Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / High Conflict in Court: Managing Charm, Control, and Challenging Testimony
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 with the most challenging interactions with humans, those involving high conflict people. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:21): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:22): We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and conflict influencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict, both in professional life and personal life. So welcome back to the podcast, our faithful listeners. We're so glad you're back. We've been gone a few weeks on our hiatus as per usual. Bill's been busy writing a book. There's very few people that can write a book in, I don't know what it take, two months bill. Speaker 2 (00:58): Yeah, one or two months typically, but I think about them for at least a year before I start writing. So it's not as short a time as it sounds like, Speaker 1 (01:08): And it's not like full-time, one or two months, it's just when you have time, right? Speaker 2 (01:12): That's how it seems to work. But summer is good. Fewer interruptions, so we got it done. Speaker 1 (01:19): Yeah, yeah, and it's great. So we're going to make an announcement about that very soon, so keep staying tuned for that. What we're going to talk about today is first of all about jury trials or any kind of trials and maybe depositions too. And even if you've never been in a trial, you might've watched one. I'm an avid trial watcher. I just love watching how the law works. I love watching how humans behave under just the most challenging circumstances. So it's been a very exciting summer for someone who's a trial watcher because there have been a lot of big trials and one of them just wrapped up yesterday. This was the Donna Adelson trial. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. A 75-year-old woman who was convicted just yesterday, as I said, of conspiracy to commit murder solicitation. And I think one more, and it sounds terrible, sentencing a grandmother to life in prison, that sentence hasn't come out yet, but that's a likely outcome. Speaker 1 (02:27): Now, I'll give you a little background on this, and Bill, I know you've heard of the trial, but you probably aren't as familiar with it as I am since I'm an avid trial watcher. But this is a case that started in the divorce world. It was a case between a couple of young parents. They were both lawyers. I say young probably in their thirties. They had a couple of young children. This is way back in 20 11, 20 12, somewhere around there. They lived in Tallahassee, Florida. He was a law professor and she was also a lawyer and did very important work, had two small children, they end up divorcing, which was unfortunate. And somewhere along the way, a relocation was filed so she could move with the children to South Florida down by Miami. For those of you outside the country, might not know that. So Tallahassee's farther north, if the relocation were approved by the court, they'd be moving away from their father. Speaker 1 (03:25): So he wasn't keen on that. Long story short, what the prosecutors were going for in this trial was to show that it was this mother, the grandmother, Donna Adelson, who was kind of the mastermind in a conspiracy to have her daughter's husband, ex-husband murdered so that her daughter and children could move to South Florida and be near them. There's a whole lot of things to it, and you don't have to know everything, except if you want to, you can go watch it on YouTube all you want, many co-conspirators. So I'm watching the trial and I watched this prosecutor asking question after question to witness after witness throughout the trial and doing a really spectacular job of it. Very masterful. So then I went back and looked at the trial that happened a year ago, and it was Donna Adelson's son, and he's the one that kind of knew who was who in the zoo, and he walked on the good side and the bad side. Speaker 1 (04:27): He was an orthodontic surgeon. So he is very successful and ran in very successful circles, but he also had this darker side where he knew some people in the criminal element. And it was through that then that he eventually was found guilty of the murder hiring hit men. It's just one of those really complicated stories. But to this point, when he was on the stand, we have the same prosecutor in his trial as we had in his mother's trial, and she's just as masterful a year ago as she was this year. But what the difference was in asking Charlie, the son on the witness stand in his own trial a year ago, I watched him try to tie her up in knots and I saw her get very intimidated, my words intimidated, but maybe just kind of stumped sometimes because he would turn questions around on her, he would tell her she was flat out wrong, he would smirk sometimes he would challenge her, and he was so confident and arrogant, the smirking and all of that. So it made me think, wow, she's done such an amazing job, masterful job with all of the witnesses. And I'm not saying she didn't with him, but I noticed a difference because he was pushing back. So I'm curious about that Bill, because as an attorney, if you have someone either on the witness stand or even in a deposition and they're turning that around on you, that's tough. What do you do? Speaker 2 (06:07): Well, I think there's several things. The most important is be prepared for that is expect that some of the witnesses you're going to be interviewing, whether a deposition or on trial, are going to be like this. Essentially, if they have bully personalities, they're going to be bullies with everybody. And the goal for bullies is to dominate, and they really don't like to be dominated. And when you're on trial for murder and it's the prosecutor asking you questions, you're being dominated by the process, the legal process. And so if this is part of his personality, and this could be a woman like this as well, so man or woman's personality, and you should