Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Manipulators in Plain Sight: Spotting Antisocial Personality Disorder
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 antisocial personality disorder. This is one that's as misunderstood as any, and it seems to be trending these days. So we're going to take a look at some listener questions and clarify some things. But first, a couple of notes. 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. Thank you again for listening and we'll dive right in here today. Speaker 1 (01:14): So antisocial personality disorder. As you listeners that have been listening for a long time, know and either through our podcast or maybe through other sources and books and articles and materials, know that antisocial doesn't mean it's the person that's standing in the back of the room at a party who doesn't like to talk to other people. And I think it's kind of confusing for many because some people consider themselves to be antisocial because they are that shy in a room or maybe an introvert, but that's absolutely not what we're talking about here at all. So I wouldn't want anyone to listen to this and think of themselves as antisocial mistakenly because they're just shy and then hear this and think, wow, I have a terrible personality, and it doesn't seem to match. So we'll just clear that up right here at the beginning. We'll deep dive a little into what it is through these questions. Speaker 1 (02:11): So here's the first one. My spouse has recently been showing more and more patterns that align with those I've heard described on your podcast as antisocial personality disorder. Just a few examples from my experience are lying, blaming others for everything, erratic driving behaviors, excessive use of energy drinks, extreme mood swings, overdrafting the bank account, parasitic behavior, specifically not contributing to household expenses, and I could go on and on. She has bipolar disorder and has been working with a psychiatrist for a decade, helping her with that. I wrote to her psychiatrist explaining every A S P D pattern, meaning antisocial personality disorder pattern in great detail with examples. In response, she asked to see my wife and I this past weekend. She spoke with us each privately at first, and then we all came together at the end of the session. The psychiatrist told me that only people in jail or who have broken the law in other circumstances are antisocial personality disorder suffers. I was in no position to argue that my wife is on the spectrum of high-functioning antisocial personality disorder with our limited time speaking, but I don't think I would've been able to convince her otherwise as her mind was made up before we spoke. What would your advice be to me when her psychiatrist has been hoodwinked by my spouse? So there's a lot to unpack here, bill. I'm thinking first of all, erratic driving behaviors, blaming line energy drinks, mood swings, overdrafting the bay. Are these signs, would you think of A S P D? Speaker 2 (03:59): Let me, before I answer that, say we're not going to be diagnosing anybody. And while we're talking about personality disorders of which they're 10, this is one of them that what's really important, I believe, is recognizing patterns of behavior and how to respond to patterns of behavior rather than trying to figure out is this a diagnosable disorder? Let's talk in terms of anti-social personality patterns and whether it crosses the line into disorder or not. But yes, antisocial personality patterns include lying, blaming, violating the law. My experience from dealing with many cases with people that appeared to have these traits is that they often had traffic related violations, a lot of speeding tickets, parking tickets, things they didn't respond to that grew because those are kind of edgy behaviors right on the edge. Like, well, that's not a big deal, but it does add Speaker 1 (05:11): Up and it's not a big deal, right? In my mind, see a speeding ticket or an unpaid anything like a deadline that would be coming due to pay a parking ticket or something would give me so much anxiety and angst and it must not feel the same for someone in this circumstance. It just isn't that big a deal. The law doesn't really apply to me, Speaker 2 (05:32): Right? Well, what's interesting is people with antisocial traits often have much less anxiety or maybe no anxiety about breaking the law, lying to others and all of that, that that's sometimes a biological characteristic that their brain chemistry operates differently from most people in terms of a conflict, not triggering a flight, but triggering fight and almost an enjoyment of the fight that they like to dominate other people. And when they're fighting, they have a chance at that. Speaker 1 (06:11): It's almost like the anxiety for you or I would be in getting a ticket or knowing that we have a deadline coming due to pay it, and for them their anxiety probably, maybe it goes down a little bit when they get something like that. Speaker 2 (06:26): I think to some that instead, it's a challenge to get away with it. And so what we feel is anxiety producing, they feel is excitement producing. And it's important for people to recognize there are people, this is about 4% of the adult population that's considered to have antisocial personality disorder in some of the studies. So three to 4% and that they really almost, it's the reverse. So rather than feeling empathy and concern, like when someone shows a facial expression