (07:17): So let's go one step further. Bill criticism is one thing and it is challenging to put up with, and criticism may come particularly in high conflict, a lot of times put downs, dissing you just being defensive, challenging, trying to get under your skin, and that causes a lot of stress. But when it goes to the next level, I guess, would you call criticism verbal abuse or would verbal abuse be the next level followed by then I guess emotional abuse and or physical abuse, or are they kind of, I'm under sometimes a verbal and emotional abuse? I mean, they're the same thing they, Speaker 2 (08:02): There's different levels, but what's most important is what's the pattern of behavior that's coming at you? And frankly, once you've had physical abuse combined with verbal abuse or criticism, you don't need more physical abuse to feel that level of fear. And it's interesting, what I've been reading about emotions being contagious and being amplified is that we tend to absorb the peaks of people's emotions. And so if someone's average is at a 50, whatever that means, but occasionally there's a hundred, let's say that's physical abuse, that's what you remember. That's what you carry with you. This person is a danger of a hundred to me, this person thinks of me at the hundred level of that I am stupid or incompetent or whatever. And that's what we tend to remember. So the most extreme behavior that someone is exposed to is often the most remembered behavior. Speaker 1 (09:08): That's interesting. Really interesting. And it makes sense, Speaker 2 (09:13): Complete Speaker 1 (09:13): Sense. And high conflict is crazy making, especially when you're being blamed and you are at those peak emotions. And then you start thinking, am I the problem because maybe I've reacted or overreacted outside my norm and now I look like the crazy one and now I start all this and the crazy thing begins. So you combine that with the depletion of self-esteem and the exhaustion. So you show up in the workplace like that. That's how we show up, having to perform at our expected level at work. And we are bringing all this in Speaker 2 (09:55): And people, you have a much shorter fuse, and so you react more quickly to people. Why'd you say that when you might otherwise say, I don't understand. Could you tell me why you said that? And people go, Ooh, wow, the steer clear of him today. So yeah, so it's a shorter fuse. Lower self-esteem impacts everybody around you as well. Speaker 1 (10:24): So let's talk and dig into a bit about stress and what it does to your brain, those cortisol shots. I guess it's hard on the body. It's hard on the brain. Speaker 2 (10:38): Yeah. Well, I think a lot about right and left hemisphere, and I'm not a brain scientist and I know I simplify things that are really much more complex, but it really seems to be that our right hemisphere, first of all, left hemisphere is associated reading, writing, talking, listening, problem solving kind of logical stuff. The right hemisphere has an incredible ability to protect us, to tell us we need protection, tell us there's a danger in our environment. But what seems to happen is when we get triggered, our amygdala gets triggered that we're in danger. Several things happen. One is you might really shift to global thinking, all or nothing thinking, jumping to conclusions, of course, fight, flight and freeze. And the people into polyvagal theory, the polyvagal nerve, which is connected a lot to your face and to parts of your body, long stomach, et cetera, really shifts your whole body into either shutting down or fighting or fleeing. Speaker 1 (11:52): And the shift is in a split second. Speaker 2 (11:54): Yeah. Oh yeah. Instantly. Instantly. And the thing with the amygdala is when I was studying this years ago, it says within six, 1000th of a second, your amygdala can tell you to react. And you might be running before you consciously realize that there's a danger in that you're running. You may see other people running and you may start running. I remember when there was a tsunami in Indonesia, I think, and people started running and other people just started running. They didn't know why. What are we running from? But if a hundred people are running, I better run too. So it's a survival mechanism, but it shuts down your analytical thinking and that's what you need in the office. But if you're in fight, fight or freeze mode coming into the office, you're not going to be able to do much problem solving of the nuanced type that most jobs require today. Speaker 1 (13:02): And a little bit more on that amygdala response. We've talked a lot about, I like to talk about conflict tolerance and which way we lean in ordinary everyday life. And so are you a conflict avoider? Are you more conflict comfortable? So I think about my husband and myself and he's a conflict avoider through and through, and I'm more conflict comfortable. However, when I am in fight or flight, I've been in a couple situations where I've observed when I've kind of been under a verbal attack actually in a training situation, and someone really got in my face and my amygdala did its job and said, Hey, whoa, there's going to be a problem here. I didn't lean naturally into fighting and being conflict comfortable, which is my normal state. I wanted to flee. That was the feeling I had. So that's kind of been an addition in my training lately is even if you think you're conflict comfortable, you might not be in that high conflict situation. Speaker 2 (14:13): No one's immune from all of these. We all have the whole range of responses, some people have more pattern of is some were pattern, some like you said, some people more conflict comfortable, other people not. So these are normal human things. It's a question of whether we're stuck and whether it's really a self-defeating pattern. That's where it gets important. I think you're talking about training. I remember several years ago in a training where I'm explaining this and that and someone says, bill, this will never work in my situation. This will never work, and your methods just aren't that good. And I remember going, well wait a minute, you've