know in advance a little bit about their personality. If you think to yourself, okay, this person's a bully. There's enough, they're accused of, and there's other examples that tell me they're a bully, whether they're guilty or not, that they may have a bully personality, then I'm going to have some trouble with this person. So some of what's recommended first is to be prepared, anticipate what they're going to say or do to wiggle out of answering a question. And also what they're going to say. I mean, there's the saying that you should know the answer to every question you Speaker 2 (07:42): Ask in a deposition or trial. In fact, that's part of the benefit of a deposition. You already know how they're going to answer and then you then have a trial. But depositions are more of a civil law thing. Anyway. So with that, there's a few other things. If you think in terms of dominance, then it's important not to show that you're rattled, that you're upset about this, that they've got to you instead is to be matter of fact, calm, composed, and focus it back on them and say, asked and answered. Sometimes they say things that have already, they say, well, you asked me that before already, or whatever is just move on or say you haven't answered the question. Once again, the question is such and such so that it looks like you're prepared for their pushback and it hasn't had an impact on you. Speaker 1 (08:45): So you're right, you have to be prepared for that because I watched this guy come in prepared. He's a doctor, he's extraordinarily intelligent, he has great mastery of the English language, and he came prepared, he came prepared with his story, and he knew that case backwards and forwards. He would pin her down on dates of conversations that happened 10 years prior and almost got it turned around. So he had an explanation for everything. He had an answer for everything. He came in smiling, sharp, professional and slick. And I think we want to think that bullies are going to come in looking tough and grumpy, but it's actually quite the opposite. And that's what we saw here. And I could see her, in my view, it seemed that her confidence did ebb a little bit. And I mean, I can't imagine why it wouldn't. It was a tough deal. And in the moment you are there for the world to see you're in front of your legal peers. This is a life at stake, right? There's so much at stake here. And then now the trials are on our broadcast, live on YouTube, on TV and things. So that's a lot of pressure. So I think to your point about being prepared, it's an absolute must. Speaker 2 (10:07): Yeah. I think also with the staying calm and matter of fact is to have some phrases that can fit any situation. So you might have a response like, well, that's an interesting answer, but sir, you didn't answer the question. The question is such and such, Speaker 1 (10:30): Just keep coming back. Speaker 2 (10:32): You turn it back. And so you keep the focus on them, but you point out that they've gone off the focus that they didn't answer the question that they've wandered off and you're staying on track. So it lets them know you're staying on track and confident, but also lets them know he's not following the rules. And I think that's something that people just aren't prepared for. And prosecutors are used to people feeling intimidated because they're being accused of big crimes and such. And so in many ways, we know criminal defendants are often on their best behavior when they're on trial. There's this comparison, family law and criminal law. In family law, you have good people acting at their worst. And in criminal law, you have the worst people acting at their Speaker 1 (11:29): Best. Nice. Speaker 2 (11:32): And so they want to look cooperative. So prosecutors in a sense, are dominating the witness, the defendant, especially just because of the structure of things Speaker 2 (11:44): And they're trying the defendant's eager to please, well, it catches people off guard with these kind of really high conflict, bully dominant type of defendants. And so you have to be prepared that they're not going to accept your dominance. And so you're going to have to perform moment to moment like jiu-jitsu or something where they're coming at you and you spin it around back to them. In many ways, I think that's the kind of thing that works, but you have to be not just prepared for what they're going to argue with you about, but prepared for how you're going to look. And appearance seems to be a lot. I think what we've learned about bullies and a lot of high conflict people is they operate at a more image level. Face and voice are in a sense, a more primitive level of communication that we're not used to because we're responsible people and have to get along. They do bullying behavior, which most people aren't really used to in a structured setting like a trial. So be prepared for that and have a generic response as well as what the specific pushback will be and be ready for that. Speaker 1 (13:13): And I think being that preparation point is thinking of yourself as an anchor. I'm not going to let this person sway me with his or her charm or with the bullying tactics and dominating tactics. And that's what we really saw in this case. Just a lot of, I'm going to dominate you. I'm going to make you look stupid, right? Speaker 2 (13:33): Yeah. Now think in terms of percentages. I get a little bit into personality disorders here, that antisocial personality is the one most associated with crime. About three to 4% of adults appear to have antisocial. There's a lot of different studies that come out with numbers like that, mostly between three and 4% of adults. Well, what characteristics you think of antisocial as this kind of mysterious, dangerous looking person with the music going dark, all of that. And the thing is, one of the characteristics of antisocial personality, one of the criteria in diagnosing that actually is conning and deceit, that they are the best at looking like victims. Looking like innocent people, looking like desirable people, being