Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Asked and Answered: Your Questions on High Conflict Personalities, Relationships, and Self-Improvement
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict personalities. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm usually here with my co-host, Bill Eddy, but he's engaging in nature therapy at the moment, so he'll be back next week. We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. So we have been very busy this time of year, September, October. We do a lot of training, which means a lot of traveling. In fact, I've been to California I think three times, Washington, DC twice Boston once. So yeah, it's been busy and Bill's been on the road and teaching at Pepperdine and doing all kinds of things, so it's good for him to take a little nature therapy and me too. Speaker 1 (01:09): Alright, today is our asked and answered episode where I'll be answering the questions that you, our faithful listeners have submitted and thank you for doing that and I also want to just take a moment to thank you for listening. I'm really happy to report that we are blowing up the past few months here. Our podcast is blowing up, I should say in September. The podcast was downloaded 21,000 times plus and we're already at over 17,000 here in October, just three quarters of the way through the month. So thank you for listening. We're very grateful. Also some very exciting news to share. Mark your calendar for October 28th to listen to the huberman Lab podcast. The exciting news. Bill Eddie will be Dr. Huber Man's guest and yes, this is a very big deal. Dr. Huberman has over 2 million subscribers and listeners, so it's a great way for people to learn about what we talk about and to get some help for the things they need help with when it comes to high conflict. So we'll put that link in the show notes before we start. 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. Speaker 1 (02:42): Let's get started with As and Answered. You've submitted quite a few questions and we've selected for today and we're going to start with this one. I am over 50. I realize now that my whole life, say after age 21, that I have been a high conflict person. I want to change. I don't want to be a high conflict person. I grew up in a very dysfunctional dv, narcissistic Indian family. I was a perfect daughter and always saying sorry and patching up sibling rivalry. We don't trust each other. Siblings are the worst enemies of each other. Mother was depressed, father was controlling. My mother used to say I would get along with anyone, but I became the worst high conflict person. I became a successful professional, then an arranged marriage to a schizophrenic guy, toppled the applecart. I had a child, left India with my child when I was 30. Speaker 1 (03:38): I did everything to hurt my parents or go against Indian culture, the need to be approved, external validation, low self-esteem, yearning to be that lovely person got me more into high conflict behavior. My family back home was exploiting me for financial benefits. I got married again being Indian. It gave me satisfaction that I now had my honor back. I could get over my shame so I started looking for justice. My high conflict personality behaviors have caused me troubles. I don't want to be this person. I have a loving nurturing side. I have a loving husband who has helped me change. My son is loving and patient. I want to put the past behind and be a better person. I want to get rid of the high conflict person that I am. Where can I find tools and ways to change? Alright, this is a question that gives probably all of us goosebumps, right? Speaker 1 (04:35): First, kudos to you for recognizing where you are in your life and what's happening with your relationships. Look, when we grow up in dysfunctional families and cultures, right? Not just the family, but it can be the culture surrounding us, we can tend to pick up some of those things and I want you to think about how you look at yourself and give yourself a little bit of a break. It sounds like you've maybe moved past some of the shame that you had, but there can be more to do. Give yourself some credit for, first of all, managing to be kind and patching up those sibling rivalries When you were young, you were destined from the beginning it sounds like to be a peacemaker. So you have that within you. Now it's you have some things left in you that dysfunctional families leave within us. They get our wires a little bit tangled sometimes, and I want you to think about giving yourself a break for those. Speaker 1 (05:41): It's what I would like to think of as a recipe. We're all a recipe. It doesn't give us excuses because we maybe grew up in a dysfunctional family, but it does explain maybe why we have some of the behaviors that we do. The great news is that you have recognized that there are some behaviors you have that you don't like. That's a huge first step. The true high conflict personality does not understand this. So I want to help you understand that at first that you are having insight into your own behaviors, right and into the way you live. So that means great news, you can work on those. You can role model what you want for your son. You can improve these relationships. So how do you put the past behind? How do you become a better person? How do you get rid of any high conflict behaviors that you have? Speaker 1 (06:39): I would say number one, get some therapy. It can't hurt just to be able to talk through what some of those things are that you'd like to change. Do you have trouble regulating your emotions? If so, there is a lot of help for emotion regulation. Do you have all or nothing thinking? Well, that's something you can challenge yourself on. If I have an important decision to make, am I being all or nothing? Nothing with my solution, or am I using flexible thinking? Meaning, okay, do I have some options here? Let's write