Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Asked and Answered: Navigating High Conflict Personalities with Practical Strategies
Transcript
- 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 involving someone with a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm usually here with my co host Bill Eddy. And at this point, he'd pop in and say, Hi, everybody, but he's away for the month. So it's just me this month. We are the co founders of the high conflict Institute in San Diego, California, where we provide a lot of training, consulting, coaching classes and programs all to do with high conflict. After a brief hiatus the past month or so we are back and we are excited about our 2024 and into 2025 season. We have a lot of cool series coming up that I think you'll appreciate and like very much. And those will begin in September with both Bill and myself. But today I'm going to answer the questions that you've been asking, they've been building up for a bit. So I have a few of those that I'll address today. And we'll be addressing those here the rest of August. I'm grateful for those. And also I want to say it was fantastic meeting so many of you when I was out on my travels this summer, American Northern Hemisphere summer and in Australia, your winter and I guess was fall when I was there. It was really great seeing you out and about and thanks for coming up and having a chat about the podcast and about everything high conflict related. It was a lot of fun. So before we get going, I just want to say send any questions you have for us to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or through our website at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links. All right, so if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, I hope you've had an enjoyable summer. And if you're down in the Southern Hemisphere, hold on because summer's coming, right? I'm based in Arizona where it's super hot. By super hot, I mean, you know, like 110, 115, which is, you know, 41, 42 Celsius. So it's every day it's hot. I want to go somewhere else for the summer. And they always say right that it's in Arizona, it's at least it's a dry heat. But I always think of it as a dry heat like the inside of a kiln. So, you know, each to his own, right? So we are looking forward to November when the cool weather comes for us again. Bill is based in Southern California, so he gets nice weather all the time. Lucky Bill. Anyway, so a couple things, brief updates. I spent three weeks in Australia in June training the National Employment Service Agency and just had a fantastic time. We did a training in Melbourne. Then we went to Sydney and the third one was in Brisbane. And we finished the trip with, I was keynote speaker at the First Nations Employment Conference in Cairns, which was just fantastic. And it was vibrant and alive. Just really fascinating group to talk with and had a lot of fun. So great trip. Got to take my husband Paul with me and, you know, go to the Great Barrier Reef and Airley Beach and Port Douglas and Hobart and all kinds of fun stuff. So thank you, Australia. I love you. And then Bill and I both spoke at a big conference, a labor conference in New York City in June, at the end of June. And it was three big organizations put together in one triad conference. So it was a highly attended conference. It was super special, really amazing people doing amazing work. And, you know, big shout out to the Federal Conciliation and Mediation Services who invited us. And we just, we had a great time. Can't wait to meet more of you. I've been teaching a new class in May and in July called the Conflict Influencer class. The first one in May was for step families. The one I'm currently teaching in July, August is for co-parents, which obviously also consists of blended families. But it has been fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Mostly parents involved, but we've had a couple of professionals. And in the current group, a guardian ad litem has been attending. I tell you what, that has been truly valuable because that person has learned and heard from parents in a way that they've never heard before, you know, just a very different perspective. And the parents are learning from this person, you know, just through conversation about the realities from, you know, a different perspective. So it's been just tremendous. I've learned a lot about what to talk about and what, you know, what to teach, what's important. And what I learned is it's some, the very basic, simple skills like BIF, EAR, calm before think, making proposals, finding, you know, making agreements. Pretty revolutionizing for parents. So I'll teach another class in September and it's open to everyone. So let us know if you want to attend that. I'll put the link in the show notes. Bill's teaching some bullies webinars in September, October, and November. So I'll put those links in the show notes as well because those are going to be fantastic. All right, now let's get to asked and answered. You ask the questions, I will answer them. So the first one, very easy one for me. Thank you. What are the five types? Explanations, please, thanking you in advance. So the five types, we talk about the five high conflict personality types. And, you know, that's kind of the foundation of everything we do. It