Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Conflict Creators: Why Drama Gets Into Our Heads
Transcript
- Megan Hunter Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict situations and maybe high conflict people. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy Hi, everybody. Megan Hunter We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, classes, and educational programs and methods all to do with high conflict. Welcome, listeners. Thank you for taking us on your run today. So, Bill, I know we've both been traveling. You were gone a couple of weeks, celebrating both your anniversary, an important one with your wife, and also a big landmark birthday for her. Bill Eddy Yes, we had a big birthday for my wife, and then we went skiing up at Yosemite, so that was a good way to know that we're still not old yet. We won't go into details on that. And it's been a travel season. So last week I was speaking in Chicago to collaborative divorce professionals. That was a great group of people, a third of whom had seen me nine years ago. So I guess they came back for more, and that was a good group. Megan Hunter That's a good sign. Bill Eddy Yes, yes. So it's always interesting to me, because I apologize for repeating some general topics from nine years ago, but they said it all felt fresh. And they had still used some stuff from before. So I guess we keep adding enough that they do feel it's fresh. So that was nice. And a month before we were in Hawaii, but we won't complain about that. Megan Hunter Yeah, no complaints. Bill Eddy But yeah, so I've been traveling. But, Megan, you've been traveling as well. Megan Hunter I have. I just returned from my—I counted up and it's my 20th trip to Australia, which if you think about it is 20 Bill Eddy Wow. Megan Hunter one-way flights of, you know, fourteen or fifteen hours each. Probably more than that, actually. But I love Australia. Hi to Hillary. Hi to my friends at Job Link Plus in Tamworth, which is where I did my training, and it was all leadership development, understanding conflict and high conflict and how to keep the flame low on conflict within an organization. So had a great time. And then it was capped off with being the keynote speaker for an International Women's Day Conference, which was absolutely a blast. It was so fun. And I had to go outside my comfort zone a little bit out of what I normally talk about, kind of frame it in a different way and think of it in a different way. So that was really fun and met some wonderful people there. So happy to be back. Today we're going to talk about something that's, I don't know, maybe a little controversial, maybe not, but it's worthy to be explored. In recent years, there's a lot of public discourse that's increasingly revolved around personalities who seem to generate and sustain intense conflict around themselves. I like to call them conflict creators, not content creators, even though it's kind of sometimes both, right? Conflict creators and conflict content creators. One begets the other. But I'm wondering if some of this conflict—building conflict up around yourselves—could be described as high conflict behavior. So a figure frequently mentioned in that context today, and I'm not picking on this individual, it's just out there right now, is Candace Owens. She's a media commentator whose recent controversies and disputes, both with critics and former allies, have kept her at the center of online and political conversations. Supporters see her as an outspoken commentator challenging mainstream narratives, while detractors argue that her rhetoric often intensifies polarization. To understand the kind of conflicts surrounding her lately, it helps to look at a few of the claims that have kept her in the headlines. She's promoted a theory in the last few years that France's first lady, Brigitte Macron, was born male, and has suggested, without evidence, that the Macrons were involved in a plot against her. She has echoed online conspiracies claiming that former First Lady Michelle Obama is secretly a man. The theory, which has circulated online for years, claims that Michelle Obama was assigned male at birth and that this fact has been concealed. Versions of the claim point to altered photos, misinterpreted childhood records, or speculative arguments about her ancestry, sometimes referencing supposed Jamaican lineage. None of these claims have been supported by credible evidence, and extensive public records and biographies consistently identify Michelle Obama as female. Still, the theory continues to resurface online, especially when amplified by high-profile commentators. And more recently, following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Owens publicly questioned the actions and statements of his widow, Erica Kirk, raising suspicions about what she might know about the circumstances of his death. Supporters describe these interventions as investigative or anti-establishment, while critics argue they spread unfounded conspiracy narratives. Either way, they illustrate the kind of high conflict media dynamics we're exploring in this episode. Candace has not directly accused Erica Kirk of participating in the killing of her husband, but she has repeatedly questioned the official account of the event and suggested that people close to Charlie Kirk, or within his organization, may know more than has been publicly disclosed. A line of commentary critics say implicitly casts suspicion on his widow and others in his inner circle. Regardless of where one lands, her rise offers a useful lens for examining a broader question. Why do some public figures become focal points for ongoing conflict? What draws audiences so strongly to these dynamics? And how can we ascertain whether we should listen or not? What should we do? So, Bill, first of all, why might listeners be drawn to podcasters who claim they possess secret or hidden information that will be revealed later? And are there psychological needs or emotions that this appeals to? Bill Eddy Well, I think many things about this. And I guess I want to start with the brain—the right and left hemispheres of the brain. And what I think we're seeing—and I'm reading a book now on the right brain and human origins, this is another Allan Schore book—it's really interesting. He talks about the right and left hemisphere as the right hemisphere actually developing earlier in humanity