Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / The Sociopath: Antisocial High Conflict People
Transcript
- Megan: Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most damaging humans, people with high conflict personalities. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my I co-host, Bill Eddy. Bill: Hi, Megan. Hi, everybody. Megan: Good morning, Bill. And we are the co-founders of The High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In today's episode, we are going to talk about one of the five types of personalities that really drive us crazy. Today, it's the anti-social personality. But first we have a few quick reminders. Here's the deal. We want to hear from you. Have you dealt with a high conflict situation, been blamed, experienced violence or abuse from an HCP? Or maybe you simply dread seeing that person again, but you probably have to at home tonight or tomorrow. So send us your questions and we just might discuss them on the show. Megan: You can submit them by clicking the submit a question button at our website, highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. Emailing us at podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or dropping us a note on any of our socials. You can find the show notes and links at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast as well. Make sure you subscribe, rate and review and please tell all your friends about us. Telling just one person that you like the show and where they can find it is the best way you can help us out and help more people learn how to address high conflict people. We appreciate you so very much. And now on with the show. So Bill today, we're talking about one of the five types of people who can ruin your life. And in a prior episode, we discussed that there are five personality types with the first being the narcissistic personality, which we discussed in the previous episode. Today, we're going to talk about the antisocial personality. Megan: And I think when people hear the term antisocial, you know, many people think it means that the person that's standing in the back of the room at a party or in the corner. They don't want to be seen, or they're just shy, but that's definitely not what we're talking about today. And I think, in my experience, the anti-social personality really can be the most confusing personality to deal with. And that's what we'll kind of get into today. So let's get started right off the bat with an understanding of what is the antisocial personality and how does that differentiate it from an antisocial HCP, but let's get started with what is antisocial. Bill: So antisocial personality and that's the word that's used in the diagnostic manual for mental health professionals. But think of this as equivalent to the term, sociopath, that anti socials and sociopaths basically have a drive to dominate other people that they'll accomplish that with very aggressive energy, very deceptive language. They may lie all the time, even if it's easy to catch them, they just make a new lie to cover the prior or lie. So they lie a lot. They deceive a lot. They con people and a con's more than a lie. So a con is when you tell someone something deceptive to get them to do something for you they wouldn't do if they knew what the truth was, but all of this is in the service of them getting what they want. Part of it is they like the power over other people of dominance. And part of it is they just want things. Bill: They want objects, they want money. They may want your reputation. They may buddy up to you so they get associated with you and you have a good reputation. And so they figure they'll get a piece of that and they'll be able to take advantage of other people. They want sex. They want power. In many ways some people say, think of them as three year olds. Three year olds are just real focused on what they want in the moment and they don't care what they knock over to get to it. And so that's why they injure people. That's why they often break the law. The goal isn't to break the law. The goal is to get something, but they don't care if they break the law on the way. And as you said, they lack a conscience. And that's kind of the social breaks that most of us have to keep us from doing things that harm others. Megan: I think it's so hard to wrap your mind around this personality type. Some of the other types, it's a little easier, but this, it's hard to understand that someone truly has no remorse because we want to think of someone with no remorse as being in prison, which I think, you would agree that the prisons are full of sociopaths, but when we encounter them in everyday life, we don't know that we've encountered a sociopath, you know, someone with anti-social personality. And I think we don't expect it. So what percentage of the US population, you know, what statistics are around anti social personality? Bill: A lot of statistics say around 4% of the adult US population, and that's about one out of 25 people. And that's a lot of people. I mean, if the United States has I think 330 million people and so 4%, so you're looking at, my math isn't- Megan: Do the math, Bill. Bill: Well, let's just say 300 million people. Then that's 12 million people you're looking at, but it's probably like 16 or 18. Anyway, that means everybody's met someone like this at some point. But as you said, they might not have known it, or at least at the time until they're gone and they've got your money or whatever it is. So this could be a pick pocket, or this could be a major business schemer associated, like the Enron was a big company. And they think there was at least one anti-social guy at the top of that, maybe two. And they just took off in a wonderful, successful direction and then totally crashed their business because it was based on lies. Megan: Right. And I think people are kind of starting to catch on these days, that narcissists and sociopaths do rise to the top. And so let's talk about that. Why do they rise to the top? And what I'm specifically looking for here is the fears with the narcissistic personality. They have a fear of feeling or being inferior, whereas what is it with the anti-social? What is their fear? Bill: Well, it seems like