got to realize it. And then I realized, wait a minute, I'm defensive Speaker 1 (15:04): Instantly Speaker 2 (15:05): I need to give them an ear statement. And so I said, wow, that must be a frustrating situation you're in. I thought this stuff wouldn't work too, but it keeps working, so it's worth a try, but Speaker 1 (15:21): It's up to Speaker 2 (15:21): You. It's up to you. And just shifting myself, and that shifted for her is that she didn't have to be defensive, that her situation was hard. Instead it was like, huh, I wonder if I can apply some of this. Maybe some of this might work. And that's often where people start. Speaker 1 (15:43): And if you'd been defensive in those moments, it would've just shut the door for her to even experience it Speaker 2 (15:49): And shut the door for the whole rest of the group going, boy, this guy's pretty defensive Speaker 1 (15:54): And he doesn't know how to handle conflict. Right, right. Yeah, it is kind of fun to have those experiences in a live group training because I've had that happen too. And it's not very often, and it's more maybe in my conflict influencer classes where I'll get someone that says, I've tried all this and it doesn't work. So then I say the same thing. It's like, well, let's try to different. Let's explore that a little bit. Let's see if we can tweak something to see if we can make something work. Right? And instead of saying, well, of course if you were doing it the right way, maybe it would work. So yeah, we never do that. Alright, so circling back to the workplace. So if you are the person who is in this situation at home, and we know this happens a lot and you have to go to work, what can you do at home if you're being criticized, put down even abused in some way? And of course we want everyone to be safe. So there's a whole piece around that and protection orders and removing yourself. So this episode isn't necessarily about how to do all of that, but it is how to kind of save yourself and restore yourself to a place where when you come into the workplace, you can focus on work a little bit more, understanding the reality that there's going to be some bleed over into the workplace, but what can you do? Speaker 2 (17:26): The thing I really think number one is surprisingly powerful that anybody can do anywhere. And that is give yourself encouraging statements. Some people call this affirmations, but the idea of I can get through this, I'm a good parent, I'm a strong employee, whatever your short phrase is, what's important is it has some power to it that it's true and that you repeat it a lot to yourself. Speaker 1 (17:58): So it needs to be true. So you have to believe it. You can't just be telling yourself some garbage affirmation that belongs to someone else. But I, I've been through this before in a really tough situation and I got through it. It wasn't easy, but I got through it. And then you want to repeat that a lot Speaker 2 (18:16): And keep it simple a sentence or less than a sentence. Some people put this on their bathroom mirror like a yellow post-it sticky. If that's not comfortable, put it on your car mirror and then take it off so you can drive safely. But sometimes just taking a deep breath can also help. But if you're driving to work, that's a great chance to give yourself encouraging statements. Don't absorb other people's stuff. My favorite encouraging statement I work in this business is it's not about me. Speaker 1 (18:53): It's not about me. So Speaker 2 (18:53): When somebody's really angry and upset and they look at me and say, and it's all your fault, bill, that I can tell myself it's not about me. They're going through a stressful time, what can I do to be helpful to them? So it just skips me getting into the defensive mode. And I think that can help people going to work to reorganize and get yourself ready. Just reciting a few encouraging statements. I know when I go into a high conflict mediation, it's going to be stressful. I'll probably get blamed for doing something wrong at some point. And I put on my armor, I say, it's not about me. I'm not responsible for their outcome, just my standard of care doing my best job. Often the issue's not the issue and they can't change how they think. And I remind myself of that. And I usually just start breathing a little bit better. And that helps me go in and not absorb other people's tension, but actually help them get past it. Speaker 1 (20:02): So let's talk about the brain research around that. Is there some science, I know you and I were talking just a couple of months ago about the encouraging statement serving as almost a block, like a football block or a shield from absorbing the negative emotions. Am I getting that right? Because I've been talking about it a lot lately, and it makes sense to me, even if someone is berating you or criticizing or you're in that maybe a little bit of heightened state because of a negative interaction in those moments. If you're telling yourself encouraging statements, can it block those negative emotions absorbing into you in that moment? Speaker 2 (20:46): I believe it. I can't tell you exactly the brain science, but I'll tell you what we learned from our trainings with our New Ways for Families coaching method. And we role-play practice parents giving themselves encouraging statements in difficult situations. And we role play so that the coach pretends they're the difficult person criticizing the parent. And the parent just silently listens while telling themselves their encouraging statement. And what we've learned from this, and it's been repeated over and over again, they said the criticism wasn't as loud. I didn't absorb the criticism. The criticism was out there with him or her because I was hearing my encouraging statement louder than I was hearing the criticism. Now I don't know the brain processing there, but the reality seems to be you can dampen this, you can turn down the volume of criticism by turning up your encouraging statement Speaker 1 (21:53): That is so fascinating and it takes you out of the crazy making almost automatically too. Right now, I remember this isn't about me. The