Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Family Feuds: Navigating High Conflict Personality Clashes
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those that involve someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Hi everybody. We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In today's episode, we're going to talk about conflicts in the family, starting with a grandmother with possible borderline personality disorder or traits thereof, and a grandchild who exhibits similar behaviors. And secondly, an ex-spouse who is a military veteran with diagnosed borderline personality disorder. So we're going to talk about these two questions today, both very important, 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 and we'd love a five star review anywhere you listen to your podcast. Speaker 1 (01:22): All right, today we're going to talk about family conflict and both of these questions today come from our listeners. So I'll just start with this one. I recently approached a clinical psychologist to help me understand and cope with my mother's history of erratic behavior. And the psychologist believes my mother may be suffering from borderline personality disorder together with a high conflict personality. The doctor recommended I look into your high conflict institute. Thank you. Whoever was that referring person, and I've been listening to your podcast the past few weeks and read Bill's book, it's All Your fault. I'm the father of twin girls age six and a half, and one of my daughters has been a difficult child since birth. She strongly struggles with emotion regulation and my wife and I have tried a myriad of different approaches to try and help her. We recently discovered an approach by Dr. Speaker 1 (02:20): Becky Kennedy called Deeply Feeling Kid acronym D F K. So far she is the only one that has been able to pinpoint so clearly my daughter's behavior and the techniques that Dr. Becky presents have been working, even though it's still an everyday struggle, having learned so much about D F K and borderline personality and high conflict personality recently, it's almost impossible not to see the very strong similarities between them. When I heard you talking about people with both B p D, it described my daughter quite accurately as well. The techniques you discuss in your podcast are also very similar to what Dr. Becky suggests for with D F K I would love to know if there could be a connection between D F K and B P D and or high conflict personality. Normally how young do traits of B P D and H C P display in children since the cause of B P D is not yet fully known? And it could be due to childhood trauma or genetics, it would be good to know if my daughter might suffer from B P D in the future, like inherited from my mother. So there's a lot in there, bill to unwrap. And so I guess maybe we start with just talking about kids with high emotion sensitivity and some real acting out behaviors. Speaker 2 (03:39): Actually, what I want to start out with is defining B P D a little bit and cautioning people that we're not diagnosing anybody, but we're looking at education, looking at possibilities. So the idea that a psychologist said that the listener's mother may have B P D means that she probably has traits of difficulty managing emotions wide mood swings, sudden and intense anger idealizing people and then devaluing them, really looking down on them, having a lot of behaviors around fear of abandonment. It's like, what are you trying to do? Kill me. You didn't call me yesterday. The kinds of things. So it's a set of behaviors, but at the core of it is often this difficulty managing emotions and regulating their own emotions and behavior. So with that said, we're not diagnosing anybody, but when mental health professionals do diagnose B P D, it's supposed to be as adults. Speaker 2 (04:53): So this is an adult disorder as are all 10 of the personality disorders that are diagnosed by mental health professionals. And exception to that is say an adolescent displays rigid symptoms of a personality disorder, five or more traits in the diagnostic manual, then they could be diagnosed if they have a year or more. So there are, for example, some kids with borderline personality disorder being rigidly displayed over the course of a year or more in adolescence. And so they may be diagnosed with B P D and if they get into good treatments for that like dialectical behavior therapy, other programs, then they can often outgrow the diagnosis. And some adults outgrow the diagnosis with good treatment. So there really is treatment for this difficulty of managing emotions. So now let's bring it down to childhood and six and a half years old. So first of all, she doesn't have B P D because she's way too young for that, but the emotion dysregulation can be related to B P D and could be a precursor of developing B P D if she doesn't learn how to manage her emotions now. Speaker 2 (06:23): And if she does, then that may really help steer her away from developing a problem like borderline personality disorder as an adult. So this is a good time, a really good time to help kids. And so the program you're discussing, we're not real familiar with it, but the basics that we've seen sound real good. And like you said, similar to things we teach, we teach helping people calm themselves by giving themselves encouraging statements. We help teach the people around an upset person to give them a statement that shows empathy, attention or respect. This could just be 30 seconds, doesn't have to take a lot of time. So I think you're very wise to be doing something now, but don't assume or predict that you're going to have the same problem that your mother did. But it's helpful to be aware that there could be some genetic tendencies that are connected. And with borderline personality disorder, we know it seems to be somewhat temperament at birth. So you have a child that's easily agitated versus a child that's calmer, et cetera, realizing that all kids are easily agitated pretty often. Speaker 1 (07:51): I've just come off a vacation with one, three and four year olds, Speaker 2 (07:56): And I bet they got agitated at times a little bit, Speaker 2 (08:01): So don't overreact. But also we get a lot