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Red Flags in Teen Relationships: Understanding Relationship Violence, Part 2 · It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People

• 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 influence the most challenging human interactions, those involving patterns of high conflict behavior. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host v Eddy. Speaker 2 (00:22): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:23): 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 continuing with part two on relationship violence, focusing more specifically on dating violence in young people and digital violence, which is a whole new thing. Let's start talking about personalities in adolescence. And I guess the first thought I have or question I have is do personality disorders matter in teen relationships? Speaker 2 (01:03): I would say yes because personalities develop really starting in early childhood, and a lot of the mental health researchers say that personalities are well on the way to developing by five or six years old. So in adolescence, you're already on the way to having an adult, possibly having an adult diagnosis of personality disorder. We're not supposed to, as a mental health professional, which I am licensed clinical social worker, we're not supposed to diagnose personality disorders in adolescents, supposed to wait until adults when things are kind of settled in. So it's important I think for parents and teens to know that characteristics of personality disorders may already be present in adolescence. And two of the four areas of difficulty with personality disorders, one is impulse control, and we see that with teen dating violence. And the other is interpersonal functioning or dysfunction, and very much dating is an interpersonal process and there's getting to be more and more research about how personality disorders are really interpersonal disorders. Speaker 2 (02:24): So it's good to have the background knowledge and understand impulse control. Maybe someone has a pattern of that. This may be someone to steer clear of or someone to get some help while they're still an adolescent. And a lot of these personalities, you can kind of get on a better track during adolescence, whereas by adulthood they're pretty much stuck. So I think it helps to just understand you may be dealing with personalities and as we mentioned last time, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder are higher incidents of those in domestic violence at all ages and borderlines a wide mood swings, lack of impulse control, antisocial is often willingness to be domineering, vindictive, et cetera. Antisocial already has a conduct disorder by age 15. That's one of the diagnostic criteria for adults is did they have a conduct disorder by age 15, which would be things like petty theft, torturing or killing small animals and pets, fires starting and I would suggest teen dating violence as well. So just a little background, Speaker 1 (03:48): Also interesting to note that violence with borderline personality disorder is that kind of impulsive rage, like at the top end of the mood swing, just can't control that impulse in that moment. So it's hot reactive violence whereas the antisocial violence is more cold and calculating. Or can it also the antisocial also be hot and reactive? Speaker 2 (04:15): You're right, very much to think in terms of the hot angers, the more impulsive borderline, the colds, more calculating antisocial. What I would suggest is if someone has both the hot and cold anger that they may actually have traits of both of those disorders. And there's a lot of overlap. In fact, about 20% of people with one of those has the other as well. But the main thing in adolescence is you don't have to diagnose anybody. Just be aware these patterns exist. And if you're seeing some of these behaviors, there may be a lot more behind the scenes that you really want to avoid or get treatment for Speaker 1 (04:58): As a parent of someone exhibiting these kind of behaviors in your teens. We see this quite a lot where parents are perplexed about what to do. It's like all my other kids are fine. Well, what's going on with this one? And maybe there's some personality issues in there, but in that case it's wise to go speak to a mental health professional and get some clear advice. Speaker 2 (05:26): Absolutely. And just to throw in additional tidbit of information, one of the treatments for borderline personality disorders, dialectical behavior therapy, DBT, and they found that that's a helpful treatment for adolescent sex offenders. And sexual violence is part of adolescent teen dating violence. And so you can treat that better in adolescence by adulthood. It's really hard to treat that. So if you have a child or someone, your child is dating somebody that seems to have a pattern of violence and sexual violence, this is the age to get attention for that. You can save this child and save who they're going to impact while they're adolescence as adults, it may just really be too far gone. Speaker 1 (06:17): Yeah, and there's a couple of websites I'll mention here. One is emotions matter.com, which is a fantastic group that helps. It has a lot of peer support groups for either young people or even adults who are experiencing these kinds of highly intensive emotions and impulse control problems. We'll