of fear is it comes across neutral to them, but a neutral facial expression comes across as hostile to them. They call it the hostility bias. And there's research on this with antisocial personalities. So you have to think this is a unique category of all the 10 personality disorders. The characteristics of this, a couple things are different. One is that the others don't intend to hurt people, but some people with antisocial personalities do intend to hurt people and get pleasure from that. Speaker 2 (07:45): The other thing is that it is more genetic, and I know that's going to get into our next question. So I want to say more about this first question about dealing with the psychiatrist, in my opinion, and I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and basically since 1980 I've been doing child and family counseling in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics. And here's my opinion. My opinion is that mental health professionals are easily conned by people with antisocial personalities. And I know because I have been, but now I get to notice a lot of other people are, why does this happen? Because mental health professionals and all professionals are conned by lawyers, police officers, conned by antisocial personalities, but mental health professionals and working closely with clients develop empathy for their clients. Well, the problem with antisocial personalities, they're really good at playing the victim. So they try to really play on your empathy and talk about poor me and what I went through and my childhood and how people treat me today. Speaker 2 (09:10): Well, a significant amount of this with antisocial personalities is totally made up, but it's not obvious because they've been making things up their whole life. So it's very likely that the psychiatrist that you were talking with feels empathy for the client, and that does influence how critical they may be of the client. That's a possibility. And I'm not criticizing psychiatrists in particular. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I've been conned a lot of other clinical social workers have too, judges, lawyer, everybody. We all have been. And there's probably a good time to mention I write a blog, a monthly blog for psychology today.com, and a couple of years ago I wrote a blog called How to Spot a Sociopath in Three Steps, and sociopath is another word basically for antisocial personality disorder. To date, this has had over 2 million views, so obviously it's something that's gotten a lot of interest. But one of the things I included in this article that I think is important and it's available, you can go to psychology today.com and find it and Speaker 1 (10:32): We'll put that in the links in the show notes. Speaker 2 (10:35): Yes. One of the things I put is if you find yourself feeling extreme sympathy for the person or extreme empathy for the person, that's a warning sign of antisocial personalities because they work hard at getting you to become their ally and be their knight and shining armor. And so it's very common mental health professionals say, my client would never, my client's not a liar. He lied once, but not on a regular basis. Now, one other thing I want to mention here is antisocial is primarily male that a big study done in the US came out with three quarters or male, one quarter were female. And I think that's another reason that professionals get more easily conned by female anti socials or sociopaths because they're really not expecting it and they really go, oh, you tell me you're a very terrible victim of domestic violence. This guy is just horrible. I can't believe everything he's done to you. I've had several cases where is the mildest person that they're claiming is violent and they're not at all violent, and in fact the woman has been violent with the man. I've had court cases like that. So this is is a huge area of ignorance I think, in society and people really need to learn about it or you'll get conned too. Speaker 1 (12:17): Yeah, I think we've all been there both by men and women. I think there are things that help us or convince us that, or bias us, I guess is the right way to put it, that someone's not like this. We kind of excuse some behaviors that we shouldn't excuse because someone's a female or a little old lady. I've seen this a few times with little old ladies who doesn't love a little old lady. And so we kind of discount that and say, oh no, that couldn't be, I'm going to believe everything she says, or someone maybe with a disability. It seems to increase our empathy when we are around. So that was kind of new for me, what you just said about the extreme empathy When you feel that that's a red flag, that's a warning sign. And I hadn't heard it quite put that way. That's really good. We'll keep that in mind. Okay, so you mentioned earlier about antisocial and genetics. So here's another listener question. Do you often see high conflict with antisocial personality disorder in multiple generations after listening to your podcast about antisocial and high conflict personalities? I think my father had antisocial personality disorder, and my younger sister has both. My father has passed and after creating much chaos during his life, including disowning me, but my sister is very much alive and creating a lot of chaos for me. So what do you think, bill? Speaker 2 (13:52): Absolutely. This of the 10 personality disorders is the one with the strongest genetic history, genetic tendency, and the diagnostic