Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Floundering Into Adulthood: Overcoming Alienation and Parents with Personality Disorders
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. Speaker 2 (00:23): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:24): 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. So Bill, today we're going to talk about the state of young people, and I know there's lots in the news all over the world, and there are many, many world events happening that have people on edge again, and we're increasingly seeing and hearing from parents who say they're young people are floundering after high school and maybe even during high school and into their twenties and thirties. And while there might be many contributing factors, we've noticed an uptick in those who may have one or more parents with the high conflict personality or traits of one of the five personality disorders that we focus on. And this can really have a big impact. So we'll talk about that today. 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. Speaker 1 (01:37): All right, bill, so I know we both have kind of been struggling with colds right now, so our audience, our listeners, you'll have to forgive us a bit. If we sound a little stuffy, we'll try to keep our energy up as well. But here we are and we're so happy that you're listening. Thank you for being there and supporting our work. Alright, bill, so what I've been hearing, and I know you've kind of been hearing this as well, is that we have some young people who seem to be, if you looked at them from the outside, should be just thriving in life, thriving in university, thriving in relationships, having good romantic relationships and friendships and coming home on weekends to see mom and dad and whoever, and just having life getting ready for life and launching life. But what we're hearing from many is that they're just floundering, whether it's mostly from divorced or families, but sometimes also from intact families. And what we're seeing is kids who just don't seem to have a direction or an aim and can't seem to get it together and they kind of referred to it as being in a funk and I just can't get it together and I feel guilty, I don't know what to do about it. My parent is upset. So that's kind of the precursor. What do you think, bill? Speaker 3 (03:04): There's so many different factors and so much of this is today's world culture that in one way kids are exposed to all the bad news from around the world every day. And it's destabilizing, I think to go, well, the grownups don't have it together, what are we going to do? But also I think aside from the culture is our connections are weaker now. Our family connections are weaker or community connections are weaker. And one thing that's stood out to me recently is thinking about kids in trouble. Kids who are doing things. I'm talking about kids like young adults, like about 18 to 20 who don't have a place, haven't found a place for themselves. And I think that our culture doesn't give you the feeling that there's many places you could belong that it's interesting, and this may just seem like it's irrelevant, but I think it's relevant, school shootings. Speaker 3 (04:13): School shootings mostly happen not in the most urban areas, but more in suburbs and smaller communities. Why is that? Well, it seems to be when you're in high school in smaller communities, there's kind of one in-group, whereas in big cities, I remember I lived in New York City for a year when I was 22. You could be part of any group. There was a group for you, there was the skateboard group, there was the punk music group, there was the art group, there was a place for you and people that wanted to be with you and get to know you and you could belong. And I think because we're exposed to this worldwide culture, which has a lot to do with looks with appearance, social media is depressing for teenage girls. And I think a lot because what's valued isn't something every teenage girl has. Not every teenage girl is the most beautiful person in the world, and yet the brilliant teenage girls, the artistic teenage girls, et cetera, there's a place for them. Speaker 3 (05:28): But it may be harder to find. We kind of have this larger culture that says there's a narrow range of what's good to be. And if you're not in that narrow range, you don't matter as much. I think that that's part the cultural impact and it's quite destabilizing when you're 20. It's right when you're launching into adulthood. And two really important things you're trying to figure out. One is what's my identity? And the other is what's my community? Where do I belong and what do I do? That's so much harder to find when we have this kind of media culture that's got such a narrow range. I know kids at their twenties, I remember 10 years ago, now they're 30 and they're depressed because they're not a multimillionaire and have their own TV show. Speaker 3 (06:27): It's like that's how you measure success in today's culture as compared to someone who's really on the road to maybe inventing something, helping people, being a teacher. A lot of helping professionals have been weakened by our culture because helping other people has lost its value in many ways. Social work, nursing, doctors, lawyers and such. We need to value everybody more and we need to put out the message. You don't have to be this way, you can be this way, you can be yourself. But one last thing, I think there's a lack of mentoring for 20 year olds that I grew up in a suburban neighborhood and there were people through the church, there were men through the church who said, we've got a train, an ho train set, and we wanted come on over and we'll talk about things. The music. I remember being in the band in high school, I was not on the football team, I was not Mr. Popular. I was one of the wallflowers in the band, but there was a band director that loved us. Those people make such a difference and we minimized that. Coaches, teachers, volunteers. There's so many people that now might be home watching TV that could be out in the community mentoring people in their twenties. I like to think that teaching law