put that link in the show notes. And there's another, since you mentioned DBT that we'll put in the show notes as well. It's just recently been across my radar and it's a free DBT. It's one of the best websites I've seen, so I'm trying to find it here, but we'll definitely put that in the show notes and maybe by the end of the show I'll have it found. Speaker 2 (07:03): It's also good to always mention the domestic violence hotline while we're doing this, which is 807 9 9 7 2 3 3. Speaker 1 (07:14): Absolutely a great idea to include that. So let's move on to something that's called referred to as TDV Teen Dating Violence. There was a study that was with data from 2014, but actually published in 2022, so very recent about teen dating violence. So what were some of the findings from that surprised you or maybe didn't surprise you, bill? Speaker 2 (07:42): Actually, it did surprise me at first, and then you think about it and things make sense. So one of the first big outcomes of this study, which was over a thousand teenagers, average age around 15 or late 14, but one of the biggest things was they found that peer group attitudes about relationship violence matter more than parental domestic violence. So what this means is if a teenager has a parent who's violent with the other parent and their peer group is against relationship violence, they're less likely to become violent themselves. On the other hand, if they don't have violence in their family, their parents aren't violent with each other, but their peer group supports it, then they're more likely to have violence in their own team dating relationships. And here's one of the questions they asked, said, my friends generally think that it's okay for a boy to hit his girlfriend if she did something to make him mad. Speaker 2 (08:58): And they were to say, agree, strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree. Out of that, they found that if their friends think that there's a much better chance that they're going to be a perpetrator or a victim in their own teen dating relationships regardless of what their parents are doing. So pure attitude seems to be the biggest factor. Now, another thing that was interesting is gender inequality. If they see that boys and girls are different and one has superior rights or authority or intelligence that matters, and the question they asked there, they said, in a dating relationship, the boys should be smarter than the girl. Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. And from this, they could tell that if they believed that there should be a gender inequality, then there are more at risk of being a perpetrator or a victim of teen domestic violence. Speaker 2 (10:13): Wow. So really the teen attitudes really make a difference. Then they said also, if you're bullied by your peers, that raises your risk. Also, if you have sex before age 16, that raises your risk of teen dating violence. And if you think about it, the rate of maturity is very rapid between 14 and 16, you think about high school kids versus middle school kids and there's more confidence, there's more ability to set boundaries, there's more ability to think about things, more ability to think about adulthood. And so this simple little thing, well, yeah, easy for me now to say it's simple. If somebody's 14 desperate to have sex and telling them don't is not quite as easy a thing. But if they can really hold off, and I know there's research around alcoholism and addiction with that too. The later you start drinking, the less likelihood of becoming an alcoholic. Speaker 2 (11:25): One more thing they found is poor ability to self-regulate. And that really similar to when we talk about borderline personalities is lack of impulse control. Also higher risk of teen dating violence, both as a perpetrator and as a victim. And that's something we need to pay attention to. It isn't just perpetrators that feed the pattern that the victim inadvertently may tolerate the pattern or escalate the other person unintentionally. We don't blame them, but people need to be aware that their own behavior influences the people they're in relationships with. So I thought this research was fascinating, but it also was from 2014, so we're going to get to a little more research that's more current. Speaker 1 (12:19): So before we do that, I did find that website that I mentioned, it's dialectical behavior therapy.com. It's a free course for taking control of your thoughts, emotions, and relationships, 40 plus lessons with guides, videos, and worksheets. And I tell you what, it's just absolutely fantastic. They explain what it is and it's full of videos and information, but in a very easy to digest way and a very organized way on their website. So we'll put that link in the show notes. Another one that I think is fantastic is Bloom 365. This is an organization, a nonprofit here in where I live in Arizona. One of the board members, I believe she's still a board member, is Judge Lynn Toller, who has had a couple of television shows and she's been a big advocate of trying to combat teen dating violence. So their goal is to uproot abuse in a generation. Lots of information on that site for students, for young people, for parents, and you can even donate there, give the gift of safe and healthy relationships. So that's Bloom 365. We'll also put that in the show notes. Alright, so let's take a short break and we'll