down all my options. Now, do any of these options, are any of them high conflict? Am I blaming someone in this? Is it unrealistic? Is it coming from a strong emotion or feeling? Is it unreasonable, right? Is it extreme? Cross out any of those and what you're left with is something most likely, pretty reasonable and will be flexible thinking instead of all or nothing. Speaker 1 (07:42): Thinking, okay, if you have extreme behaviors, you haven't said if you do or not. Sometimes growing up in a dysfunctional family, we don't know what an extreme behavior is and isn't. So maybe talk with a therapist about that or talk with a trusted friend about that or talk with your partner if that's the kind of relationship you have and just being vulnerable within that relationship and saying, look, I want to change. I am changing just by having this conversation and let's set up something, a way we can work together and we can help each other so that I can clean up the things that I need to clean up. Because believe me, you can improve those things once you start practicing them. They become a matter of muscle memory and it starts to just shape who you are and you will continue to respond that way. Speaker 1 (08:40): I mean, it takes work for sure, it takes some discipline and making decisions, but it sounds like you're on the right track and you'll be able to continue your wonderful relationship with your son and role modeling those things for him. If you ever have a hard time with decisions you're making or managing your emotions, perhaps picture your son and what you want him to be like in the future. What I want him to behave this way when he's 25, when he's 30, what I want his future partner to behave this way that can sometimes curb our own behavior and help us kind of come into alignment with what we want for ourselves. But I would highly recommend talking to a therapist maybe that deals with families that works with trauma and see if there's anything you need to work through on that regard. If not, just keep trying to manage your emotions, have moderate behaviors, flexible thinking, and check yourself. Speaker 1 (09:45): Okay? And by the way, we are working on a class of course that we'll be offering here at High Conflict Institute to help with people in your exact situation and thank you for that question. Alright, now let's move on to question number two. I've found your podcast kind of desperately looking for answers about how to manage life and marriage. My husband and I have a child just under age two. We cannot stop fighting. It's less frequent but more intense. Lately everything just builds as we try to keep peace. I will spare you the whole backstory because I'm sure the way I will tell it is dishonest and I will frame myself as a victim. I was diagnosed with bipolar about a year ago and BPD and I assume here, listener, that you mean borderline personality disorder instead of bipolar had been a suggested diagnosis on and off for me since I started seeking mental health treatment about 10 years ago. Speaker 1 (10:46): I had an extremely bad time postpartum and our relationship was very volatile and not helpful. I attempted to take my life twice. Both went on medications that seemed to make me even worse, but doctors kept wanting to try again. I am 100% sure I am a high conflict person. My husband might be two. We have a couple's therapists, but we can't seem to use that resource well. I start screaming, screaming even more quickly than I normally would and he quits speaking, claiming just like at home he won't talk because he will be attacked. He behaves completely differently during therapy. I do too, but show an even worse side of myself. We need to split up. I want to be better for our son or I think I do, but maybe it is just me not wanting to be seen as the monster I am not wanting to lose. Speaker 1 (11:36): I feel completely hopeless though, like even the responsibility I take and trying to accept my part in things is fake and me manipulating the situation even more. I've struggled with volatility and unstable relationships for my entire life and have never thought it was just me being a victim. I've always felt that when it comes down to it, I am to blame. I don't know how to move forward in a way that protects our son from me other than leaving slowly so I disappear from his life. The only reason I'm not doing this is that I don't trust my view of his father. Is he just as sick as me or is he really this wonderful man with a sick and combative wife? He struggles with empathy and it terrifies me to think of him raising our son alone or with someone else he chooses. It scares me more to think of our son growing up with me as his mother. Speaker 1 (12:24): He is an incredibly sweet and smart boy. He deserves so much better than this. I have a therapist and I'm on medications. Most of my life is manageable at this point except this relationship I'm trying to hang on. But it seems every choice is going to damage my son and leave him with awful parents. What should I do to minimize damage to him seeing that he has one, possibly two. I conflict people for parents. How do we split up and co-parent when we can't communicate at all? It seems impossible. So first of all, I'm really saddened to hear that you're experiencing something so challenging and this is pretty common. So much of what I said in the first listener's response or the response to the first listener's question applies here as well. It's great that you have a therapist and I really encourage continuing that relationship and maybe ask your therapist about dialectical behavior therapy if that might be something that would be good for you in that type of therapy. Speaker 1 (13:28): You can learn to manage emotions and have flexible thinking, things like that. So again, like the first question, I applaud you for thinking about this and for asking the questions and reaching out. Huge first step, huge second step is