Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Caught in the Crossfire: Escaping High Conflict Contagion
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 that involve someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Hi everybody. 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. In today's episode, we're going to talk about high conflict contagion and projective identification. Now, if you're not sure what that is, stay tuned because we'll talk about it all about it today. But first, a couple of notes. Please send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Speaker 1 (01:06): Alright, bill, so we've had so many questions come in from listeners and we're really very grateful for that and it really shows where the needs are and all of you listeners, what information you're wanting to hear. So this is kind of a little bit different. One for us talking about contagion. And so the listener asks, please discuss contagion, a tricky subject as it involves projective identification, but an important one, I went online and Googled projective identification, and I found an article written by John Burton MD on the Psychology Today page of Kristen Beasley PhD. The article says, projective identification was first described by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Here's how it works. Person A has a feeling they'd rather avoid, and so they project it unconsciously onto person B. Many times the projection fails because the other person refuses to accept the projection. However, in some cases, person B resonates or somehow identifies with person a's projection and ends up acting or feeling in ways that combine both person a's projection and person B's feelings. Speaker 1 (02:22): And then we have projective identification. And here's an example. Valerie is a successful personal trainer who loves her work. She has helped countless clients achieve their fitness goals. Her new client, Tom, wants to lose weight and increase his core strength. After their first meeting, Tom sent Valerie several texts, she answered them, but felt a bit overwhelmed by his neediness. At the second session, Tom appeared solen, he had also made none of the changes she had suggested. So Valerie found Tom's lack of enthusiasm, frustrating. She also had a tendency to blame herself if clients didn't improve, wondering if she was doing something wrong. During their second session, she experienced an uncomfortable feeling. She wanted the session to be over. She tried to ignore the feeling and encouraged Tom to keep up the good work. She'd later got along text from Tom saying he didn't feel the sessions were helping, that he felt Valerie was just treating me like a paycheck and that he needed to work with someone else. Valerie questioned whether she did look at her clients like a paycheck, feelings and thoughts she didn't typically have with other clients. She felt confused, not sure where things went wrong with Tom and not sure of her own behaviors. So there's an example of projective identification, and I think right off the bat we can tell there's a difference between that and perhaps high conflict patterns of behavior. What are your thoughts on this? Speaker 2 (03:51): First of all, I think that it helps to think, I like just to use the term projection because people often can recognize that projective identification gets into a little more psychoanalytic theory and psychiatrists and psychoanalysts can get into the depths of that. This is a good explanation that you just read because what happens is he's projecting onto her that all she caress about is a paycheck, and that's not her issue, that's his issue. And he may carry that around with other people and he may have that as how he approaches people. He's looking for who can I get paid by that identification by Valerie going, is that or is that not my feeling confuses people and it's good to understand that this is how this works, but at a simpler level, what we often see in our high conflict cases is people do project onto the other person and the other person does not accept it at all and gets angry about that. Speaker 2 (05:02): And so let's say you have a couple and they're having an argument and he suddenly says, I know what our problem is. You're having an affair. She's like, I'm not having an affair. That's crazy. Well, when you came in today, you didn't have eye contact with me or this, that, or the other thing. And he's all invested in that she's having an affair. Well, actually he's having an affair and projecting it onto her like, well, if I'm having an affair, she's probably having one too. And I did have a case when I was doing couples therapy where it turned out both parties were having affairs and that they had never revealed it to the other person, but they were suspicious about the other person. So they were guessing and projecting. But often another aspect of this is the person doesn't know how they're feeling. Maybe their partner is doing something and they feel really angry, but because they love their partner and they feel insecure about the relationship, they're afraid to say they're angry. Speaker 2 (06:12): They're not even conscious of their anger, they're so nervous about the relationship. And so the other person says something and they say, why are you angry at me? And their partner says, I'm not angry at you. And they go, yes you are. I'm sure you are. I can feel it. Well, what they're feeling is their own anger, but they can't recognize it because it's all unconscious. And that's an important thing for the listeners to know. This whole discussion we're having is the person that's projecting isn't conscious of what they're saying and feeling and thinking and doing. Speaker 1 (06:47): So you're saying that if they're projecting on the other partner, as in your example with the husband accusing the wife of an affair when he's the one doing it, I think we like to think that this person is consciously lying and throwing them under the bus. And I think maybe in some cases, is that true? Speaker 2 (07:05): Sometimes people know that they're blaming the other person for what they're doing, like having an affair. They know they're having an affair, but their belief that the other person is having an affair comes from their unconscious projection because the other person may not