be back in just a minute and talk about digital abuse. Speaker 1 (13:49): All right, we're back and we're going to talk about digital abuse and some research that's very recent about that. But first a question that I know was a burning question on your mind, bill, that during the pandemic lockdowns, during covid research shows that domestic violence went up for people living together. Everyone was kind of driving each other crazy, not able to go out to work and things like that. But I guess the burning question is did it go down for teens who weren't living together? Speaker 2 (14:22): And that would totally make sense, I thought. But the research we found is from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia that it went up one aspect. They said it went up I think from 2020 to 2021. A hundred percent. And so why is that? And what is digital abuse? So digital abuse is basically online abusive behavior. So what they found is that there's a variety of digital abuse behaviors that then increase the likelihood of physical abuse and sexual coercion. So here's some of the digital abuse behaviors logging into or using a young person's social networking account without their permission sending unwanted sexual messages or pressuring a young person to send sexual or naked photos monitoring a young person's activity. And I remember counseling once, I had a young couple, 13 or 14, the boy's mother said they needed to meet with me and they both were hitting each other and they weren't sure what's normal. Speaker 2 (15:41): And then older kids, I hear about that. They like, I have to have your password. You have to give me your, if you care about me, you'll give me your password. And then they use that to pry into what the other teen is doing. And I know of cases couple like that where they wouldn't give their password to their partner, but they demanded their partner give it to them. And that's an out of balance, unequal relationship for sure. Forcing people to share their passwords is another one here. Spreading rumors via text, email, social media, posting, embarrassing photos. And of course this is illegal if someone sends you a naked photo of yourself and then they post it online to get back at you for something that's illegal. People need to know that creating false profile page using the victim's name, in other words, pretending they're them and sending different messages, threatening or harassing over the phone or social media using GPS locator from social media to stalk a young person. Speaker 2 (16:54): So this was some of what the research saw was the pattern and the result of that, they found that one out of three young people were experiencing teen dating violence. Once Covid got going and that victims of teen dating violence, they found two or three times more likely to commit suicide report increased alcohol and substance use suffer from more anxiety and depression. And that as the world becomes more virtual, digital abuse also becomes more increased. So it's a precursor to these other. So in 2013, a study found victims of digital abuse harassment two times as likely to be physically abused, two and a half times as likely to be psychologically abused and five times as likely to be sexually coerced. So that's 2013. So we have research starting 20 13, 20 14, but COVID escalated at all. Believe it or not. It's Speaker 1 (18:05): Sad. I mean it's been a decade since my youngest was in high school, so there was plenty to deal with then in terms of the emergence of digital bullying and abuse and that kind of thing. But now it's worse. And just recently I've been around some 19, 20 year olds. And for them this is normal. Yeah, that's what I think we need to understand. And you and I are a little bit older these days, and so we're not in that world so much, but maybe younger parents realize this, but I think many don't that this is almost in some circles to be expected that you're going to be in some kind of digital mix up or threatening situation. And one story recounted to me recently was a young lady who'd had sex with her boyfriend and had consented to having it videoed, just the two of them, right then when they were breaking up, he used it as a threat to get her to do what he wanted her to do. Speaker 1 (19:06): I'll release this video online if you don't do this. So I mean, we know other people who have been held. They have their digital digitally compromising photos online, kind of taken hostage by DU Wells and then held hostage for money. I'll release these pictures if you don't send me money. I mean, we know personally of people that have had this happen to their teens. So it happens a lot. And I guess when we say that the rates of suicide go up with these sort of instances, what's the longer term effects? I mean, we hear these statistics and it's shocking of course, but there are so many hundreds of thousands if not millions of people walking around this planet that are having trauma experiences. And some of them are getting PTSD diagnosis, complex PTSD, a variety of trauma related illnesses, and they don't seem to know what to do about it or how to overcome it. Speaker 2 (20:12): What we're seeing is in many ways, one of the biggest fallouts of all this is people avoiding relationships altogether, not trusting, I can't get close to anybody, they'll take advantage of me, or you can't trust men or you can't trust women and making global