other person isn't a bad person. This is a piece of them that doesn't know how to do it differently. Speaker 2 (22:09): They lack the skills, Speaker 1 (22:10): So Speaker 2 (22:11): They Speaker 1 (22:12): Lack the skills. And so I don't have to take that on and I just have to focus on what to do. I can give myself encouraging statements first. This is very powerful. So on that drive to work or even putting on your calendar like a reminder at 7:00 AM every day, just type some of those encouraging statements in there and have it on repeat. And so that you start your morning by looking at those, just anything like that pop up on your phone, anything you do, whether it's breathing, but definitely giving yourself encouraging statements is very helpful. So now you're in the workplace, now you've been able to build yourself up a little bit and not feel so stressed and giving yourself an ability to focus more on your work. But I'm sure your stress is still a little heightened. And now you're at work and you get that text message, Speaker 1 (23:11): Phone call, usually a text message. And you and I have had probably hundreds if not thousands of clients say, huh, I get that text message and it's instant. It's just huge. It can just set your whole day off. So we'd like to tell people, just be careful what text you look at and is mostly these things don't require emergency reactions and responses, but the high conflict nature of it, they take crisis and put it on you. And you have to remember that their crisis doesn't have to be my crisis and I don't have to fix their crisis. So anything else you can do, when you get that text message at work and you do look at it, I recommend waiting until 7:00 PM to look at it till you're off work. But if you look at it, then you're probably going to need a method for dealing with it. Speaker 2 (24:17): Well, I think, of course, I think of the Biff method and think, first of all, do I need to respond? And if I do, using a biff would be the best response. And sometimes I respond when other people wouldn't because I think there's some misinformation that needs to be straightened out before it gets momentum going. Brief, informative, friendly, and firm works with emails, works with texts, two or three sentences often all you have to do. But I think taking a step back going, do I need to respond? And then if so, what would a b response be? Now, there's an added thing that, because I'm always learning. When we did the Biff for co-parent communication book, Kevin Chafin, one of the co-authors on that book, family therapist in Kansas said, I don't remember if he came up with the idea that one of his clients did, but he said, what you can do is cross out what you don't need to respond to and see if there's anything in there you do need to respond to. Speaker 2 (25:34): So someone says, you're an idiot, you're doing everything wrong. What time is tomorrow's staff meeting? And by the way, you don't even understand what happens at staff meetings. So the first two sentences you can cross out, what time is tomorrow's staff meeting? Well, that may need a response and you don't understand, you can just cross that out. So now you're looking at a simple question that doesn't have emotional energy in it, and that's what I can respond to and that's all I need to respond to. So in a sense, it's like the encouraging statement. You're taking out the criticism and just addressing the real life issue at hand Speaker 1 (26:19): If there is one. Yeah, I like that. I need to remember that. Speaker 2 (26:24): Take a note. I'm still practicing recently. It takes a while to catch on, but I tell you an email, it's fun to print it out and cross out. Don't need that. Don't need that. Don't need that. Oh, there's a question. Alright, I'll respond to that. Don't need everything else. And there's one line out of 15 that actually needs a response. It's so empowering. Speaker 1 (26:47): We need to add that to our exercises and trainings. Speaker 2 (26:52): That's a good idea. Speaker 1 (26:52): Yeah, let's do that. So many things to remember. Okay, so if you're in this employee and you have this going on at home and you're doing these things for self-care and how to get through your day, now you need to talk to your employer. Is it a good idea to tell your employer, look, I'm in a really bad situation at home. I can think, I would maybe be afraid that the employer would say, or it would give them a negative view perhaps of you or put you into a place of some kind of care that you don't want or in some kind of category or feel like a punishment. And I think that's a lot of the reason I wanted to even do this topic today is employers might not understand. So how do we help them understand that yes, I'm going through something really tough at home, I need your help. I mean, I've kind of got this, but I kind of need some help too. So how do you say, I don't want to be punished, but I need help. Speaker 2 (28:00): Well, my first thought being a therapist is that you may want to first talk to a therapist such as an EAP. Your company has typically three EAP appointments. You can get fairly short notice at no cost to start there because that's a confidential process by law. And kind of talk through who you would talk to, what would you say? And maybe some ways you can manage it yourself without having to even discuss it with a supervisor or your workplace. It's true, as you say that, I don't know, 50 50 chance that employer won't understand and will be critical versus will understand and be empathetic. Totally depends on the personality of the supervisor, the nature of the workplace, all of that stress level policies and the stress level of the person you're disclosing to. Because they may have something happening at home too, and they're like, oh no, I don't want this. Speaker 2 (29:11): I don't want to deal with this. You go away. So that's what I think is talk to someone who has to be sympathetic to start with a therapist. But I think if you do talk to a supervisor or to hr, don't make it too heavy. Some people just open up the floodgates and that can intimidate and worry the employer. So instead you