at all be having that, but a lot of times the projection's totally unconscious. So I should caution this and say sometimes they know what they're doing, but often they don't know what they're doing. That drives a lot of high conflict cases. They don't know what they're doing and they really believe the other person's doing the bad thing that they're worried about. So Speaker 1 (07:44): Perhaps someone that struggles with a fear of abandonment, they see their partner looking at their phone and oh, they suffer that quick, instantaneous fear of abandonment, kind of a micro abandonment, and immediately assume, jump to the conclusion that, oh, my partner is interested in someone else. They're looking at their phone instead of paying attention to me. And that's where that unconscious projection comes from. Yes. Speaker 2 (08:13): So I think you're having an affair and they might be thinking of having an affair or fearing abandonment. It's tricky. The projection is of what I'm feeling onto you. And so if they're feeling abandoned, they may think the other person feels abandoned. It's a little complicated and tricky, but I think we should keep it simple and just have the idea projection is where what's going on for one person is projected onto the other person of any type that that's the kind of thing that's happening. And that drives lot of high conflict disputes because most people with high conflict personalities don't see their part in the problem. They don't connect the dots back to themselves. And so they honestly believe other people are doing all these things that aren't at all an issue. So you're right. So she's projecting onto him that he's having an affair or thinking of abandoning her when he may be looking at the weather or making a grocery list. In other words, what's going on for her? What's going on for him? But she thinks it is and attacks him as though he's doing what she fears, Speaker 1 (09:38): And it completely 100% feels to her that it is real and that it is true. And she or whoever the person is will stick with that thought until otherwise proven differently if ever. Speaker 2 (09:51): Yeah. So let's take a high conflict family court example. So you have a woman on the stand and she says to the judge, I know he's sexually abusing our daughter, and the judge is supposed to be trying to measure her credibility. Well, she totally believes it. And so her tone of voice, her body language, everything about her is credible, but she's wrong. And that's what feeds a lot of these conflicts because high conflict people can be appear very credible and they honestly believe stuff that really isn't accurate or is a projection of their fear onto the other person's behavior. Speaker 1 (10:37): So we'll link that to contagion shortly. But first I have a question about deflection. Is deflection different from projection? Because I think of a case maybe with an antisocial personality where lying is just a way of life. When the lips are moving, there's possibly a lie happening. In that same scenario, if an antisocial person is accusing their partner of an affair, it may be to deflect blame from themselves. Is that also projection? Speaker 2 (11:07): Well, see, the thing is if you think of projection as a psychological process, then it's supposed to be happening when the person's not conscious of what they're doing. By and large with anti socials, they're often very conscious of what they're doing and very comfortable with it. And they do deflect a lot. They say, look like with gaslighting is you're gaslighting me. And they say, no, I'm not. I've never gaslight. I would never do such a thing. How can you even accuse me of such a thing when in fact they are So they're deflecting blame typically, consciously. And I think the thing with antisocial is most of what they're doing that really harms relationships. They're of doing, but they're not aware of it being wrong or they know it's wrong, but they're not aware of having a problem with it. They're okay with Speaker 1 (12:04): It. They aren't aware that it's a maladaptive behavior. Right, right. That this is contrary to healthy relationship behavior. Speaker 2 (12:13): Right. Because anti socials often think that everybody does what they're doing. And I remember I represented a husband and his wife had antisocial traits. She accused him. A lot of stuff we proved wasn't true, but one of the things she said is the best liar wins in family court. I told my client, I said, that's not true, but it tells me how she's thinking and she's probably thinking of lying. And in fact she did and she's terrible at it. We just constantly caught her at it. But that's how I think anti socials think is everybody does this, so why shouldn't I? Speaker 1 (12:55): Interesting. We'll be right back. Okay, so moving along to contagion, how does this all relate to high conflict contagion as you've brought up earlier? I think maybe it was before we started recording the podcast, we were talking about it as emotion contagion, Speaker 2 (13:23): Right? And I like to say that emotions are contagious. I'm not the only one saying that There's been books written with a title like that and lots of articles. I think the government website for National Institutes of Health has something like 800 articles on emotional contagion. But what I like to say is emotions are contagious and high conflict emotions are highly contagious. So here's how that seems to work is one person's having an emotion, let's say, and again, I'll come back to family cases. So mom's angry at dad, they're separated and she's telling son Johnny, your father, and she's very angry and maybe slams pounds the table and all of that. So her emotion is anger. His amygdala in his brain, amygdala is particularly sensitive to facial expressions of fear and anger. That's the right amygdala in the brain. You have one in each hemisphere, and the right amygdala is particularly sensitive facial expressions of fear and anger. Speaker 2 (14:34): Well, mom has facial expression of a great deal of anger. So let's say Johnny is nine years old. Well, Johnny is experiencing his mother's anger expressed towards his father. His amygdala goes red alert, there's a problem here. There's intense emotions, there's a lot of anger. We need to deal, we need to see what we have to do. And so two outcomes