going to therapy. So I do want to encourage you that you can get better. It's not impossible. Again, it takes time and commitment. So take a look maybe at Dialectical Behavior Therapy as a possible option. Talk to your therapist about that. There's also several other websites and organizations who help people that are struggling like this, and one of them is emotions matter. I'll put that link in the show notes as well. As far as minimizing damage to your son, we have a class called New Ways for Families Together. It started as new ways for families for divorcing and separating families, but which we'd love for families to stay together. Speaker 1 (14:36): So we will be launching that in November 20, 24. New Ways for Families together where you can learn how to manage your emotions, to have flexible thinking, to have moderate behaviors and to check yourself and to give yourself encouraging statements. Those are the things that will help you manage yourself so that your relationships can perhaps stabilize a little bit. At least you'll be doing everything you can to make that happen. Now, your partner, husband, spouse maybe impacted by that and may not, but those are things you probably should talk through with your therapist. And then if you were to split up and try to co-parent the New Ways for Families course this for divorcing and separated families would be a very good resource for you to learn how to co-parent together effectively. I hope your family is able to stay together, but obviously that's up to you and your family's decisions. Speaker 1 (15:43): You asked the question, is my child's father's just as sick as me, or is he really this wonderful man with a sick combative wife? The brain is tricky. I like your question because it just shows that you're vulnerable and you're open to change and to figuring this out. Again, talk to your therapist, see if you can get these answers there and ask honestly. You can also kind of self evaluate. Take a look at the articles we have on what is a high conflict personality, what are the traits of that pattern of behavior? We don't have to label, we don't have to diagnose, but we can learn how to influence conflict, how to deescalate it, and those are all the things. We have lots of resources for that on our website. So it is possible. What I mean by possible is the perfect outcome possible. It depends what your definition of a perfect outcome is, so just know that you can get better. Thank you for that question and I wish you the best. I'm going to take a short break and I'll be back to respond to another question or two. Speaker 1 (17:03): All right, and I'm back with more questions from our asked and answered series. Alright, question number three. My husband and I are somewhat newly married and I have recently found out via therapy that he has borderline personality disorder. He is not aware of this yet because of course it sounds like if a person has BPD, it is recommended not to tell them. I struggle very much with this because while we each have therapists, I feel like I'm the only one doing the work and also fully informed as to what is going on. Plus I'm the one bearing the brunt of his blaming behavior and other negative issues with BPD. How do you recommend a person with BPD is notified or informed of their disorder? Also, do you have a website resource that gives a short general overview of what causes BPD, how it manifests and how to interact with someone who has it? Speaker 1 (17:58): I have encountered many different resources, but would love to give something short and sweet to share with our family members that they would actually read since some websites are so long so they can understand more about why my husband is so difficult. Alright, great question and I'm glad you've asked it before you stepped into on that stepping stone of opening this door to borderline personality disorder. So first of all, it sounds to me like perhaps your therapist has let your husband or has suggested this, or perhaps it's his therapist has diagnosed it. I'm not sure. Well, it sounds like he hasn't been diagnosed. Okay, so you feel like you're the one doing the work. So how do you recommend a person is notified or informed? So we do not recommend notifying that person or informing them that they have borderline personality disorder, right? If you do that, it's going to potentially get you in some hot water because no one wants to hear that they have a personality disorder. Speaker 1 (19:13): Now, after someone gets a diagnosis, often, especially with borderline, there'll often be relief because, wow, I finally understand why my life is so chaotic. I understand why relationships are so hard for me, but until that person discovers that through their own self-discovery or therapy or reading online, which is common, they aren't going to want to hear from you that they have borderline personality disorder. So if I were you because you have a therapist, I think it would be a good idea to talk to the therapist about how you would go about doing that. But definitely don't put yourself in that place. It can escalate the conflict. It could cause the person to be very confrontational and just worsen it. So part of this is you working on setting your own boundaries, seeking professional help. We have some resources on our website. I'll put in the show notes that can help you and we just don't want to make things worse. Speaker 1 (20:18): There's a book called The Big Book on Borderline Personality Disorder by Sena Rooney. She's in the uk. She's someone who had the diagnosis herself and worked through dialectical behavior therapy and other therapies to overcome that. And she wrote the book in such a way that it's not kind of the morbid very dark side and feelings and thoughts that often go with BPD, but instead comes at it from the person who has it that overcame it or is overcoming it. There's chapters in there for the person themselves, for family