their fear is of being dominated. So the solution is they have to dominate other people. And I know like in high conflict divorces, let's say I represented a wife of an anti-social and she says, I don't do hardly anything. And he says, I'm too controlling. He's preoccupied with me being too controlling. And I tell you, Bill, I'm one of the least controlling spouses in the world, but he just sees the world as trying to control him. He feels dominated. And so he has to lie to me. He has to say, you know, I'm going to be away for the weekend. I have an important work project. Well, he is away for the weekend because he is having an affair and using community property to spend on that. So that's kind of the lying and conning. What's interesting is the diagnostic manual for mental health professionals says that sociopaths or anti socials are different from narcissists in three areas. Bill: One is how deceptive they are. Narcissists exaggerate, but anti socials lie profusely. Another is how aggressive they are. So they're really like physically aggressive. They physically push people around and get into fights and such. And the third is impulsivity that they see anti socials are more impulsive than narcissists. So some people say, oh, like my husband, I think my husband's a narcissist. And he's so aggressive and lies all the time. Well, it's probably, he's a narcissist and antisocial, but if he's antisocial, then you have to be even more careful in how you handle your divorce. You have to look for secrets more and protect yourself from risks of violence and defamation. Megan: Running high conflict Institute. Now for about 14 years, 15 years, we've had a lot of phone calls from parents and also employees in the workplace. But the ones that struck me the most were from parents who said, you know, the other parent, my children's other parent is a sociopath and now I have to send my child over there or my children. And I can think of one particular mother who called us and said, I have two sons. And the father likes one of them and really doesn't like the other one and will punish him. And I'm terrified of sending my child to his father's house. We don't hear that level of terror typically when they're talking about other personality types. So why is this so much more intense with this personality, Bill? Bill: Well, I think two aspects of it. One is they may be more physically dangerous. They get into fights everywhere. Bar fights, street fights, beat up their spouse, beat up their kids. So there may be more of a physical fear that's appropriate, especially if the person's engaged in extreme behavior before keeping in mind, will all these personalities, there is a whole range. Some people have a little bit, some people really have it a lot. Some are just self-defeating and others are very dangerous. So we're not saying everybody in this category is necessarily very dangerous, but anti-social many of them ares. So a child might really pick that up. But the other thing is, they're so clever at conning people and kids get really confused because they go, well, my father says, my mother is like the cause of all problems and she's slept with the whole football team and she takes all my money. Bill: So I can't give you any money and all these things and the kids kind of like, they, you know, this is their parents, so they believe them. And then they go and they're angry at their mother for doing all these terrible things. And mom says, "None of that's true. Where'd you hear that?" So it's it's distressing. I think of a case I had, I represented a mother and the father had actually been in prison for two years for petty theft at an auto parts store. But he had that antisocial pattern of behavior. When he got out, he wanted custody of the kids. He charmed them and gave them things. And so at some point mom said, "Look, I'm not going to fight this." They're they're like 11 and 14, so they can go live with him. I have a good relationship with them. So I'm not worried about me. Bill: Well, the father had said since the older boy was 14, yet they could decide which isn't true legally, but he said that. And so the boys went with the father. Well, after, less than a year, they kind of burned out on being with dad, because he was so controlling himself. And they said, "Okay, we're old enough. We can say where we live. So now we want to live with mom again." And dad says, "Oh no. You can't do that now. You can only make that choice once." And so for quite a while longer, they stayed with dad and the younger boy really became depressed. He just felt so helpless and he felt kind of like an abused spouse and he ended up having to be put on medication. I think eventually they went back to the mom, but this is an example of the control manipulation and why kids are scared of anti-social parents. And by the way, we're talking about them as if it's just men. Megan: That was my next question. Oh, Okay. Go for it. Bill: Well, the research shows about 75% of anti socials are male and it may actually be a biological tendency for some, but there's about 25% or female. And there's a talk that that's the woman who's on trial for the Theranos Company, that she has those antisocial traits and cons you know, high level government people out of millions of dollars. But it does seem consistently to be about 75% male. And the research suggests that there is a biological component. So first degree relatives of someone with antisocial personality disorder are more likely to also have it. But that's a tendency, it's not an absolute. Megan: Interesting. I, several years ago was involved in a nonprofit organization and we were, like all nonprofits, we were to help the community and one particular meeting and a new woman came to the group and on kind of the welcoming, wanting everyone to feel included. That's kind of who I am. So I did this with this girl and she came to a couple of meetings and then didn't come back again for a while. And she told me that she had lost her job. She was a high level executive, like a CFO or something. Something along those lines and had worked in nonprofits as a volunteer raising like tens of millions of dollars for nonprofits. So this didn't come for a while. And we had a gathering