can be a little bit confusing. And I'll say right here at the outset, it doesn't really matter that you understand so much about each type. Because when we talk about the high conflict personality pattern of behavior, right, all five of the types seem to exhibit the four main defining characteristics repeatedly. It's just a pattern that repeats itself, repeats itself. When you get down a little deeper, you see what's happening with the five types, and you can get more nuanced in your responses, use in your ear statements, in your bifs, all of those. So the five types, the first one is, and I'll say first, they're all driven by a fear, right? If we think of ourselves as an operating system, each human being is an operating system. And we all have, you know, pretty similar programming. Someone came in and went thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, and, you know, typed all this code. So we're all going to have a fear of something, we have fear responses, you know, so if I'm afraid of spiders, or of hailstorms, or whatever my big fear is, being in the dark, being alone, heights, those are, you know, some kind of common fears. When we are in that space or place of where, you know, we're confronted with our fears, we're going to have a fear response. Now, that may put you in fight or flight, you may run, you're always going to seek safety back to where you began, right? I want to feel okay again. So now when we talk about the five personality types, they also have fears of probably some of the same things that everyone does, like heights or being, you know, in the dark, but they have this extra fear. And it comes about in how they relate to other people. Okay. So the first type is they fear feeling inferior. So their safe space, where they feel okay, where they feel best is when they feel superior to those around them, to those they're in conversations with. So as soon as they feel inferior, and it can be their own perception, right? It might not be a reality for you, but it's how they've perceived it. It's what they're feeling inside, because this is all about the brain. And this is just their programming, right? So if they feel inferior, they're going to do whatever it takes to feel superior again. So that might mean puffing themselves up, saying something amazing about themselves, putting those around them down, dissing someone, right? So it might be kissing up, kicking down. But it gets them back to feeling in their safety zone, which is to feel superior. Makes you feel like garbage, but they're back to their safety zone. And they aren't thinking about how it made you feel. Doesn't cross the radar. Okay. One thing I want you to have in mind is that this fear-based operating system just isn't optional, right? And I think, you know, what we hear from people a lot is, you know, people make choices. Yes, they do make choices. But when you're programmed this way, and it's a fear-driven thing, fear is powerful. That amygdala in the right hemisphere is powerful. So fear response is pretty powerful. And it makes it so that it's all about me, my needs in that moment. So of course, I have to be superior. So you kind of get into this thing where you go, "Well, of course he did." "Well, of course he did." Right? Of course. That's just how the programming is. So the second type is kind of the love you hate you. Another way to look at it is just this, the safety zone is to feel connected and attached, right? And the fear is being abandoned or feeling abandoned. You can kind of think of it as, you know, one little thing can trigger that feeling of being disconnected from, you know, an intimate person. Put some immediately in that fear zone and that's where the love you hate you comes from. Just constantly connecting to feel loved and attached and connected, but then sabotaging it when they feel abandoned by doing something that comes across, that's where the love hate, the hate part comes from is something kind of extreme. It usually sabotages the relationship. And it just keeps repeating over and over and over again. The third type is those who fear feeling ignored. So their safety zone is to be the center of attention. I need to be the center of tension to feel okay. As soon as I'm not, I might do something dramatic. I'm going to get in front of your radar. I want to be seen. I want to be heard. I got to constantly, you know, be like that. So, you know, if they are feeling ignored, it might get kind of loud. It might get kind of dramatic. Might be some false accusations, something like that. And the fourth type is the fear of being or feeling dominated. So the safety zone is to dominate others, you know, by whatever means they can do that. A lot of times it's lying, lying when they know they can get caught. It's fascinating to watch this at work, right? And it's just all about their need to dominate. And it's you just go, of course, that person did that. They need to dominate. So they might, you know, ruin your reputation, throw you under the bus, break the laws. Just this dominating fear overrides everything else. Okay. And then suspicious, the fifth and final fear personality type, high conflict personality type is those who are really paranoid. And they're suspicious, right? So they're kind of fearing that other people are out to get them, right? So they are going to