possible. One is Johnny who's nine says, mom, you're absolutely right. I can't believe that dad did that. He's a total jerk. Or the child goes, mom, you're wrong. You're scaring me. Stop being so angry and wanting to get away from mom. In both regards, Johnny's trying to figure out for his own survival. How do I calm mom down? Johnny's now angry. He's either angry at dad or angry at mom and wants to protect himself. So that's how emotions can be contagious. Also, there's mirror neurons in the brain, and this is something discovered in the 1990s by Italian researchers studying monkeys who were copying the researcher's behavior and they started realizing that they have mirror neurons and that the neurons were firing when the monkeys weren't doing anything. Speaker 2 (16:07): They were just watching the researchers pick things up and move things around. And they figured, is this true for humans? And they realized that it was that we have neurons that are close to our motor neurons that make us move our hands and do all of this. Well, right next door we have mirror neurons. So if you watch somebody else, you start feeling like, I want to move my hands. Like you're removing your hands. And they think a lot of how we learn, how we learn to play sports, how we learn to do music and how children learn before they really comprehend a lot of stuff, is just by imitation. So you think of copycat or imitation behavior, maybe mirror neurons. So we have mirror neurons, we have your amygdala. These get hooked by other people's emotions. And when it's high conflict emotions, the person receives it as high intensity, maybe life and death. And I think that's why we see kids that a hundred percent hate the other parent or a hundred percent hate the parent that they're with and want to get away from. Because what they're receiving is the high intensity emotion. It's not the ordinary level emotion. And so high conflict emotions are highly contagious. And if you don't realize that, you don't really don't understand high conflict behavior and how offices work, how communities get upset with each other, polarization, all of that. Speaker 1 (17:49): Yeah, no, that's kind of where I was going is in a group emotion contagion can be kind of unsettling and maybe at the far end of it. Dangerous. Speaker 2 (18:02): Yes. Yes. It really, I think it drives polarization. I've got a webinar somewhere on that. Polarization is driven by high conflict emotions typically coming from an important person in the group. And what you see is half the group, and they also call it splitting. We talk about splitting with borderline and narcissistic personality disorder where they see people as all good and all bad. A real quick example, I was asked to consult for a university department that dealt a lot with disabilities, and they said, our team is starting to hate each other. Well, what was happening is there was a student that was asking for accommodations, which is part of what the department deals with, but things were escalating. And it started being where some of the faculty and staff said, we've got to bend over backwards more for this person. And the other half the staff said, no, we've bend over backwards enough. Speaker 2 (19:10): We have to expect this person to pick up her responsibility to try harder and do more things so that she can succeed in life. She's got to take more responsibility here. That could be an ordinary discussion and debate. But it was highly emotional and the two sides were starting to hate each other. And I explained to them about splitting, and they said, there may be somebody in the mix here with a high conflict personality who's feeding each side of the split because they think that way in their own brain. And they go, you know what? That's the student. And so they agreed after the meeting that they were going to ask for more from the student. And this is many years ago, they didn't have proof of all the disability and needs for accommodation that she was asking for, and she wasn't able to produce it. Speaker 2 (20:06): And they realized this is a high conflict person with a disability, but not all the disabilities that she's asking for. And they ended up suspending her, I think for a semester. Everything calmed down, and I think they may have actually removed the student, but the idea was that this was a high conflict person that was splitting the group. And what I also taught them is, you've got to check things with each other. Don't allow yourselves to become that split and polarized. And that's the kind of process. And I think we see polarization in a lot of workplaces, families, communities, and of course in politics. And people don't realize that they're getting emotionally hooked. Once you do, you can unhook yourself go, oh, okay, this isn't about the person. This is about an issue and we disagree, but we don't have to hate each other Speaker 1 (21:02): And we can check it out with each other and just have a normal conversation instead of making assumptions and letting it really take root and become a contagion. Right. Speaker 2 (21:12): Exactly. Speaker 1 (21:13): Good. Alright, well thanks Bill. This is a little bit different one for us, and I think it was kind of enjoyable. I know it was for me. I hope it is for our listeners as well. So thank you whoever sent that question in. We appreciate it and we hope for everyone that this information was very helpful to you in some way today. And again, thank you for listening. Speaker 1 (21:42): The next week we'll talk about family conflict. I'm sure none of you listeners have ever, ever dealt with family conflict. Just kidding. So the first situation will be regarding a grandmother and a granddaughter who have similar traits and a second family with a husband experiencing perhaps borderline personality disorder. And finally, the third question is about two people with high conflict personalities who are sort of targeting each other and blaming each other. So three interesting scenarios. Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And we'd love it if you'd tell your friends about us and we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a five star review so we can 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 life will become more peaceful. 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.