actually at my home and an email went out to everyone in the group. Megan: So she wrote to me and I was surprised to receive an email and happy to see it. And she said, "Hey, I'd love to come to this gathering if you don't mind." I said, "Yeah. Of course. Here's my address, come on over." So she came to the party and had a beautifully wrapped gift for me. And I accepted it as you know, or thought of it as a host gift when you go to someone else's home. And that was the start of about a 10 month journey of confusion. And so during that gathering, I asked, I said, well, you know, I didn't see her for several weeks, so everything okay? I thought maybe you moved away for a job. And she said, oh no. I was diagnosed with cancer and I went through surgery and all these things. Megan: And I said, my personality again, as a fixer kind of popped up and I said, "Well, why didn't you tell us? We would've brought you meals or given you transportation, whatever you needed. We would've been there for you." And she said, "Well, I just kind of like to take care of things myself and I just handle things and I don't like to bother anybody, but I'm getting better." So, okay. But there went my empathy factor. Kind of went right through the roof. And well, what can we do to help you? Because obviously, a few weeks of cancer treatment, isn't going to have everything all one and done. So this went on for quite some time where we would have her for dinner and she would tell stories about her very, very traumatic and lonely and abusive childhood. Megan: Was it true? I don't know, could have been. But she kind of kept pulling me in and I need this special kind of probiotic to help, you know, establish my immune system. And so I take her to the most expensive store, grocery store and buy the most expensive probiotics. And the rest of the group started fundraising for her. And I don't know, over the course of those months, we probably raised $5,000. Now here's the interesting bit. She said she didn't have a job, but she was always job searching. So she would leave her home every morning, which by the way, we were never invited to her home. Never knew her address at all, but she would say she was job hunting every day. And about once a week, she would drop by my house on her way to interview for jobs and either leave a little gift. Megan: Or I remember one particular day, she said, wow, if I don't get a job, I'm about to the end. I'm going to become homeless. Well, you know how that goes for a fixer, Bill. Oh no. And she added in the little bit that, you know, I've raised tens of millions of dollars for women in my exact situation. And now I'm going to be one of those women. So all these things, but I was confused. And so I actually went to one of your books that you wrote called, It's All Your Fault. And I read through the anti-social chapter and read about confusion. And that's when I had my light bulb moment. So what in there did you hear, Bill? What would our listeners from that story, some maybe listening and saying, oh, well, Megan, that was kind of dumb. Like how come you didn't catch on where others might have been in the same boat as I was? Bill: In General, we all have to have a healthy skepticism. And by healthy, I mean, not to be paranoid that everyone's out to get us or something, but if 4% of people spread pretty much equally around the country and probably around the world have this personality, that means that maybe 4% of the people you come in contact with, you have to be really skeptical. And sometimes you have to pay attention to your gut feelings. Like, Ooh, this feels weird. So that's the first thing. The second thing is they're going to pull your heartstrings and this is a pure manipulation. Bill: They know, they find out and work on your weaknesses. And so if you are a bighearted person, which I think Megan, you are, I've known you long enough. It's going to be tempting to want to rescue people like this from their terrible circumstances. And so when you start feeling like they're a victim and you have to save them from their victim who had, whether it's homelessness or somebody else's picking on them or whatever, is to be cautious about that and check things out and always consider the possibility that you're being conned. Bill: And I think that's one of the things in modern society that we didn't have to have as much of before. If you think of 50 years ago, 100 years ago, people knew 98% of the people they dealt with every day, they'd known them for years. And now all of us may deal with say 20 people a day who were total strangers on the phone at a store, et cetera. And any of these people could target us to take advantage of us. So we had to have this kind of built in skepticism, but look for victimhood. And I see this a lot, for example, in legal disputes, I see this in workplace disputes, high conflict divorces is they really make professionals, lawyers, counselors, mediators, judges, human resources, et cetera, feel sorry for them and pick up their cause. Bill: And what happens is you see these people suddenly becoming angry, maybe angry at you. And they'll say, "What did you do to that person?" And you didn't do anything, but they told them a story. And I call this the bully story. And the bully story is one of a crisis, a villain and a victim. And they'll tell you, they're the victim of some villain out there and that there's this terrible crisis. So you have to save them. And it's really easy to fall for that. And I see professionals fall for that all the time. Megan: Yeah. I have to say, I felt, I was quite surprised that I fell for it because as someone who is supposed to be an expert in this and gives trainings to professionals in this area, it was quite humbling to experience it from the other side. But I think when we're, you know... I come from a background of helping. My parents raised us to always be watching for people who needed help, who needed rescuing, who needed assistance in any way and I don't want people to struggle if they don't have to, you know. So there was kind of a powerful combination and I was such an easy target for this person and I guess the whole group then went along with everything, but I was the main target. Megan: It was