solutions. And yet, on the more hopeful side, I think by mid twenties, a lot of people start getting their feet more on the ground. They start having friends who are reasonable and also going into therapy. And certainly trauma is getting a lot more attention. There's good therapy for trauma. One of the best sellers right now is about trauma. The body keeps the score by vessel VanDerKolk. So we want to paint a realistic picture but not a hopeless picture because I do think while there is a lot of impact with what happens in adolescence, that a lot of people are able to really work on overcoming that in their mid and late twenties or thirties. Speaker 2 (21:22): But what we mostly want to do is help people avoid this in the first place through education, through picking the right peers to be around and knowing what's normal. And one of the things, I know college campuses have policies about all of this, but no means no is an important one. In other words, if someone says no, it doesn't mean you pressure them until they say yes. If they say no, you've got to just stop right there. And that only yes means yes. That silence doesn't mean consent to doing something sexually. So if you're 13, 14, 15, 18, 20 25, this is an age of exploration, but you've got to have the consent of your partner. And as that earlier research shows, you have to see relationships as equal between equal partners where both have a say and that's what's normal and that's what needs to be understood and learned and taught. And by the way, that big study I started out with said that peer interventions are where you have to be that middle school and high school both need education about relationships, and that's where you're going to prevent teen violence. That's Speaker 1 (22:45): Where that website, bloom 365 or I think it's dot org can help get a start because I think probably most of our listeners are not in that teen group. They're more parents or grandparents or other family members. So how best can they approach teens with this, especially a teen who's rebellious and doesn't, I don't want to hear from my parents and I'm going to do what I want. And then they find themselves in really dangerous circumstances that they don't then feel like they can't tell their parents about Speaker 2 (23:15): What I believe. And I did a lot of child and family counseling throughout the 1980s into the early 1990s. One of the things I really believe and I told parents over and over again, is your kids and your teenagers have a tape recorder in their brain and they're recording every single thing you say. So even though they don't show it, it's getting recorded. And someday it'll come out when they have a teenager and they'll go, where did that come from? So it's good, teach your kids, tell them what standard and listen and tell them they can talk to you, but talk about what standard and what dangers to watch out for. Kids today have many more dangers than we had. They know the worst behavior in the whole world by the time they're 10 or 12 years old. So they're scared, but they also are driven by hormones and stuff to experiment. And they just really need to know about how to be safe and have activities that are safe. And I know for me, group activities, school plays, music, church groups, all whatever it is, I'm not a sports guy, but kids in soccer, baseball, football, all of that have a lot of group activities because there you start to see what's normal and some things everybody does and some things nobody does or only one person does. And you want to steer clear of that person, Speaker 1 (24:50): Or if the whole group is like that, steer clear of that group because Speaker 2 (24:53): That Speaker 1 (24:53): Can be a risk as well. Speaker 2 (24:55): Exactly. Not all groups are equal for your own benefit. Speaker 1 (24:59): Right, right. Okay. I suppose it seems interesting to you, our listeners, that we're talking about teen violence, and I think this episode is playing the day after Valentine's Day, which is supposed to be a day full of romance and love and flowers and chocolate and candy and champagne and all those things. And we hope it is, but it also sets up an expectation, probably more so in the teen mind in a dating relationship than in others. And that expectation can apply some pressure that often will result in some kind of abuse. It might not be physical violence, but it can be some type of abuse. So that's why we're doing this episode so that we can kind of not scare people, but let's say, Hey, let's look at the realities. And we've written that book Dating Radar to help anyone understand what to look for and where your own blind spots might be. So we'll put that book in the show notes. But Bill, just one last, we've got a couple minutes left to talk about the book Generations talking about the Gen Z. Well, I was going to say the Gen Z generation, but I guess that is, they're just Gen Zs. So what did you find in terms of teen dating violence in that generation that was born between 1995 and 2012? Speaker 2 (26:30): Well, first of all, let me say this is from a book titled Generations. It's the real differences between Gen Z, millennials, gen x, boomers, and Silence, and what they mean for future by Jean Twain, T-W-E-N-G. What she talked about with Gen Z was quite surprising, and she didn't focus on dating violence, but I feel like her information's real important because talking