than the left. And the right hemisphere is more relational and more emotional. So we get drawn in. Our right brain is especially processing a lot of our emotions, and especially our emotions about relationships. Whereas the left brain is more processing details. It's kind of scientific, looking for details, for facts, for planning, looking at the past, whereas the right brain seems to be more in the present, more about feelings and who we're connected to. So I think a lot of what we're seeing is people really do want to be connected and belong, and to be special. And so if somebody has special knowledge that most people don't have, that makes us really special if we share that knowledge with them and with each other. So what you're getting is little communities around particular online personalities, I think. And personalities can be very attractive, and high conflict personalities can be very attractive. The drama, the extremeness, all of that grabs our right hemisphere. We're like, oh, we want to watch. But the other thing is this research on amplification that I read, that I applied to high conflict divorce and children resisting contact. That research on amplification says if you listen to someone tell a story, an emotional story, the negativity grabs your brain more than boring or positive—that our brains are attracted to negative, attracted to danger, attracted to stuff to help us survive. And so I think the negativity grabs us. And if we don't use our left brain to think about it and just accept it, it's like we're glued to such people because they're telling us special things, but they're telling us dangerous things. And I think specialness and danger really draw us in. And a lot of people with potentially high conflict personalities emphasize a lot of drama and danger. So I think we kind of get sucked in unless we stop and think about it. Megan Hunter So this promise of exclusive insider knowledge. I find this really fascinating, that, you know, I'm going to release this information. I'm on track. I've got all my investigators researching like crazy. They've found some incredible stuff that you need to know. That's always the red flag for me—this special: I have this special information, I'll be releasing it to you soon. And it hooks that right brain, doesn't it? And then we're in. Now we're going to dial in again to the next episode and the next and the next, and check them out on social media for that bit of information. So it's just stringing it along, stringing it along. And you never really do get that information. So why does this feel so credible to certain audiences? Bill Eddy I think it's that belonging part. It's like if we kind of think along the same wavelength, then this makes us more special. This makes us more connected. And a lot of my way of thinking of this is this functions like gossip. And when you gossip with your neighbors, you actually get closer to them. And I think it's a normal human characteristic that we gossip about each other, and that when we gossip about somebody else, that brings us closer together. Also, we need to exchange information like who's good at this and who's good at that. So there's a real social function for gossip. What's interesting is how, to some extent, it's been hijacked, I think, by online influencers—because they're controlling the gossip and can get a lot of people feeling like they're on the inside. The tone of voice and the secret information and all of that—it feels like we're buddies because, you know, we share this unknown piece that the rest of the world doesn't know about. And it's interesting, but I think if you break it down, you realize it's all about emotions and about relationships and nothing to do with left brain facts. I want to go to the left brain if I want facts. Megan Hunter Right. That should be a t-shirt, Bill. Go to the left brain for facts. Always check with the left brain for facts. I think if you aren't aware of right brain, left brain, and the kind of attraction to drama and gossip with the right brain, and you're looking at it from a different context—maybe an attention-seeking context—which then can lead to the thought that, well, this is only about getting clicks. Clicks equate to money, a lot of money. And as these grow and grow, you end up making a lot of money. So I wonder about the personality types that get into this. I would assume that some may have a high conflict personality coming into this, others may not, but get addicted to the clicks and the money and eventually find themselves in an unsustainable conundrum where now they are being sued a lot and being seen in a negative light in the public eye by some, not everyone. So I guess my question would be: do you see it that same way, Bill, where it might be someone who has a high conflict personality to begin with, and others who don't and just get caught in the trap? Like, are some creating this? Bill Eddy I think there's a lot of areas of public life where high conflict personalities are drawn to attention. That's one thing they all have in common—they want attention, and they've developed methods, especially emotional methods, of getting attention. You know, say you have someone with a narcissistic personality—and I'm not saying any particular folks are—but someone with a narcissistic personality wants to just tell people, I'm the smartest, or I'm the greatest, or follow me, I've got the best investment plan you've ever seen. And so the narcissist is like, me, me, me, follow me. The more histrionic person is, watch me, I want everyone's attention. And I think that drives a lot of influencers—there are people naturally wanting to draw attention, and they've learned, in terms of tone of voice, facial expressions, all of that, to be very dramatic. I mean, maybe I'm jealous because I think I'm pretty much boring tone of voice and boring facial expression. But I think it attracts high conflict people for these reasons. On the other hand, I think that more ordinary people or more ordinary personalities that have a special interest get into the influencer role and then may get carried away with it. My understanding is when people suddenly make incredible amounts of money from either music or drama or on-air stuff, that it sweeps them up emotionally and they may overreach and get themselves into legal trouble. So I think both types are involved, but especially today's modern media really