kind of interesting. A couple pieces I didn't mention was she told me some job interviews she had gone on later after I finally discovered that I was being conned. I went back to look at her profile on LinkedIn, and I discovered that she had listed one of those job interviews as her now her primary place of employment as an executive there. So I thought, well, that's interesting, because I remember when she interviewed there, she said she did not get that job. So I called the place, it was a small organization. And I said, "I'm just checking, does so and so work for you or have they ever worked for you?" And they said, "Oh no. No, don't have anyone here by that name." So that's the interesting piece to me. One of the interesting pieces is that they'll lie when they know they can get caught. Anyone could call, see this on that profile and call this organization. So what is that? Bill: I think that's part of the aggressiveness and risk taking behavior. They're definitely risk takers. And that's another thing in the diagnostic manual. It's amazing because they're so aggressive and fast. They can lie about something, get what they want and be gone to the next town before you realize that you've been robbed. That's a simple version. I'll give you an example I had that's still bothersome, but people need to know about these things and that is them taking advantage of elderly people. And so I had a young woman, attractive young woman, divorced client, told me her story and her ex-husband had been abusive, this, that and the other thing. So I'm representing her. And one day I get a phone call from this elderly man. And he said, "So and so has been caregiving for me or taking care of certain things for me. Bill: And she mentioned that you were her lawyer and she even left a card of yours here. Well, anyway, she somehow took $10,000 out of my bank account. And now I don't know where she is. So I want your help in getting her to put that money back in." And I said, "Well, that's interesting because yesterday she told me she had to leave town and that she'd get back in touch with me when she wanted me to work on her case some more. So I don't know where she is and I feel very bad for you, but there's nothing I can do about it. But here's the elder abuse line at the district attorney's office." And I had this little twinge of a feeling like I couldn't necessarily believe everything she said. And as soon as he said that, I now didn't believe anything she said. Bill: She may not have been an abuse spouse. She may have been an abuser herself, who knew. But she was attractive. She was short. She was young. And I bet she's off to another situation and conning somebody else out of their money. And you read in the news, even high profile people when they're older, get into these relationships with antisocial caretakers who push the family out. Some their stories of, of nurses, marrying men who then surreptitiously die within six or 12 months of the marriage. And by the way, they gave all their money to that person. I think there was one alleged nurse like that, that had like three elderly men died within a year of her working for them. So people need to be aware. People need to be aware. So there's another thing I want to tell you to watch out for, with anti socials is they're very fast with words. Bill: And for example, they'll make a statement that's false and they'll quickly make a statement that's true. And then they'll argue for the true statement as though the false statement is also true. So I'll give you an example in family court. So a case I had a woman who I think had antisocial traits said, "And my husband's abusing our daughter and we can't have child abuse, your honor, this is a terrible problem in our community. We've got to do something about this. He has to be punished." Well, it wasn't true that he was abusing the daughter, but by the time you get that long sentence finished, the judge now is angry at my client for abusing his daughter without ever questioning, is this, or isn't this true and all the time, they're so quick with their words. So you got to watch out for their words. Megan: Interesting. I was thinking more about the story I was telling. There were a couple of other points. One is that, this was a female and with antisocial... I mean, I didn't diagnose her, but the patterns were there, very clearly there. And I think part of the reason I didn't realize I was being conned is like I said before, I'm a helper and a fixer, but also because she was a woman and there's maybe a gender bias within some of us that wherein we think that a woman would not be like this. And as you and I both know, as we've trained all over the world in these things, we give a little test during the trainings to test people's gender bias, basically, you know. Do you think people with anti-social personalities are there are more men, more women or about equal, and this is the one that they usually do get more accurate and it's usually way more men. They think it's a male dominated personality and they're right. Megan: So then we take out that female part from our brain and we don't realize perhaps that we're being conned by a woman and we want to take care of someone who's alone. There were lots of tales of I'm all alone. My parents have passed away. My brother was murdered. I have no other family, you know. So and let's add to that, that one of the biggest red flags with anti socials is that charm that they present with in the beginning. Well, this particular person didn't really present with charm in the way I expected. In my mind, I was thinking of a charming person as smiley and lovely. And this person was not that at all, but the charm came in the way of gifts. Megan: With always beautifully wrapped. I mean, maybe once every week or two, I had a gift. So that was kind of interesting. So that leads me to think about, why do they end up this way? You've talked about the genetic component, but some of the research and reading it tells us that a traumatic childhood, abusive, maybe some attachment issues there. What do you think about that, Bill? Bill: In some cases, that's true, but I'd say the majority of the people that I've known were antisocial didn't have an outstanding