respond by kind of counterattacking first and things like that. The big thing is to remember that they are, it's fear based. And everyone's just trying to get back to their safety zone. But the way these five do it isn't healthy for relationships. And it's pretty sabotaging. So I hope you found that helpful. Second question. Hi, Megan and Bill. I'm really being helped by your podcast and books. Thank you for making them the concepts readily available. We like to do that, right? These are lifesavers. I just finished an episode on the importance of connection with people with high conflict personalities. All of that makes sense from a tactical, practical and strategic perspective. If the person is high conflict and easily dysregulated, it only makes sense to take that into consideration and do what you can do within reason to help them stay regulated. But can you speak to the tension between fostering appropriate connection and inappropriate placating of the person such that they become or carry on as an emotional bully in the midst of a group? We have an HCP in the center of our extended family. Family members walk on egg shells around him. It can feel like he's the gorilla in our midst who must be treated with kid gloves. Some have encouraged my husband and me to just do what he wants. So he will stop making us be the target to blame. It seems wrong to let him bully us or others. And yet we clearly see how his mad leads to escalating conflict, mad being, misassessment to danger. Could you describe specific behaviors or approaches that tease out the nuances of the tension between ear, empathy, attention, and respect, and placating the gorilla? Thanks so much. And definitely let me know if you use this question on the podcast. I'll let you know. So what you're talking about here is connection. And it's one of the key principles in interacting with someone with that high conflict brain that needs connected in order to get that fear out that I was just talking about in those five types. So when the fear of being dominated or fear of feeling inferior and all that is up, then the left brain, the logic part is offline and the right brain is reacting, reacting. We can get good at ear statements because it sounds like you've learned, "I've got to connect. We have to connect with this guy to help him calm down, to help him deescalate because he can't do that himself. He can't regulate himself." Okay. So that then gets into what I call getting stuck in earland. And we don't want to get stuck in earland. We want to use it appropriately so that we use it when someone's upset and we need to deescalate them. When they're complaining, blaming, just give a little connection in your statement. And sometimes that's enough and you can just move on. Make yourself boring. That's it. But look, you don't need to be bullied. And the way to stop that is to set limits. All right. Our new methods, the slick method, S-L-I-C, is setting limits and imposing consequences. And you can remain boring while doing this. You keep your tone of voice calm, right? You just stay kind of in this objective neutral position with a calm tone of voice and you set a limit. So limits meaning stating the desired behavior you want to see. And then if it doesn't happen, you say it once and you can say a little ear statement first and then set the limit. If they violate the limit, then you restate it. Here's what we discussed. If this happened, then it'd be great. But if it didn't, if it happens again, here's what I will have to do. So you're giving a threat of imposing a consequence, right? So it's like you're connecting with the ear to calm the person. And then they kind of got logic back online again a bit. And yet their operating system says, "I need to dominate. I need to be a bully. I need to..." Right? So that's when you set the limit. If this, then this. Right? And that puts you in a seat of confidence so you're not being bullied. You might remain the target of blame. But if you do it just simply and evenly and impose the consequence if it's violated again, that's what this person needs. And I understand it can be scary. Right? It's hard to set limits until you try it once or twice and see some results and you get that muscle memory and you're like, "Hmm, this works." Right? Has the most potential of working. And it protects you while you remain boring. Right? And you don't get involved in back and forth. It's just, "Here it is." And then you don't have to say anything else. There's no laws or rules saying you have to get super involved and engage in a lot of back and forth. No, set your limit. Connect, set your limit. That's what you do. Okay? One last thing. The imposition of a consequence is really how the high-conflict brain, another way you can help regulate it. We think of emotion dysregulation and helping that person regulate through connecting with your statements. But setting limits is also helping the person regulate their own. It's like someone has to tell them no. And then if they go ahead and violate, then you impose the consequence. And that means if that means they're not coming to family events anymore, then you stick by that. Or if you're not coming to family events anymore or you hold separate family events, just think through the options yourself. Right? So I know it's tricky, especially in families, but