attracts people with high conflict personalities because they're good at grabbing attention. Megan Hunter Yes, so attention and also being convincing and very confident, right? When we listen to someone that our brains are already attracted to because of the drama and, you know, they're special, right? And it's said with such confidence, our brains want to believe it. Bill Eddy Right, especially our right brains, because that's the social brain. And that doesn't go by facts and figures—it goes by tone of voice, facial expression, hand gestures, all this stuff. And most people don't realize we kind of have these two approaches to problem solving, two approaches to conflict, and that one's primarily unconscious and operates in the background. You go, oh wow, I really like this person, but you don't know why. And it's because they're doing the drama and the maybe singsong voice and the display of confidence and certainty. Our brains like certainty, especially the more stressed we are, and the world today is kind of stressed. So we like certainty, and the people that promise us certainty, first of all, aren't working from facts, but second of all, can be very seductive to our social brain. Megan Hunter So how might individuals with high conflict personalities themselves be particularly attracted to podcasters who frame issues as dramatic battles between truth-tellers and corrupt institutions? Bill Eddy Well, I think the whole thing we've talked about for years on our podcast is negative advocates. And negative advocates get emotionally hooked by other people's emotional messages. When you see a high conflict person, say in the workplace, and they have a little group of people that kind of follows them—without understanding what their behavior is, they just emotionally feel drawn to them—then we think of them as negative advocates. They reinforce that person's behavior, and that person may use them to convince other people of things. Well, I think it's the same thing in various forms of social media: people with these personalities attract people who maybe get something out of being a negative advocate. I want to be near that person because I want some of their confidence. And confidence is something that our right brain just loves. We love because we want to feel confident. The trouble is high conflict people across the board feel confident. Megan Hunter Yeah. Bill Eddy And yet they shouldn't, because they're not operating from factual information. They're operating from a belief in themselves. Megan Hunter A belief in themselves and big feelings, and the big feelings seem to drive that confidence. Bill Eddy Yeah. So it's the more emotional brain, and high conflict people are more emotional people. But it doesn't mean everybody who's emotional is a high conflict person. So it's interesting, but all this stuff goes on kind of under the surface. We're drawn, but we don't know why. But I think the more people become aware of these dynamics, the more they can pick and choose who they let themselves get drawn to. I mean, you and I talk a lot about helping people get divorced from abusive relationships. Well, how did they get into those? They were drawn in by the charismatic—the spark—that we found in the Dating Radar book we wrote together. These are things that draw people in. If you don't know about it, you think they're totally real, but they're actually emotional and not necessarily based on reality. Megan Hunter And then you get to a point where that's the only thing you listen to. Maybe that's the only podcast you listen to. So your vision gets very narrowly focused. And you're only listening to that one person. So you have that one extreme point of view and that specialness, that bond that you think is created but isn't really there—it can get you into that narrow silo and really defending someone who isn't providing any evidence. Bill Eddy Right. And the amplification research—how one person amplifies another person's emotions to other people—says that our brains automatically attach to negative faces. And I'm not sure if it says negative voices, but definitely negative faces. It's harder to detach from them. Megan Hunter That's really interesting. Bill Eddy Yeah. And so the more negative someone is, the more we're watching. I think it makes sense because negativity is related to danger, and we want to survive. So if you go back, you know, thousands of years where people did most of their communication emotionally, we've got a deep perception of negativity as something we need to pay attention to. Megan Hunter Yeah, so in what ways could podcasters who promise secret revelations reinforce the thinking patterns often associated with high conflict personalities, such as blaming others, escalating conflict, or seeing the world in those rigid us-versus-them terms? Bill Eddy I think that it brings out the idea that we have to protect ourselves by blaming other people. And blame is a big part of pulling together a community. You know, in the book I wrote two years ago, Our New World of Adult Bullies, I wrote about what I called anti-communities—that a community of people comes together because they're against something or somebody. And when that's their main purpose for being—to be against somebody else—it's kind of a false community, because you're not building things together or sharing other things. You're just against something. And you can't have too many anti-communities in a society and have a society survive very well. And yet that's what I see happen, like when children are resisting a parent. It's one parent and the child have teamed up against the other parent. They have an anti-community. In the community there may be two groups of people that hate each other and they feel really good together. But that hatred of the other is not going to help the larger community. So I think that's what happens—people become part of an anti-community when they start seeing the world as us against them. It feels good. Megan Hunter Yeah, it feels good, because we're on a team, right? We like to be on a team. Had someone last week call it a wolf pack. I got my wolf pack, right? I got people to back me up. So what can we do about it? And I go back to something you came up with—the three theories of the case, right? It might be true. It might not be true. It might be both things, right? So in a legal case, it may be when you have one person saying the