manual even points that out that there's a higher likelihood of this between the generations and within generations. So you're absolutely right that it does often occur in multiple generations. Now, what's also interesting, and it sounds like the listener's situation is like this, you have siblings with the personality disorder and siblings without the personality disorder, often quite opposite, working in the family law field with a lot of families, I've seen many situations. There's like three or four kids, and one has an antisocial personality, and the others are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet, reasonable and often been caretakers of the messes that the antisocial person creates. So it seems like it's not something that really has a lot to do with early childhood for many people, but really is luck of the draw genetically. Speaker 2 (15:08): Now, with that said, I want to say some people have a terrible early childhood, and that could be a cause, extremely violent communities. Some people live in communities where there's a lot of violence, and that tends to generate more children growing up with antisocial personalities just to survive. So there is some of that. But of all the personality disorders in the research that's been done, this is the one that's most likely to be genetic. Now, let me add to that. That means there's some biological differences I said earlier about how they see hostility from a neutral face and they don't see fear in a fearful face. Now, I don't want to say they're all like that, but there has been research on that. It's called the hostility bias. Also fascinating is their heart rate tends to slow down when they're in a fight that they love to be in a fight in an argument because they have a chance to dominate people. Speaker 2 (16:15): And that seems to be their primary goal, is they dominating people, especially people in weaker positions. Now, historically, who knows why we have these genetic tendencies in our personality gene pool, and I think all the personality disorders, all the personalities today at one time had a real survival value. And if you think about it, this is a personality that does really well in wartime, and so they may be the warriors who fighting and to keep fighting, whereas most people would want to run in the opposite directions. So if you're at war, you may want to have some people like this on your side, but don't get too close to them. That's what I'd suggest. Speaker 1 (17:07): Yeah, most definitely. Just so fascinating, fascinating, the hostility bias and what the brain is registering in those facial expressions. Really good stuff. So let's take a short break and we'll be right back. Listeners, if you're loving this and you'd love to learn more, just subscribe and leave a review for us, please. We'd love it. We'll be right back. All right, we are back. Welcome back, and we're going to talk now about how you can know if someone has antisocial personality disorder or narcissistic versus borderline personality disorder, and do they ever overlap? So Bill, let's talk first about antisocial and narcissistic There overlap. Are there differences? Can you tell? Does it matter? Speaker 2 (18:08): Yeah. And the answer is yes, yes, and yes, yes, there are differences and similarities. So let's first look at antisocial and narcissistic. So both of these personalities invest a lot of energy in creating a false image of themselves. Narcissists have what we call a false self, and they often grow up like this. Maybe they're abused as kids or whatever, and they cope by creating this kind of fantasy image of themselves, the false self. And so they're wonderful, they're strong, they're successful, they're famous, they're rich, they've done all these things, and so they want to impress people. And these two personalities are the most charming personalities in the world. So narcissists will really charm you. They'll do wonderful things and tell you how wonderful they are. Antisocial will create a made up story that they know. They may say, I was a C I A agent once, and in fact I have to go away this weekend for a secret mission and I can't tell you what it is, so you'll just have to just let me go and take care of the kids while I'm gone. Speaker 1 (19:24): Do you know Bill, and I hate to interrupt, but I have to tell you, when I was a single girl, there were so many guys who said they were with the ccia, and it's like, do you guys not realize that there are so many other guys that also say this? I mean, it's so common, and I've seen it with other people as well. And it's just like we always say people don't stop themselves that have these type of personalities. They just believe that other people are going to believe them because we do believe them. We are charmed by that. Oh, how special, how exciting that is, how intriguing that is. But in reality, it's not even true. Not even close to true. Speaker 2 (20:05): That's the thing that people miss. They forget to have a healthy skepticism and go always have a healthy skepticism because when they convince you that they're doing this or they were a victim of that or whatever, and you go, oh, this is terrible, is start asking yourself, I wonder if this is even true. And this is something I try to tell judges in family court, you've got someone pouring their heart out to you. Well, some of those people have antisocial personalities and everything they're saying is made up. So don't assume that people are telling you accurate information. That's