of people that say, oh, he'll grow out of it, or Oh, it's not a problem, leave him alone when in fact it could. One thing to know is personality development is well on the way by five or six years old. So if you're seeing a problem that you're concerned about at six and a half years old, I think you're very right to want to address that. And often the way to address that is having the kids learn skills to manage their own emotions. So I'd say you're on the right track. Get help from the people you've been talking to. And you're actually a good example of how this may be more genetic than parenting because you've got twins with very different personalities. More and more mental health professionals are seeing that a lot of personality traits may really exist at birth and there may be genetic tendencies. So don't blame the parents when you've got a child who's got difficulties, realize this may be genetic. On the other hand, realize there's things you can do to influence does this develop in a positive or negative way? So a lot of people with potential for personality disorders don't develop them because the way that they're raised, the parents and the skills they learn steer them away from that and into more healthy. Speaker 1 (09:34): Yeah. And what are some of those maybe genetic traits? Have you heard of anything like is impulse control genetic or lack of impulse control? Speaker 2 (09:44): It seems that impulse control is a combination of your genetic tendencies and what you learn because that's a big part. I worked with three-year-olds as director of a child development center for a university, and they say three-year-old is the most violent age in a person's life. Wow, Speaker 1 (10:11): Interesting. Speaker 2 (10:12): Because they have the most energy and ability to punch your knees and to pull your hair and do all those things, but they just starting to learn to restrain their impulses. And so that's why early childhood is a perfect time to learn impulse control and a big job of human beings. A lot of animals have it all figured out like kangaroos, mother gives birth, the kid hits the ground, stands up and starts living life as a kangaroo or a giraffe or all of those humans need a lot of child rearing. We need to learn and that makes us good because we learn the family and culture we're growing up in, but it means there's a lot of work to do. So that's a lot of what's happening, but they find that a lot of behavior has genetic aspects to it, and so some people have a harder time and other people have an easier time, but early childhoods a real good time to deal with things like this. So I think the listeners on the right track, a six and a half year old needs to be learning skills of impulse control and emotion regulation and can have a very happy life because of learning that now. Speaker 1 (11:38): And I find it really fascinating that these are twins, right? And we want to think that twins are identical in every way, but they're obviously going to have their unique personality traits and like you said, it's really great that these parents are paying attention to this now and trying to do something about it, and it sounds like they found a great program. There's another program we'd mentioned for teens, not little ones, but one for teens is called my out of control teen.com, which is basically a parenting training program even though the name teen is in it, I think the twins aspect is very fascinating. Whether they're twins or just siblings, everyone's going to be different. And then you bring in maybe something, an additional aspect of an adopted child and you get yet a whole nother set of genetics and characteristics to deal with and handle and get to know and opportunity to grow through those. So really, really good question. Thank you for sending that in. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after that. If you are loving our podcast, we'd love if you'd give us a five star review or just any note of encouragement or your thoughts. We'll be right back. Speaker 1 (13:10): Okay, we're back and we have another question from another listener, bill, and this one is about an ex-husband. She says, my ex-husband is high conflict and finally diagnosed with borderline personality. He was first diagnosed and then she said misdiagnosed. In my opinion with P T S D from the military, he highly exaggerates a story that happened when compared to stories on the news being in the care of the veterans Administration helped him to get on disability from ever working again. So he was very motivated to get the care, but also this aside bonus is this diagnosis of borderline could happen when it otherwise probably would not have happened. He will blame me for him being borderline because he heard it comes from the abuse. He says he suffered from me in the marriage when in reality he was verbally abusive to me and actually had been to jail for a domestic incident with his new wife who's soon to be an ex. Speaker 1 (14:12): He constantly project his own behaviors onto me. Another example of this is road rage, lots of tickets, whereas I do not have that type of thing. How would you respond when he continues to accuse me of this? I don't want to be unresponsive because I don't want lack of response to look like I'm accepting this. If we ever go to court, we currently have a parenting consultant also. Normally we have 50 50 custody of the children due to me having the kids 11 out of 12 months this last year due to his domestic violence charge and he's unable to catch up on time. I think I should be able to claim the kids on taxes. Now, bill, I know we're both tax experts, so this is perfect. Just kidding, he hasn't paid anything for them and fought me when all I asked for is half of activity fees for the kids. How would you go about discussing that with him? I'm not looking forward to a fight, but I think he shouldn't claim them. So that's a lot of information in there. And I guess the question really the nugget of this is how do you have a conversation about something difficult when somebody hasn't really been maybe participating in the way they should or in their quarter to child support or whatever it is? It could be the issue's, not the issue in these. So how do we have that conversation