members, what to say, what to do. That would be my go-to number one reference. Honestly, there's several other organizations hope for BPD, nami, N-E-A-B-P-D, so I'll put all those links in there. So those, I think that answers your question about short general overview of what causes BPD. I think the N-E-A-B-P-D website is probably pretty good for that, but the big book for BPD is probably one of the best. Speaker 1 (21:31): One more resource is the for you would be the borderline Personality Disorder wellness planner for families, and it can be a great source of support information and just tracking your own behaviors, your own wellness so that you don't really get dragged down with this. And there'll be a lot of tips in there about how to handle different conversations. So I think hopefully that will be helpful to you and I wish you all the best with that. Alright, we'll take one more question now and finish with this. Regarding raising thriving teens, how do you undo having children that may have made parent decisions? I know I have low self-worth and indecisiveness. I also am an adult child. I moved my 12-year-old daughter and myself from one state to another to be with her dad and we got engaged. He was estranged from us for her first 11 years. Speaker 1 (22:40): I find it very difficult to see how he treats his other daughter he lived with versus ours. I've shared with him how I feel and I still feel like our daughter is entitled or owed or needs more from him. However, I've been told by everyone that his other relationship is different. I still feel like he chooses his other daughter and his soon to be ex-wife over me and our daughter. We're currently not talking as of recently. We are not living together for four months because he is scared. His divorce won't go through smoothly with us living together and I feel in need different things he isn't able to do like talk, share, and problem solve when there are issues. I feel disconnected and abandoned all the time. I also closed my child support a year ago and don't get any help now and I feel guilty or in fear to ask for help as he is struggling to, I need help to figure out how to proceed. Speaker 1 (23:37): Alright, well that's a tough one and it sounds like you've made some big changes to have this relationship. You want to be a good example for your daughter and help her have a good relationship with her dad. The part about that he has this other daughter and it feels like he chooses her perhaps over yours. I guess I would just encourage you to think about time, the amount of time that he spent with the other daughter. It sounds like to me they've been around each other a lot more than him and your daughter. In that case, you just have to think about the amount of time it takes to create relationships, to create memories, to forge bonds, to learn, to build trust. So his other daughters probably had that for quite some time where for your daughter, this is kind of a fresh start, so that is going to take time. Speaker 1 (24:38): Now some people will be able to kind solve that over time and other people it may not be resolved and a lot of that is going to be up to him and that puts you in a tough, tough position. I would suggest that you get some support where if you can go to therapy and talk about some of these things and get some ideas outside of perhaps where you are and what you're thinking. There's also some very good stepfamily coaching and I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a really great organization for that. They do a lot of coaching for step families and even though perhaps you're not married yet, you are in a blended family, so I think that could be a pretty useful resource for you. And so do some things to work on yourself, do some things to work on your daughter, helping her not or to remember that she is not the parent, and that you need to be making those decisions and it's your responsibility and that you're going to do that and that you're going to role model good decision making for her. Speaker 1 (25:52): You're going to role model how to manage your emotions, how to have moderate behaviors, how to have flexible thinking, how to check yourself low, you mentioned that. And being indecisive again, a good therapist or a good coach can help you with some of that and merely by making decisions can help increase your self-worth decisions to help yourself. And then following through on those decisions to help your daughter and then following through on the discipline from that and the decisions you make there. Increase your self-worth, so self-worth something anyone else can give you. So that's why I would encourage you to find some good counseling and see where you can go counseling or coaching. I'll put some links in the show notes and I wish you the very best. Think about you and like I said, to respondent to one of the other lister questions, think about what you would want for your daughter when she's your age. Would you want her to have this low self-esteem? I bet you don't. Would you want her to be indecisive? I bet you don't. So role model the opposite to her, right? And just keep that in mind as you make these decisions for yourself and for her. Speaker 1 (27:22): All right, that wraps up our asked and answered episode. Thank you listeners for tuning in. Next week, bill will be back for our final episode of the five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life Series. This time focusing on narcissistic personality disorder and domestic violence. That will wrap up that series. Actually, we were going to have that today, but with Bill being gone, we weren't able to do that, so we switched it around. Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. Until next time, keep learning and keep practicing. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small to find the missing piece. It's all Your Fault is the 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.