true, especially in dating as you said, but I don't know why it is. But the C I A is one of the most common excuses, and we know of cases where people aren't spending the weekend on a C I A mission. They're spending the weekend with their other family and their other spouse. And every once in a while, and you see programs about this on tv and in the news, you find someone that's had four or five or six spouses that they've been maintaining using the credit cards of the others, and that they get time away by making up stories like this. There's the Tinder swindler who's reading about that recently, and he was getting money from women wiping out their bank accounts, retirement, et cetera, with stories of how cool he was and how he was connected to, I don't know, the Israeli Secret Service or something. Speaker 1 (21:41): Oh yeah. They're always the masad or the C I A or special ops or Secret Ops or Black Ops. It is always something that's just so special. And as you're talking, I'm thinking the more special something sounds to you like the bigger the grander, the more you should have your antenna up thinking this could be possibly entirely made up and entirely false. Speaker 2 (22:06): Exactly, exactly. Have a healthy skepticism. So things like that serve two purposes for them. One is it makes them seem important and mysterious, which is exciting. But the other is it gives them an easy way to cover up that they're doing other things they don't want you to know about and to get you not to follow their trail and know what they're up to because you go, oh, okay, I'm not supposed to check anyway. So antisocial a difference. So there's similarities. This image, a difference is antisocial are willing to just blatantly lie, totally make things up, and they really don't care. Speaker 1 (22:48): And do they know, I mean, yeah, they don't care about, they have zero empathy for you, but do they know they're lying? Speaker 2 (22:55): Well, here's two ways that I see that. One is they know they're lying, but they say that everybody lies. So they think they're just doing what everybody is doing. But the other is, and I've had cases like this, I've asked clients, do you think your wife or your husband really knows they're lying? And what I've been told several times is I think that by now they believe their lies. And so they make up a story and it's to serve a purpose, but then they start believing their own story, and the more they repeat it, the more they believe Speaker 1 (23:32): It. It's almost like there's a flip. As soon as they lie, they feel justified in that lie, even if they knew that it was a lie in the moment, they felt like they had to tell that lie in order to feel dominating or to feel superior. Right? And then it does become truth to them. They keep telling it. They keep telling it because they can't tolerate the thought that they're not seen as wonderful and feel dominating. So they have to believe that this is truth. Speaker 2 (23:58): They do. And people say, oh, well, it's because of a tragic childhood. That's possible, but it also may be purely genetic, and they had a wonderful childhood. So all of these, but especially antisocial, seems to have that genetic roots. So let me say a difference here, a difference between narcissists and antisocial is that narcissists really exaggerate, but they don't do as much making up a whole story out of nothing, that it's more an exaggeration about how wonderful they are. Antisocial will make up something that's a hundred percent fabricated and yet be very persuasive. Of course, you see this stuff in the news a lot. This is what makes criminal stories interesting. But I want to mention something which I didn't say in the prior question, which is antisocial about half of them get in trouble with the law, but about half of them don't, aren't going to prison, aren't necessarily even violating the law. Speaker 2 (25:07): They certainly lie a lot, but there's a lot of antisocial say in business, and there's an interesting book by an expert on this called Snakes in Suits, and it's about Wall Street and Bernie Madoff and people like that who, well, Bernie Madoff did break the law and went to prison, died in prison, I think. But the idea is fundamentally that antisocial lie, narcissists exaggerate. And sometimes people tell me in a divorce, they say, I think my husband's a narcissist, and he lies all the time. Well, it gets me thinking, okay, if he lies all the time than he may be antisocial and there's a lot more secrets that I need to look for. Whereas with narcissists, they don't keep a lot of secrets. They just exaggerate every single thing they've done. Speaker 1 (26:03): I've just thought of something else, bill, is there possibly cognitive distortions happening? Speaker 2 (26:09): Oh, absolutely. And that's a characteristic of all personality disorders and high conflict people is a higher incidence of cognitive distortions. And the reason I say higher incidents is we all have cognitive distortions. Some of the time we think something's worse than it is, we jump to conclusions, things like that. But for these folks, because they lack the self-reflection and self-awareness, they don't check themselves and they tend to believe they're all or nothing thinking, jumping to conclusions, emotional reasoning and all of that. And they may be conscious of it like some anti socials and totally unconscious of it, like people with borderline and often narcissists too don't even realize their distortions Speaker 1 (26:58): Back to charm. I wonder if charm can be defined differently because I've come across some individuals who seem to display these antisocial traits and they didn't come off as charming at first, and so I wonder if that's kind of a manipulation or if there's something else going on that makes them not seem charming. But a couple of instances I think of they came across as victims and very kind of quiet, laid back, but not big and smiley. And I think that's what we think of with charm, is the person that comes up and well, hey, bill, how you doing? What's going on? And not right? Speaker 2 (27:35): Yeah, there's the whole range. So this is a common characteristic as charm, but the charm may be a quiet charm and not all antisocial or all narcissists have high conflict personalities. High conflict is preoccupied with blame and the finger pointing. Some anti socials would just rather rob the bank without anybody knowing they did it. And so they're not out there pointing fingers. They're secretly extorting or hiding your money. I had a case once where a divorce case, the wife, I think it was like a six year marriage and in the divorce process, discovered that her husband didn't have a job. He was pretending to go to work every day, but he didn't have a job. And instead, the income he brought in, he had somehow siphoned off from her father's business. He'd gotten into her father's business somehow and made it look like that was his job. It's just shocking. But he was a friendly, nice guy, but not overly friendly and overly charismatic. So you get the range, I think have a healthy skepticism in life, and the more you learn about these patterns, the more you go, oh wait, I'm starting to see some of those patterns I heard about on the podcast. I think I'm going to be cautious about giving that person $10,000 to repair my fence, or something like that. Speaker 1 (29:04): Yeah, we're a little too trusting oftentimes. Alright, so let's also talk about the overlap or differences and similarities between narcissistic and borderline personalities. Speaker 2 (29:15): Both of these personalities really like to engage with people. Borderline is known for intense relationships, degree, relationship instability, mood swings, sudden intense anger, but they really care. They're really sincere, caring. People who lack control over their emotions. They have emotion dysregulation, but they can be wonderful people. They can also be charming and sincere about it, but then switch to rage and just really anger and such. Narcissists can also certainly be charming, but they also can have a real investment in relationships, although their investment is more about them, they want you to love them. They're not as concerned about loving you, but they do care and they care mostly what you think about them. So similarities are intense relationships. I see these two personalities more than any other in family court, high conflict cases, especially custody disputes. People with borderline traits want to have the kids so they can feel secure and they feel threatened by the other parents' relationship with the kids. Speaker 2 (30:41): People with narcissistic personalities want the kids there to admire them and to look good. They want to be able to show, Hey, I got custody. I'm one of those great guys, because it's really to show off rather than really sincere. Most men who want custody or share custody care about their kids, but the narcissists are often putting on a show and using the kids to put on a show. So that intense connection is something that you see with both of these personalities. Now, some of the differences, I mentioned that people with borderline personality have emotion, regulation problems, emotion dysregulation, people with narcissistic personality or more stable emotionally, but they seem to have self-esteem dysregulation. Their sense of themselves, they're always feeling on the defensive trying to prove how wonderful they are. That's their instability. Borderline have a fear of abandonment, so they often clinging to people, whereas people with narcissist personalities, they don't care so much. Speaker 2 (31:56): If you're not going to give them enough, they'll go somewhere else. And they often have multiple relationships. I've had them in counseling situations and they have, they're married and they have two girlfriends, and it's like they say, I have extra need for attention. And they just have to understand that this may be totally out in the open because they say, I have these extra needs. I really have to have this. It's very interesting and curious. The last thing I want to say is all of this with all these personalities is on a continuum. For some people, it's a disorder. For others, it's not. What's important is patterns of behavior, so you know how to respond and when to be cautious. Speaker 1 (32:39): Good disclaimer at the end there, bill. Actually, not a disclaimer. It's really just the reality. You really do have to be careful and cautious. So listeners, thank you for taking time to submit your questions and to listen to what we have to say. We read each and every one of the questions that come through, and we'll get to all of them eventually. So thank you again. Next week we'll talk about grandparents in relation to high conflict. Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. We'd love if you tell your friends, family, and colleagues all about us, and we'd be very grateful if you'd leave 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.