without a fight? Speaker 2 (15:36): You have to figure out what works with this person best. So you may verbally say, we need to have a talk. I want to talk about this. And with one person, with another person, it may be better to put it in an email with another person. It may be we need to meet with a mediator to discuss this. You've got a lot of choices about how best to communicate with somebody who may have a short fuse and borderline personality disorder. People often have a short fuse and are prone to sudden and intense anger. Just think of which choice fits best for you. The thing you don't want to do is make it big. You want to keep it really small. I have this saying is keep the conflict small. If there's six issues to discuss, just discuss them one at a time. Just say, we need to talk about the tax exemption dependency exemption credit, and who's claiming it this year? Speaker 2 (16:35): And I propose that I claim it since I had the kids the majority of the time. Interesting tax question. You should ask somebody when I was doing regular divorces as a mediator and lawyer that actually a person who hasn't had the care of the children more than half the year may not be allowed to claim them. So you may want to check with that and if that's the case, then you can say, my accountant says blah, blah. So that's one way to avoid an argument if that's just the reality. There's a lot of other pieces here. I guess Megan, I'm thinking first talk about B P D versus P T S D. Speaker 1 (17:21): Yeah, I think that's a good idea because I think there's confusion about that and sometimes it gets lumped into the same category, but is it really, Speaker 2 (17:30): Some people say that borderline personality disorder is really someone suffering from P T S D, which is post-traumatic stress disorder like a lot of military soldiers have, like rape victims have, like victims of terrorism have is its post-traumatic stress disorder. Its unresolved stress. And so when it's prolonged, that's what they call it, post-traumatic stress disorder. In some cases, someone with borderline personality disorder has that also. But some people say borderline looks like that, that they're irritable, angry, impulsive because of P T S D. I believe, and I'd say probably a majority of mental health professionals believe that P T S D and borderline personality disorder are two separate diagnoses and that many people have both, but many people just have borderline personality disorder without any history of abuse. Some people may be genetically born that way and some people just have P T S D and don't develop borderline personality disorder. So it's important to address these as two separate, possibly co-occurring or not co-occurring issues. Now, the next thing I want to get to, it's very important, is that marriages don't cause people to develop borderline personality disorder. Speaker 1 (19:09): That's a relief to hear, I'm sure for many people. Speaker 2 (19:13): Yes, personality disorders start before you're an adult, and in many ways they start in early childhood. You come into adulthood with a personality disorder, you don't get it from your spouse. So if your ex-husband is saying that you abused him and that the abuse caused him to develop borderline personality disorder, he's just making stuff up. Now, he may honestly believe that because people with borderline personality disorder often blame other people for all their problems because they can't connect the dots back to their own behavior. That's one of the characteristics of a personality disorder. So he may honestly believe I got this from somebody, but he didn't. But I don't think you're the person to teach him that. You may encourage him to get some good counseling for his borderline personality disorder, and if it succeeds, he'll learn that you're not to blame. And as you pointed out, he constantly projects his own behaviors onto me, and that goes back to our prior podcast about projection. So we're glad you've been listening. Speaker 1 (20:36): The listener asked, how would you respond when he continues to accuse me of projecting those behaviors on me? Is there a magic way to respond? Speaker 2 (20:46): My favorite phrase for that is, we see it differently and there's no point in discussing it further. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I don't see it that way and leave it at that. Or you need to read this article. If you have an article, which I'm sure if it comes from you, he won't read or discuss that with your counselor, that may be important for you to realize that our marriage did not cause that this is a problem that predates adulthood. So you may want to look at earlier, because early abuse is a factor for many people with borderline personality disorder, but it's not a factor for everybody with it. Yeah, don't engage. Don't engage. This is a time to say you need to discuss that with somebody else, Speaker 1 (21:35): Right? Engaging doesn't help you. It doesn't help him, right? It's just going to escalate things. And I guess engaging in the right way, using your statements and setting limits helps both of you and ultimately will then help your children as well. Well, good. These were great questions. Thank you for sending this in, and we help hope that everyone who's listening has benefited in some way from this information. It might not be a family situation you're in, but you can kind of apply this oftentimes across many different types of situations. Speaker 1 (22:19): Next week, we'll talk about neighbor disputes. It happens quite a lot in the last couple of years. It seems like the gloves are off and a lot more neighbor dispute questions are coming up for us. So keep sending your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And we'd love it if you tell your friends and colleagues about us, and we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a five star review so we can keep growing and helping more people around the world. Until next time, keep learning and practicing so you can be confident in your human interactions. In high conflict situations. As you do, your life will become more peaceful. It's all Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True Story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.