want to say, you be, matter of fact, there's a problem in dealing with, and here's how you can help me, or here's something I'd like some help with so that it's a small, we have the saying, keep the conflict small. You want to keep it small so the person doesn't feel burden and actually can be helpful. I'm looking for some solutions here. Do you have any ideas or resources if you just unload the workplace has mixed priorities, not just employees, but also the supervisor's time, the bottom line, all that stuff. So sad to say, but I think you have to be realistic. And we have stories of people telling employers too much and the employers and being harsh with them, Speaker 1 (30:34): And then you feel punished at work and you're being punished at home. So there's not a really good place for me to be except maybe on a jog by myself or reading a book or something. But yeah, we want to be able to get some support at work. So I like that. Keep it simple. Speaker 2 (30:53): Let me add one more thing is along the lines of talking to a sympathetic person, therapists, et cetera, is talk to a friend, talk to a friend about what's happening at home, what's happening at work because a friend can just listen and doesn't have a responsibility. What can be empathetic and supportive? The worst is not talking to anybody. You want to talk to somebody because that connection will help you feel like you're okay. And it's just a problem to solve. Speaker 1 (31:25): And if you're the employer, whether you're the supervisor that the employees coming to discuss this with, or you've noticed that you have an employee that maybe something's different now and they're highly skilled at their job, that things just, maybe they're getting into some conflicts or they're seeming very stressed or not very friendly or depressed or any of that. Or even if they do overs, share a bit. What can you do as an employer? Speaker 2 (31:53): My inclination is to say mostly the same things we've been saying for the employee, and you and I both do a lot of HR training and teaching them ear statements, empathy, attention, and respect. Say, yeah, have a seat. Let's talk. Tell me what's going on. And to have empathy for the person and to start there, start with an ear statement. Don't start with policies and rules and solutions. It's just like men get criticized by women for trying to solve problems before just giving some empathy. And it's the same thing in the workplace. It's so tempting. And women do it too. They go, here's the problem to solve. Speaker 1 (32:37): Well, because we're at work, right? Speaker 2 (32:39): Yes. Speaker 1 (32:39): When we're at work, you're in problem solving mode. That's why we're there. And so it can be, you really have to flip that and go into just, I'm going to be in a little space here of giving this person some space, giving them a safe place to talk. And maybe if they ramble a little bit, that's fine, but giving them some grace. And I think opening that door so they don't feel like they're going to be punished if they share. And there are going to be those who do overshare, and if they are the high conflict individual and they come in, they're probably going to want a lot of leeway and a lot of, there'll be some blame associated and things like that. So you also have to be careful as the employer. But I think to give someone, just realize that this person is probably struggling with some trust issues if they're being abused in some way at home or having to deal with a lot of criticism or put down and being dismissed and all those things. So giving them some ear and then asking, how can we support you through this? What can we do? Speaker 2 (33:44): That's the next step? Speaker 1 (33:45): We might have some limitations, but let's see how we can walk this journey together so we can make you help you be successful at work. And even just that, even if nothing happens after that, you've at least helped that person feel like they're in a place where they can just be themselves. And even just that can solve a lot of the issues. Speaker 2 (34:09): And you know what, Megan? Your tone as you said, that is just spot on. And that's what people need to know is your tone makes a huge difference saying, let's see what we can do now. I mean, in five minutes, you could totally turn around how an employee feels and they might go, Hey, somebody cares. Somebody wants to help. We have a solution in mind. I feel so much better. And that doesn't take much time for that. That's beautiful. Really. Speaker 1 (34:43): Yeah. Don't need some big HR process. You don't need big counseling. Be put on probation or some kind of performance improvement plan necessarily. I mean, maybe there's a place for that with some people, but five minutes might make the difference. Speaker 2 (35:00): Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (35:01): Human connection. It's key. Speaker 2 (35:04): It's amazing. Speaker 1 (35:07): Well, great conversation, bill. Thank you. And I hope this has been helpful. Speaker 2 (35:12): I just have to add one other piece. If you are in a position as the employer where you have to set some limits because your concern, and with that, you need to let the person know what the consequences are if they don't follow limits and include your statement because how you talk to somebody when you set limits, even a, we want to help you here. And by having this limit, we think it's going to help you be an even stronger employee, that that context is motivating rather than just going, you can't do that anymore. Right? Speaker 1 (35:54): And my door's open if you need to talk again, right? Five minutes can make a difference. Huge difference. So thank you for listening today. Next week, I don't know what we'll focus on yet. We'll find out. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And until next time, keep learning, keep practicing, keep taking care of yourself, keep giving yourself encouraging statements, and we'll all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. 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 notes and transcripts at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.