about relationship and changes, first of all, her research is up to 2023 and she's got graphs and looks over the last 10, 20 years. And what she says is teens and 18 to 25 year olds are having far less sex than prior generations that they do much more social interaction online than in person that in terms of sexual preferences that many are saying their preference is asexual. And there was a study done where they were saying heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, 1% of people wrote in asexual. Speaker 2 (27:48): And that's a lot of people. There's an avoidance of physical relationships, even though online they have that going. The authors talked about some men who don't have sex but want it calling themselves in cells, involuntary celibates, which is really, I think very much a misnomer because it's hard to find somebody in their teen and young adult years who can't find a partner if they want one. And so saying it's involuntary, I think is a cop out. But they also have a lot of anger with that generally towards women that women aren't coming up to them wanting to have sex with them, I guess. But on the other hand, that some women are also celibate and calling themselves fem cells and they're angry. And here's a quote that men made it so difficult to find, love to find a man who will treat me like a human being and not as a sex stall. Speaker 2 (28:57): And so they're angry too, and they say there's a percent of people that are staying at home angry about sex and the other gender, and this doesn't necessarily bode well for the future of relationships, families, child rearing, et cetera. And that leads to the next thing, and that is that Gen Z is really slowing down the process of coming into adulthood that as of 12th grade, only half of students are dating. Whereas in the 1990s, by eighth grade, half of students were dating. And after that, more than half were in the 1960s, 70% of women, 20 to 24 year olds, and 45% of men the same age were married by 20, 20. 60 years later, only about 12% of women, 20 to 24 year olds, and less than 10% of men, 20 to 24 year olds were married. So the average age of marriage is now 28 for women and 31 for men. Speaker 2 (30:14): Also, the birth rate is now for Gen Z teens and young women is the lowest since they kept records of this in 1918, there's a quote she has says, among teens, birth rate in 2021 was less than a fourth of what it was in the early 1990s. And I remember as a social worker and lawyer in the 1990s, that teen pregnancy was a big concern. It's like all these teenagers are having babies. They don't know how to raise them. They called it children having children, a big to-do. And then I don't remember hearing about it for a long time, and then I read this. And so in terms of relationships, I think that this doesn't help solve the dating violence issue because if people just aren't dating, they aren't learning skills for screening out whose violent and may in their twenties get into a violent relationship. Speaker 2 (31:17): And that were also isolated that the pure values that the earlier studies showed is so important. And having peer groups that people socialize with and pick partners from romantic partners that were missing that. And I think as a culture and as a society, we need to pay more attention to what's happening for teenagers rather than treating them like adults and saying, go do your own thing, is really, they need a lot of nurturing. They have a higher incidence of depression and anxiety. And so I'm glad we're talking about this today because I think it's a wake up call to me and hopefully everyone, that there's a lot more going on under the surface and that there's a lot of need for education and emotional support. We want to support you out there as parents and as young adults and teens going through these tricky times we're going through. Speaker 1 (32:23): Absolutely. I did want to mention one last thing or ask a question, I guess, is these studies, were they all US based? Speaker 2 (32:31): Yes. Generations and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the first study was of, oh, I forget what state, they interviewed over a thousand kids from one particular state. I think it was in the Midwest. I think it was Michigan or Indiana, something in the Midwest. So yes, just the US studies. I would guess the rest of the world because of having social media, et cetera, having some of the same experience. Speaker 1 (33:04): Yeah, I'm sure it's similar everywhere I am thinking. There are some cultures though in some countries that have a better grasp on this, maybe because families are tighter or different things. But those are just my anecdotal thoughts. Speaker 1 (33:24): Thank you for listening today. Next week we'll talk about high conflict at work, how leaders can manage it, and how hr employee assistance programs, coaches and others can help potentially high conflict employees, learn new conflict resolution skills and ultimately calm the workplace. So we're going to announce something new we're doing for leaders in the workplace and talk about what we already have, new ways for work for coaches. In the meantime, 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 grateful if you'd leave us a review. Until next time, keep practicing these skills, be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small. 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.