Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Can People with High Conflict Personalities Change?
Transcript
- Megan Hunter: 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 challenging human interactions, those with someone who may have a high conflict personality, 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 in San Diego, California. In this episode, we'll talk about whether people with high conflict personalities can change, but first, a couple of notes. If you have a question about a high conflict person or situation, send them to podcast at highconflictinstitute.com, or on our website at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast where you'll find the show notes and links as well. Please give us a rate or review and tell your friends, colleagues, or family about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation. We're very, very grateful. Now, let's talk about change. As we all know, change is hard for everyone, but if you've had a high conflict individual in your life, you know that change for them is seemingly impossible. Our minds tell us that they're doing these behaviors on purpose or even partially so and that they can change if they just choose that route. Well, yes, I suppose that's true, or is it? If we start with the premise that people with high conflict personalities don't even know that they have such a thing, then why would they change? There's no desire without need. So let's talk about this, Bill. What do you think? First, do you agree with this premise that most individuals with a high conflict personality don't know they have one, and if you agree with that, do you also agree that they don't see a need for change? Bill Eddy: And the answer is yes and yes, and let me elaborate a little. First of all, two key characteristics of high conflict people is they lack self-awareness and they lack change. That's why they're stuck in conflict and so what we see is the four key characteristics we often talk about, first is preoccupied with blaming others. It's all your fault, zero my part, all or nothing thinking and solutions, my way or the highway, often unmanaged emotions, although you don't always see that, but that's what's driving them inside. They feel like they have to do things, that this is necessary and normal to do whatever they're doing, and the fourth is the extreme behavior. So with these characteristics, because they're so blame focused and externalizing, that they really don't see that they have a problem, and you're absolutely right. If they don't see the need for change, then why bother, and so what we see is high conflict people often escalate conflicts or keep them going forever because they're not working on their part and their part may be most of the conflict, and so if a major contributor to a conflict isn't trying to make any efforts to change, things aren't going to get resolved. Now let's just talk for a moment about ordinary people. Let's say 80 to 90% of people are used to solving conflicts. When there's a conflict, we automatically start saying "Uh-oh, what did I do? Did I do something wrong," and then you go, "And what should I try to do different so that doesn't happen again?" So it's really normal for people to think what's my part in this problem and what can I do different? We automatically go there, but high conflict people don't and that's one of the biggest things that distinguishes them and why they're in so many conflicts because every day, we're resolving conflicts and usually giving and taking and working things out. So yes, I agree that they don't know they have a high conflict personality and that's why they don't feel like they need to change. Megan Hunter: Okay. So yep. We've established they don't see a need for change and then that leaves us with a dilemma. You may want to be around this person. You may be married to them or working with them or they're in your neighborhood, wherever they may be, and the problem in this dilemma is that we become very exhausted and it makes relationships with them almost impossible, but a lot of folks want the relationship to work or have the employee stay or to have a good relationship with the neighbor, but really need the person to change, the other person to change in order to have a decent relationship. So I guess here's the million dollar question, Bill, can they change? Bill Eddy: Well, this really comes to where we need to break down the high conflict personality types, and as we've said many times in this podcast, there's often overlap with personality disorders. So for example, we see narcissistic high conflict people, or HCP. So narcissistic HCPs, people with borderline personality disorder or some traits, people with antisocial disorder or traits, people with histrionic disorder or traits. These are all called cluster B personality disorders in the manual for mental health professionals and there's an overlap because people with personality disorders generally don't change. They have an enduring pattern. That's part of the definition of personality disorders. So if they blame others, high conflict, and they don't change, they have an enduring pattern, then this is a big question. Can they change? So let me go by each of these types of high conflict people. Start with the borderline personality type of high conflict person. They're often blaming, all or nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, but this seems to be the personality that we're the most hopeful about now, that there's methods for treatment. There's therapy, cognitive