students, many of whom are around 22, 25, is a good way to pass things on and that it's easy for us to lose track of that. Speaker 1 (08:14): Yeah, I think what you're saying is so important, bill, particularly community, I've been around communities in which there are a lot of aunties, so there's lots of aunts and uncles. Everyone's an aunt, even if they're not really an aunt, and it feels like family. And you get pressure both good and bad from that whole community and the mentoring from the whole community. And you can have those connections with different people and feel like you have some roots and a firm foundation, like a firm footing to stand on. And then let's think about then another level of this is beyond the social media and the larger cultural age that we're in is this topic of bullying, right? If you have someone that's maybe not feeling very connected anyway and maybe feeling like that wallflower and is, I guess there've always been bullies. However, it's now so much easier to bully with social media Speaker 3 (09:21): And Speaker 1 (09:22): To really, really put young people in such terrible positions and having their emotions and self-esteem just battered. Speaker 3 (09:32): Yes, we don't have the protections against that. And mentoring parents, teachers, et cetera, help give people resilience. I'm talking about resilience is having assets of people that care about you, that love you, et cetera. It's really sad. I'm going to bash the media again, Speaker 1 (09:56): Go for Speaker 3 (09:56): It. But I think that the media gets attention and today when I say media, I'm talking about television, movies, social media, all of this, that it puts the worst behavior in the front that shakes people up. It grabs your amygdala and you can't reflect as much and go, oh, well, that's like happens one out of a billion times. That's not something I need to be worried about instead of, oh my goodness. So with bullying, bullying has more power than it used to and it has more multiplication. There was a fist fight in the Italian legislature six or 12 months ago, and that made it to the evening news. And it's like if you want attention, have a fist fight. And it's like we've lost our balance somewhat with that and with all the media competing with each other for eyeballs, we're really getting the wrong impression that the world is an extremely dangerous place, that you're not safe here, that bullies abound and you never know when it's going to hit you. Speaker 3 (11:10): And it's an exaggeration. We had problems for sure, and I go back to when I grew up. So I grew up in a suburban community outside of Philadelphia and in our neighborhood we knew about problems. We knew somebody got arrested, somebody had a car crash, but we didn't know about every single thing in the world that went wrong. And so we had the ability to recover and to reflect on things. And so it's this constant bombardment. It's really not healthy for our brains. We need time to reflect. And most people know that the internet shortened our attention span, but they don't realize that it also shortened our ability to reflect. Speaker 1 (11:54): Yeah, that's important. And I sense this living in a fear state about things that young people shouldn't be even thinking about, let alone being worried about big world problems. And I suspect it's because their brains are that amygdala has been grabbed so many times that they're just kind of living in this perpetual fear state and it's driving them into some conflicts of their own or into a lot of depression, which I guess, well, let's pivot here into the parenting aspect of this. So more of a micro level as we talk about every week and we think about all day every day at High Conflict Institute is this problem of high conflict behavior. And if you have a parent who has a high conflict personality or has the traits of a personality disorder, those are interpersonal disorders, those just make it really hard to have good relationships with people. Speaker 1 (13:01): So if you're in a family with this, and this is what I'm seeing a lot of is families or young people who've had a parent that has really shown some bad behaviors for a long time, and the kids report that I felt lonely growing up. I felt alone. And it's because I just tried to just make myself invisible so I wasn't a bother because I didn't want my parent to explode or disrupt or erupt and disrupt my life, so to speak. And then you add in bullying and things like that. So that's what we're hearing a lot about lately is kids who just, they're trying to make decisions about this such an important transitional period of their life in that 20 something, 22, getting through college, graduating, getting into a career, making those decisions. And yet they're so worried about a parent, do I have to take care of this parent? How do I have a relationship with this parent? Should I have a relationship with this parent? Do I have to be their caregiver? Do I have to give in all the time? Do I have to be the one that's always the nice person? Speaker 3 (14:10): Really good questions. And that's a lot of pressure. The roles have been reversed. What people don't realize, the statistics say about 10% of the adult population has a personality disorder. And characteristics of personality disorders include difficulty caring about the needs of others. So when you grow up as a child around a parent like that, it's harder. Now. Many people have someone else in their life that can care about their needs. It may be a grandparent or maybe the other parent, all of that. But it's very confusing. People are trying to weigh these big questions instead of not worrying about their parents all the time. When I was a therapist with adolescents and then doing divorce work as a lawyer and mediator is the kids are worried about who should I live with and this and that. And I keep saying, tell your kid not to worry about that. Speaker 3 (15:13): Parents are going to take care of that. Kids should not be thinking and worrying about that. You should not be deciding which parent you care about more and to take that pressure off so they can be themselves and develop into themselves. And another thing