childhood. And so I think I agree with the DSM implications, the diagnostic manual, that this really may be hereditary. And if you look back through human history, you see that humans are constantly at war and that these folks really make good warriors that they're aggressive, manipulative, conning risk taking. And those are all useful skills for soldiers. And in many ways, if you think of narcissists as leaders, they go back in history, being self-centered and gathering people together to follow grandiose schemes. I think because a big part of personality is our genetic tendency is this is part of our human gene pool of personalities. And it makes sense. And in many ways it may have helped get us to where we are today, but in the modern world where we're trying not to be at war all the time, and we don't want people dominating each other, we want to be more equal and get along and more peaceful. Bill: We have to help reign in these more aggressive tendencies. And I think that's like in high conflict of worst cases, family courts have spent a lot of the last 15 years making restraining orders, protective orders, because more of these folks seem to be showing up in high conflict divorces. So if society can learn to recognize and set limits or on these folks, then we may be able to get the benefits of their good behavior, but not get the problems of their bad behavior. And I think by understanding, these aren't bad people, they just, you know, came into the world a little bit different. Megan: So let's shift now into the, you know, what do you do? So in my situation, then, what should I have done when I figured out that I was being conned and that I was dealing with someone with this type of personality. How do you back out of this? Bill: Well, I think carefully. So once this dawns on you, you gently start having reasons to be less engaged with this person, because you're not going to be able to manage this relationship very well, but a sudden disconnect may trigger more anger, more difficulty, maybe even hostility to you, sabotaging some of your work or stealing things from your home, something like that. So I think you want to gently just say, I'm not going to be so available anymore, or I'm not going to be able to work on that project with you anymore. I've got some other things that came up, so you're not lying because you always have other things coming up. Especially, I know you. You are super busy, Megan, but I think the idea is disengage carefully without anger and disrespect. Be respectful and say, thank you for something or other that was worthy of thanks and see you later. But I'm not going to really be able to be available for that anymore. Megan: Should you warn others? Bill: It's tricky because that can come back to bite you. So I would say don't warn others who you don't know, because that can backfire, but people, you know, you may want to just say, "You know, I had a bad experience with so and so and I would encourage you to kind of steer clear of her and I don't really want to go into it, but it'll just be on guard, something like that. Because if you badmouth the person, it gets back to the person, then they're going to want revenge from you. And these folks can be very vindictive when they feel personally offended. Megan: Right. And they'll turn it around on you. And because they're so persuasive and so charming and such a victim. Bill: Yes. Megan: You will end up looking like the bad guy, believe me. I have firsthand experience. So that's the how to back out of it. Now, what about if you... You know, this is your co-parent or is your boss or someone in your family. How do you manage that relationship? Bill: I think you manage it a little bit of far, if you can. Don't get too close to them so that you can get manipulated or get sucked into helping them against the other people that they've taken advantage of. A matter of fact, healthy skepticism ask for evidence of things. If like you're working together on a project at work and they say something outlandish, and you say, can you give me any more information or documentation on that? Because it's going to be hard for me to use that information unless I've got something supporting it and in a family relationship is really not overextending yourself. You got to be careful. You do favors for con artists and they'll just take over your life. They'll move in with you. And that may not be the best idea, but be matter of fact, don't be angry and don't be judgemental. These aren't bad or evil people. These are people with a problem and you don't want the problem to spread to you. Megan: Right. Very good. So we'll have many more episodes where we talk about each personality type and what they look like in a divorce and what the experience is in workplace and co-parenting in the family in many different situations. So more to come on that. If you are listening to this and you've kind of got someone like this in your life, it's a good idea to read what you can, get support. Never tell the person you think they are a sociopath. Right, Bill? Bill: Absolutely. You never want to tell them they're a high conflict person or anything. Because defensiveness is such a big part of who they are. But before I forget, I wanted to mention when you're reading, read the book Megan and I wrote, Dating Radar because that includes some tips on avoiding this high conflict personality as well as some others. Megan: Yes. And some pretty good examples in there that I think resonate with people. They start to kind of pick up or make realizations that maybe something they've been involved with or someone they're currently involved with or dating has some of these traits. So it's a pretty good idea to get out of that relationship. But yeah. That's a great book, Dating Radar. We'll put that in the show notes. And in the next episode, we'll continue with the five types of people who can ruin your life, focusing exclusively on the histrionic personality type. So you'll want to stay tuned for that. And until then, best wishes in all your conflict situations. Bill: Take care. Megan: It's All Your Fault is a protection of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts at trustory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.