give it a go. See what happens. So let's take a quick break and I'll be right back with two more questions and I will answer them. All right. We are back or I am back with you. Right. Here's the next question. I do PR for a small municipality in the South. For those outside the US, that means the southern part of the United States. New council members were elected in November and took their oaths of office in January to serve alongside their other fellow council members and mayor. One of the new council members exhibits high conflict and narcissistic behaviors, most notably of which are explosive anger anytime one does not agree with them, followed sometimes by targeting and a lack of self-awareness that is most almost uncomfortable to watch. And here's my question. How do staff members and department heads who have less power and authority than council members interact with the high conflict council member? Keep up the great work and thank you. Thank you. All right. So look, when there's that sort of power structure, it can be intimidating, right? So you've got both department heads and staff members and they both have less power and authority than the council members. So you've got this one who's being disruptive. So is there a possibility that one of the department heads or, you know, whoever's staffing the meetings or whoever's the chair introduces a respectful meeting policy? Okay. We have that on our website. I'll put it in the show notes links. In so doing, you're providing some structure for the chair, mayor, whoever it is. And when this person becomes disruptive, then you set a limit, just like we talked about in the last question, set a limit, impose a consequence and use the respectful meeting policy that your whole group is agreed to as the source for getting this this unruly member back in order. Okay. So it's the same, you're going to use the same skills, whether you're staff or department head, and whether it's in the office or it's in a meeting, right? So you're going to connect with your statements. You're going to help the person analyze options or, you know, ask them choices to make choices between two or more things. Ask them for proposals or make proposals, right? All the same skills that we teach at every level. Responding to misinformation, right? Using BIF responses in your email with this person and then setting limits, like I said. So it's the CARS method, connecting, analyzing options, responding to misinformation, responding to emails, and setting limits and imposing consequences. It's just kind of that over and over and over again. And with the narcissistic type of personality, if we think about the fear, the fear of feeling inferior and the need to feel superior, well, how, what are you going to say to that brain to make it feel superior? And in so doing, that's going to bring it out of reactive mode, get the Left Logic brain online so you can start getting some action, such as asking questions and guiding them down that path and, you know, making choices and asking for proposals or analyzing options. You give that person some praise. You say something that you can respect about the person, even if it's, you are a sharp dresser. Where do you shop? Right? It's just anything that makes them feel like, "Hey, it's all about me and I'm awesome." Right? And it's not that you're playing their game, you're just giving them what they need so they can help regulate and you can get some work done and not feel targeted. Okay? So it's a balance of using the CARS method through all of those. And then the respectful meeting policy can be very, very helpful. All right. Thanks for that question. Appreciate it. And now we'll get to the last one. This one's a little bigger. "Hello. I have just finished reading your book, Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life. I found it excellent, though sadly it confirmed what I believed for over 15 years, which is that my daughter, now age mid-30s, has a high conflict of borderline personality disorder. My daughter is bright and beautiful. I love her to the end of the world, which she knows. Although she got a good degree from one of the main, biggest universities in the world, she never seems to have been able to hold down a job or a relationship. Her father and I split and he also exhibited many borderline and narcissistic behaviors when she was a baby. He died several years ago, leaving a lot of money. She has blamed me for everything that has gone wrong in her life since she was about 14 years old. Since the death of her father, this is getting worse and worse. I don't believe she is happy and I want more than anything for her to flourish. I know she wishes she were in a relationship. I just wish I could help her. Sometimes I find her anger toward me contagious, but in practicing the CARS method and ear statement approaches. It feels hard to be relentlessly blamed for everything that she sees is wrong in her life. She often says she wishes she had never been born and I often fear she will one day simply let go of life. She lives a couple hours away from me, calls me around four times every day, but refuses to see me when I offer to visit. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you so much. All right, so these are really tough situations. So, you know, first, having, you know, congratulations are absolutely due to you for using the CARS method ear statements, but you also don't have to just, what did you say here? It's hard to be relentlessly blamed for everything she sees is wrong in her life. So how do we turn that around a bit? Like you, you've using the CARS method, so connecting with an ear statement. That right brain is like, it's on fire and when it's on fire, it's all or nothing. It's like you are the one to blame. You are all bad. It's just everything is seen as negative, particularly with the most intimate person in their life, which happens to be you. Okay, so you're going to get the love, hate, the push, pull. And so, look, it takes some effort and you are adapting and you're doing, doing the right things. So connecting with ear statements, something that makes it about her, helps her regulate. Empathy works very well. Like, you know, oh, honey, I see that this has really been a tough time for you. Or, look, I know you want, you'd really like to be in a relationship. Yeah, I understand that. All right, so it's just keeping calm using ear statements where appropriate. When the complaining or blaming starts, it could give a little ear and then shift it into a think action. A think action being something like to give the ear statement and they say, you know, what's your proposal for, you know, kind of going forward, moving past this? Right? So it's like you're guiding this person into left brain, into the logic, into the problem solving and thinking about things. You get a double bonus here. You're getting them away from all the reactive emotion, emotional stuff and connecting with them because that's the key. And then also opening up that logic brain into thinking, which is where there are a lot more calm things happening and makes them feel calmer. So whatever you can do to get her thinking in those moments. And that means thinking about things that she can do about her life or analyzing those options about things. Well, it's, you know, what options do you have? What, you know, I know a lot of things you've tried, but are there some other things you might think about here? So you just experiment. The great news is, you know, a lot of people are walking on eggshells, like, Oh, what if I say the wrong thing? You're going to get a lot of practice. You already have had a lot of practice. So just stick with using ear and connecting and then, you know, getting her thinking through options, through choices, through making proposals or giving her proposals. And if she's sensitive about, you know, you giving her a proposal about what to do about this current life situation, then ask her for a proposal, right? And then set limits. That's probably one of the biggest areas where lacking is setting limits about the abuse we take. You can, you know, you can end a conversation, you can stay connected and say, well, let's switch to different conversation because I'm not, you know, this isn't one I want to be a part of. Use your words and just try it. When there's another flare up, accusation, a blame, another complaint or something, then, you know, just use a little ear again, and then get her redirected into the thinking brain with choices, options and proposals. Okay. And if it's, you know, just going badly, just say, Look, I've got an appointment or I've got, you know, I always have an appointment set up for something. Or, you know, I've only got a 30, you know, 30 minutes for this phone call. We've only got a couple of minutes left. Is there anything, anything else you want to discuss before I before we get off the phone, something like that. So I'm gonna put some links in the show notes. There's a book by Sharena Rooney, who's in the UK. It's called The Big Book on Borderline Personality Disorder. Sharena is one who struggled with this herself. And she's written a brilliant book that's not all filled with depression. It's filled with hope and actual strategy. And then a couple of books by Amanda Smith. One for families is called The Borderline Personality Disorder Wellness Planner for Families. My little publishing company Unhooked Books published this book, and it is brilliant for families. And I wish it were flying off the shelves because it should be. It's just amazing. Written by Amanda Smith from Hope for BPD. Okay, I hope that was helpful. We'll put all that in the show notes. And I'm really thrilled that to be back. And I appreciate all of you listening today. Next week, I'll have authors Annette Burns and Nicole Stautner, both are lawyers, talking about their brand new book to be released in October called Co-Parenting by Design. And they're going to answer questions about co-parenting and every aspect you can even imagine. So Annette is the co-author with Bill Eddie on the Biff for Co-Parent Communication book. And she's seen it all, believe me. And Nicole has been on the bench before. She's seen it all as well. So it's a fantastic book. And I know you'll really enjoy listening to them. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing these skills. Be kind to yourself and others. And don't forget to set limits. Connect, use the CARS method, right? While we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. 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, show notes, and transcripts at truestory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]