is I think it really helped growing up was getting a job. I delivered newspapers since I was 13. And interestingly, a job gives you some grounding. And it wasn't that my career goal was to deliver newspapers, but my career goal was to be a responsible person who made some money and had to be organized and had to be on time and had to get up early, things like that. And so I think that when you're 20, you're trying to decide what should I be? I was having this conversation with a law student two days ago and asking what her career goals were and she wasn't sure. And I said, well, don't worry about that. Find something to do after you get your degree and get experience and then see from experience what you like and what you don't like if you don't have experience. It's real hard to say what I like and what I don't like. And I'll just say for myself, I didn't know I was going to be become a lawyer that wasn't on my radar until I was a little bit older. I won't say how old, Speaker 3 (16:50): But that was not when I went to college, that was not one of my goals. And yet that's been my most foundational career now that I've done 30 years. So we don't know what we're going to be and it's okay. And when you have a job, you usually have other people and that helps people feel centered. I think mentors having a job, even a part-time job and tuning out some of the world craziness. Don't disconnect from the world, but don't spend six hours in front of the TV looking at today's news. The research says that's going to drive your heart rate up and not be healthy. Speaker 1 (17:29): But what about those who can't even get it together enough to think about these things? They're just, I mean, truly floundering. How am I going to get through this semester at school? How am I even going to get signed up for school? I can't get off the couch. I'm depressed. I've felt so responsible for my parent and their needs because it's been all about them my entire life. And so what do we say to young people like that? My advice is take a lot of these tips you've already given, getting a mentor in that, but there's also, if you're in school, go to your school's counseling center and try to get some support. Get a good group of friends. If you have some friends, tighten that group up with healthy relationships. Go to counseling. Get dialectical behavior therapy if you need to, because what I'm hearing is a lot about a lot of self-harm. Speaker 3 (18:21): Yeah, Speaker 1 (18:22): It's some young people who are truly floundering and can't pull it together enough to just even take a step. Speaker 3 (18:30): Well, that's really when they do need counseling and to find resources, and especially when you're in school, there's school counselor, there's some resources you can connect with. And some of the talk about DBT, dialectical Behavior therapy, a lot of that is in groups. And when you're 20, you really want to be in groups feeling the group love, feeling the group connection. Just all of that is so, so important. So you have to feel connected to other people, other to feel connected to yourself. Speaker 1 (19:05): But healthy people, Speaker 3 (19:07): Healthy people. Healthy people, yes. Right, Speaker 1 (19:09): Because there are folks who are really young people struggling to a level where they're reaching out to the people where they're feeling accepted, and that isn't necessarily a healthy place. So I hope it's not a tsunami of young people. I don't know. Am I being extreme Bill? Speaker 3 (19:28): Well, no, because heard from university counselors saying that we're seeing a higher incidence of depression than they can remember, and so you're absolutely right. This is happening, but there's also resources and there's knowledge, and there's things you can do. I guess our culture says it's hopeless. Everything's crazy and chaotic and stuff like that, and it's not true. There's things that are difficult, but the world isn't hopeless. We actually have a lot more going for us than we realize, and we need to think about that. There's a program I saw for high school kids that actually had them list good things happening to them and that as they did that, and these were kids who were depressed, they felt better. And it's like you get more of what you pay attention to. So pay attention to the good stuff. Write it down just one through five, five things that make me feel good that are happening in my life now. When you look at those, you feel better and have more energy to go collect some more. Speaker 1 (20:39): Yeah, print that out, write it out, put it on your wall, put it somewhere. Just those encouraging statements and good things that are happening in the world and to remind yourself that all I have to do is worry about what's happening today. Speaker 1 (20:52): I don't need to worry about the future. Like the old saying, don't borrow trouble. Don't borrow trouble from the future. Instead, just get through today what you need to do. Focus on one thing at a time instead of this overwhelming list, which research tells us it's not one big event that causes tons of stress for us. It's that constant to-do list that puts so much stress on ourselves and a lot of anxiety producing things. So just one thing at a time and make life manageable. If you have a parent that you don't feel like has a listening ear and is just going to criticize you, instead well find the parent or the grandparent or the mentor who can be a healthy resource for you. So good. Well, I hope that's been helpful to our listeners and we'd love to hear from you. If you've noticed young people struggling with this or if you're a young person that's kind of had experience with this as well. Speaker 1 (22:02): Next week we're going to talk about whether ear statements of you who have listened for a long time, you know what those are, if they're for all high conflict types. It's a question I've been getting a lot lately, so we're going to break that down. 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 tell all your friends about us and we'd be grateful if you'd leave us a 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 world and 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.