behavioral therapies that help them change how they think and change how they behave, which helps them feel much better and have better relationships. Dialectical behavior therapy, also known as DBT, has become quite popular for treating borderline personality disorder. So we see if they have borderline personality traits or disorder and they're a high conflict person, then they may have a chance of change, and so there's some hope, some optimism, and the research suggests if someone sticks with that method, DBT, for two to five years, they may outgrow the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. So borderline HCPs are maybe the most hopeful, but somebody, that somehow they have to get into therapy, into counseling for change. Now, narcissistic personalities, this is less likely to get into a change method because they feel they already know everything, and I remember as a therapist, I think I only had maybe three people with a narcissistic personality, whereas I worked with many people with borderline, probably a couple dozen, maybe more than that, 30 to 40 people over the 12 years of my therapy practice, and so the narcissistic personalities really don't think they have a problem and so they're not really invested in change. With that said, there are a few people that do develop some self-awareness and get into counseling or some program of change. Again, it's usually a more cognitive behavioral approach. There's a method called schema therapy, which has had some success with them and it helps them really look at the patterns of thinking, the schemas. Schemas are deeply held beliefs that they're often not conscious of, but they help them kind of peel the onion back to those deeply held beliefs, and so schema therapies had some success. They need therapists that are good at not taking things personally when their clients criticize them because all of these high conflict people criticize their therapists, but a good therapist can write that out just like a good parent can manage a five year old that's blaming them for not doing something right. Anyway, histrionic personality, some people have had some success. They often are really stuck in their own patterns of thinking and they're not seeking counseling, but they like being center of attention. So they get into therapy to some extent, but therapists get frustrated because they never follow their suggestions. So there's some drama there. Lastly is antisocial personality. So antisocial HCPs that are preoccupied with blaming others, antisocial is the least likely to change and may be more genetic pattern of behavior. They may really may be born with antisocial personality, which gets maybe half of them into criminal behavior and all of that, but we see them in legal disputes, business disputes, the book Snakes in Suits talks about antisocial people in business like on Wall Street and there's always a few people in the news like that. Anyway, they're the ones that seem the most hard wired to be the way they are. However, if people see signs when they're teenagers, this is often when there's problems start showing, that's a time when they might change. So teenagers with antisocial traits or conduct disorder have a chance for change. As adults, extremely unlikely. Megan Hunter: It brings to mind when you were talking about borderline personality disorder and the likelihood of change there, in my other company, the publishing company, Unhooked Books, we publish a couple of titles from Amanda Smith, who we've had on this podcast in the past. One is titled The Dialectal Behavior Therapy Wellness Planner, and the other is the Borderline Personality Disorder Wellness Planner for Families, but that DBT planner is designed specifically for someone who wants to change their behavior. They're in dialectical behavior therapy and they actually are affecting change, and this wellness planner kind of helps them track that change and why they're going off course of it, and so just the mere fact that there is something like this is good evidence that change can happen, and often with dialectical behavior therapy, at the end of it or maybe somewhere along the path, they no longer qualify for the diagnosis of borderline personality. So it's fantastic. Let's talk about what it takes to help them change. Bill Eddy: Yeah. This is real important for people to realize because they sometimes, a lot of people think, well, I get someone into counseling for six sessions and then they'll get over it, and so you think of things like anger management. Say someone you like has been physically abusive of their partner in an ongoing way and you think, "Well, he just needs six sessions of anger management and he'll stop doing that because he's really a nice guy other than doing that." Well, what you realize is doing that is part of a pattern and that we often see with high conflict people, there's a public persona and there's a private personality. Well, the public persona's part of the whole personality. And they've got maybe wide mood swings or antisocial behavior that's out of sight that you don't see. So you need to be able to recognize that people need more. So all of these people, all of our HCPs, high conflict people need really a more long term program of change, and so for example, I was just talking about physical abuse. So with that, there's batterers treatment groups, or they're not necessarily called batterers treatment, but treatment groups that may go on for 52 weeks, and that's really what's recommended and that gives people, majority are men who