other person is high conflict—might be true. Or it might not be true, it may be the other way around. Or maybe both people are high conflict. So could we apply something similar in this situation for our listeners who this matters to, right? Who really care about getting to truth and not being swayed one way or the other, because I think we've all been there, right? So how can we bust our own biases? Is there a three-theories way to do this? Like, it might be true, might not be true—is it backed up with evidence? Bill Eddy Well, I think if someone says someone else is acting badly, it's good to consider that possibility. But to always reserve judgment and say it could be the opposite is true. So I want to look for information that tells me which it is, or it could be both things are true—two high conflict people, or something like that. And just having an open mind, having to keep our minds open. You know, my father was a scientist. He was a physicist and a chemist. And I just remembered, when learning this stuff in the last twenty years, I remembered my father's voice saying, "Is that so?" And, you know, with four kids and we all believed different things and heard different things during the day, we'd say, did you know such and such? He'd say, "Is that so?" Like, we really need to look into whether that's really so or not. And I always liked that—it was just reserving some judgment, not just jumping to conclusions. But the other thing is to look at several sources of information. Is that true? Would someone else say that? And I know sometimes I hear stories where people tell me things, especially high conflict people, maybe clients or maybe the other side in a legal case, where they say something and I go, oh, that's so disappointing. And then I go, you know what? I'm going to check with the other person they're talking about and see what they really said. And I've had cases where people say, you know, Bill, you know what so-and-so said about you? And I think it's to get me upset. And it's like, no, I don't. What'd they say about me? Oh, okay, thanks. And then I'm going to go to so-and-so and find out, were you talking about me the other day? What did you say? Well, I just want you to know someone interpreted it the opposite of what you said. So check things out and listen to more than one source for information. I think those are the things to really help not jump to conclusions. Megan Hunter And I wonder if we could put AI to good use and ask AI to challenge you on what you've heard. What is the opposite side of things? I think you can do that quickly now with AI, of course. It may be a good use of AI. I know you probably aren't a huge fan of that yourself, Bill. Bill Eddy No, but I do use it. I used it an hour ago to get a summary of something. But I'm still an AI skeptic. And I think the use is to get an idea and then to look deeper into it, but not assume what AI is telling you is accurate. And I'll give you a quick example. So, you know, AI took our BIFF method and doesn't always say where it came from. I used Word Copilot to say, what would a BIFF response for this be? They gave me a BIFF response and I said, where did the BIFF method come from? Because they didn't mention my name. They said, oh, well, Bill Eddy with High Conflict Institute. Oh, okay, good. I then asked, what are the 10 questions that Bill Eddy says to ask yourself about a draft BIFF response? And for people that don't know, BIFF is Brief, Informative, Friendly, and Firm. It's a method of responding to emails, texts, letters, etc. And we guess it's probably in use by about a million people by now, because it's been around fifteen years and we've taught a lot of people, and they teach somebody else. But AI—so Copilot said—I said, what are the 10 questions Bill Eddy says to ask about a BIFF draft? It made them up. Megan Hunter Oh yeah. Bill Eddy They weren't my questions. They had the method from the first edition of the first BIFF book, before I put the ten questions in the second edition. So AI—or Copilot—didn't know about the ten questions, but it just made them up. Megan Hunter It does a lot of that depending on what you ask and what you prompt it to do. Bill Eddy Yeah. What are the ten questions Bill Eddy says to ask yourself about a BIFF response? So for this reason, I don't trust AI, because something I know about, it lied about—but it didn't tell me it's making it up. It says, oh, Bill Eddy says to ask yourself, and made up stuff that's kind of along the lines, but wasn't me. Megan Hunter Yeah. And there's built-in things to each of the different versions of AI. So there's a lot of things to be worked out, I'm sure. So if you want to know about BIFF, come to our website. We'll tell you all about BIFF. Bill Eddy That's where to go. Go to the source. Megan Hunter Yes, go to the source. Anyway, alright. Well, this has been great, Bill, and I hope this has been of help to you, listeners. We're not picking on Candace Owens—she just happens to be one that's in the media right now and seems to be stirring up some controversy. So I thought it might be really helpful to talk about. We're not diagnosing, we're not anything, we're just helping everyone gain understanding. And I really think, Bill, I love the two forms of problem solving. You're either problem solving from your right brain or your left brain, from emotions or from, you know, analytical problem solving. And we know we need to be kind of whole-brain in order to make good decisions, to get those two hemispheres together. So that's what our training is all about. Anyway, listeners, thank you for listening today. You'll find the links to our upcoming training, specifically on managing high conflict behavior in the workplace, which is coming up on April 23rd. That can be taken online. It's live, virtual. That'll be in the show notes. We'll also include links to Bill's book, Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life. And if you're looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization, visit us at HighConflictInstitute.com. If you have a high conflict situation in your personal life, or you just want to learn some conflict skills, visit ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing skills. Be kind to yourself and to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace. Megan Hunter It's All Your Fault is a production 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.