are engaged in that more extreme behavior, it gives them time to practice skills. And when we put together our six videos about domestic violence in family law cases with 16 experts is one of the experts talked about treatment for abusive people engaged in physical abuse, and he said in the 52 weeks, about 70% of them show significant change and are able to stop hitting, have developed some empathy, have learned some skills, and are really able to change some of their behavior, and we associate physical abuse certainly with high conflict people, that's a characteristic because they're blaming. That's why they're hitting people and they're not managing their emotions and they're doing extreme behavior. Megan Hunter: I thought it was interesting that you just said that some of them develop empathy. Bill Eddy: Yes. Megan Hunter: Let's talk about that because I think that might be surprising to some that that's even possible. Bill Eddy: That's one of the problems with high conflict people because they're so preoccupied with blaming others, they're not showing empathy for others, and two of the four cluster B personality disorders are known for that. Narcissistic personality, that's one of the characteristics is a lack of empathy, and antisocial, a lack of remorse, which includes empathy. So what he said was that they role play, that the men in the group role play being the spouse or partner of each other and talk about how it feels to be talked to in a demeaning manner, how it feels to talk about that you hit me and it made me not trust you, and so they find that with these practice exercises, that they do start developing some empathy. And in many ways in their own childhood, they may have been abused and not experienced a lot of empathy. So they find that they can teach empathy. They also talk a lot about their children and how their children must feel and the fears of their children, and some of them relate to that because when they were a child, they were afraid of what their parents were arguing and it was going to become violent. So they have exercises to walk them through what it feels like to be in the children's shoes, what it feels like to be in the spouse's shoes, and that's exciting to know the 70% seem able to learn that. He says the other 30% may be the anti-socials who really are stuck because it may be a more genetic tendency and that it's hard to rewire everything. Megan Hunter: Wow. That's fascinating. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Megan Hunter: And encouraging. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of all of these personalities, if they're going to change, it takes a long time, it takes a lot of repetition, and that means the people around them also need to reinforce the new skills that they're learning. So if they have lawyers, if they have therapists, if they're going to court, the judges need to communicate with them in ways that show empathy and firm this so that they learn that they can, and I remember being in court one day, it's a case before mine. I was a lawyer for a client and the judge was telling a man, he says, "I'm not giving you more parenting time yet because you're in a treatment program, but I'm pleased to see your progress and I hope in the future that you will be ready for more parenting time." And he said, "I really believe that you can change," and in that case, I really think the man had already demonstrated some change. He just needed to do more, and the guy had a tear in his eye, not the judge, the person at the table, the father in that case. There's this sense that the judge wanted him to succeed and that's the kind of thing high conflict people need is to know it's not about shame and blame because that triggers defensiveness. Instead, it's about learning better skills at managing their emotions and their behavior and their thinking. So what helps to change is repetition over a long period of time and an encouraging environment with the people around them. Megan Hunter: It's encouraging and quite exciting to think that people can experience some change and it really means that those around folks with high conflict personalities also have to change, right? So we have to adapt. We don't have to change our personality or our behavior, but how we address and communicate with this person. Would that be accurate? Bill Eddy: I think to some extent. I think it's important that it not mean we tolerate bad behavior. Instead, it means that we have empathy and we can give them what we call EAR statements, empathy, attention, and respect, and still set limits and say, "That's not okay, that thing you just, it's not okay and if you do that again, I can't work with you or you can't work here, or I'm going to need to move out," or whatever the limit setting is. So yes, it does include us approaching them differently, but not tolerating bad behavior and not treating them with disrespect. Megan Hunter: Okay. So final question. How does someone approach a person with a high conflict personality about change, or do you ever do that? Bill Eddy: This is a tricky question and the best parallel here, I think really is dealing with someone with a chemical dependency and addiction, alcoholism, et cetera because they need to get into a program of change and that's really been well established. So there's interventions where all the people close to someone, say, who's an alcoholic gets together and says, "You need to go into this treatment program or we're not going to be able to pay your rent anymore, let you use my car anymore. We're going to have to withdraw the supports that we've been providing," and that often gets the person to go into some kind of treatment program like a hospital program for a period of time. Some places are starting to do that with borderline personality disorder, I think narcissistic personality disorder, but if someone says, "Can you tell me what those places are?" I can't tell you. I've just heard through the grapevine. When I stopped being a therapist, I was already thinking about this and heard of a couple instances, but that's many years ago. Now, if someone just says, let's say it's to a partner and says, "I can't live with you any longer if you're behaving this way," you're going to get an explosion from the person if they have a high conflict personality. So it's often recommended to talk through with a therapist how you're going to approach that and maybe even get your partner to go to a therapist with you and discuss it there, where you have another person who's more neutral. The other thing is if you're dealing with this in a legal situation like a divorce, you want a divorce and you're afraid the person will become violent. That you should plan this out with a lawyer and you may even need to move out and then have your partner served with papers and take it from there. I've done consultations about small, tiny steps like that. So that's a possibility. Now, if you're in the workplace, sometimes employers say you need to get coaching. You're going to have to get some coaching. The healthcare industry's doing this, what they call disruptive physicians, say you have to get some coaching because as you said earlier, Megan, they don't want to fire them. They want to keep them, but they need them to change. I've done trainings and consultation with some high tech companies and they have brilliant people, but they say they have sharp elbows. And that's what they need to deal with. We wrote an article, we have it on our website called Fire or Keep High Conflict Employees, and it really talks about give them a try with coaching, but don't exhaust yourself with that. If they're not seeing any change after three or four coaching sessions, then maybe they do need to be moved out of the organization. So all of this, it's tricky and it's good to get some outside consultation or advice before approaching a high conflict person who may really explode when you set limits with them and say they have to change. Megan Hunter: Yeah. And I hear so many people say, "Well, I'm going to confront this person about their behavior, their high conflict personality." I like to just change that word from confront to address or have a discussion, communicate with, right? It's just less shaming, less blaming, and less judgemental and confronting. Words matter. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Let me just real briefly tell the quick story. I may have told this before, the three young women in their thirties who figured out their mother had a borderline personality disorder and they got together once, they had all come from different states and see their parents for the holiday and they said, "Mom, I want to sit down and talk with you. We figured out your problem. You have borderline personality disorder and there's treatment for that." Well, what did mom say? She said, "Get out of my house. I never want to see you again." Megan Hunter: Yeah. Bill Eddy: And they consulted with me for, how do we get back communicating with mom, and I said just little things over time. Start talk about the weather, talk about holidays, and don't ever talk about this again, and I think they worked their way back into connectedness, but they were sad because they wanted a closer relationship with her that just wasn't going to happen. So once their expectations changed, then they dealt with her differently, but they had that idea, we're going to confront her, and that did not go well. Megan Hunter: No, it never does. All right. Well this is a great discussion, Bill, and I hope it's been helpful to you, our listeners, as you navigate these challenging issues with your loved ones or coworkers or anyone in life. So thank you for listening and just remember that we don't diagnose, we don't label, we don't denigrate, we don't confront people about their high conflict personality. We just do what we can to help them get through life a little easier and we do have some control over that, but don't diagnose and don't label. Now next week, we'll take today's conversation one step further and talk about those who actually do catch on to the idea that they may have a high conflict personality or high conflict behaviors. Although, most people with a high conflict personality don't have this insight, some who are sort of maybe medium level, so to speak may have some insight and a desire to change. So basically, we're going to talk about what if I'm high conflict and if I am, what can I do? Listen in and find out. So send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to highconflictinstitute.com/podcast, and tell your friends about us and we'd be very grateful if you'd leave a review wherever you listen to our podcast, and I just want to say that for all of you who've been listening and you email us and let us know that you're listening to this, it means a lot to us. We see you, we hear you, and we're grateful for you. So until next week, have a great week and keep learning about high conflict behavior so you can manage it in your life and keep striving toward the missing piece. 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.