seductive, being charming. The most charming people in the world are antisocial and narcissists because they invest in, Speaker 1 (14:52): And I would add to it, charming and confident, confidently charming, right? Speaker 2 (14:57): Yes. Speaker 1 (14:57): It's the confidence. And I guess there's obviously conman comes from it's that I didn't do it. You're accusing me of something, but no, I absolutely didn't do that. And it starts to, you see how it can put a question mark over people's heads when there's that confidence attached to it, Speaker 2 (15:16): Right? And when they say, I didn't do it, and they add to that facial expression, tone of voice that's very confident. Like you say, that accesses, and let me know if I get too technical here, but I think that accesses what some people call our lower mind, that we share seven emotional systems with all mammals, and that's our lower mind. It's fear, rage, lust, caring, all of these things. And yet humans were different. We also have a higher mind that runs the show most of the time, Speaker 1 (15:59): Most. Speaker 2 (15:59): But if you're afraid enough, if people can make you afraid and you just have your pure emotions, then what accesses those and makes you more afraid and more befuddled are extreme words. So when they say, absolutely, I did not do that, but you absorb is the emotion that goes with that, which is, oh, well, they absolutely didn't do it. The lower mind is very literal. If somebody says something's true, the lower mind goes, oh, I guess it's true. Speaker 1 (16:35): Must be true Speaker 2 (16:36): And doesn't think further about it. And comes mostly from the face and voice of the person, which antisocial. And to some extent, narcissists are really good at contorting to look like they're really sincere people. That's why I recommend to a lot of family lawyers, don't put that person on the stand in hopes you'll upset them. And they'll show the judge that they're really a domestic violence perpetrator. They're going to yell and be violent. You're not going to get that. You're going to get the cold, charming, reasonable person and they're going to make themselves look more innocent than before you put them on the stand, even though they're totally guilty. Speaker 1 (17:24): And you're going to get so frustrated. Speaker 2 (17:27): Yes. So while my background is family law and some family law trials, I think in criminal law that sometimes people aren't prepared for that personality. And you need to realize that's a high percent of people who are in criminal law trials are people, these antisocial traits. Speaker 1 (17:51): And like you said before, we have a preconception in our minds of what they might look like or Speaker 1 (17:58): How they're going to show up. And I think in this case, you have someone who is trying to dominate obviously throughout and combined with high intelligence, and that's just a tough one. So look, props to the prosecutor. She did an amazing job. She did great, and she got a conviction. So he is in prison now. Sadly, someone lost their life through this. One last note on it before we move on. It was kind of laid out in closing arguments that so many people involved in this case, there were a couple of three hit men, basically their children all lost, their parents all in prison. Now Speaker 1 (18:43): The man who was murdered, his kids lost their parent. They've now lost their uncle and Charlie, he's in prison. His son lost his father. Now the grandmother's in prison. And these things impact so deeply and widely. And that's what I saw with all the trials I watched in the last few months, which I'll be bringing up in future podcast episode. Never fear. Anyway, well thanks for that, bill. Let's move along to a listener question. We were off air for what, six weeks or so, and a lot of questions came in and they're just really good, they're fascinating, and they're just everyday questions that people are having to deal with in live. The first one is from Stephanie. She says, hello there. I'm a counselor and a therapist. I'm a stepfamily specialist and work from a somatic trauma lens in my work as an adjunct to teach counselors the complexity of family systems. Speaker 1 (19:43): Your work is frankly missing or shows up in just a paragraph. I would love to be a part of changing that. Yay, go, Stephanie. We would do, my question is based on a lack of empathy in high conflict personalities, personality disorders, specifically those in cluster B. I have experienced many clients who have little to no empathy for people they know in all environments, but have an overactive empathy or attachment for animals and strangers, such as getting on advocacy projects and nonprofits and such. In the past, I've associated that with heavy childhood trauma and an inability to trust humans. So they give all their empathy to animals because animals are safe. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject, and I think we've talked about this a bit in the past, bill, and I think it's something we both have observed as well. There's kind of an over empathy in some, not all high conflict people. I think it's just some, we will talk about the childhood trauma, but I think relationships are hard for, these are interpersonal disorders that make it difficult to have close relationships. So a relationship with a pet may be much easier. It will definitely be much easier than with a human. They don't talk back and they're always there for you. So I see it a couple of ways how nice that they have that love, but they aren't really getting the practice in relationships with humans that they could get. So I'm interested on your take on this. Speaker 2 (21:18): Well, I have a lot of thoughts about this, and one of the leading techniques we teach is ear statements E for empathy, empathy, attention and respect that it's a two-way street in many ways. If you give empathy, you're more likely to get empathy. Also, if you don't show empathy, people around you are going to not want to show empathy either. So here's my thinking at this point about it is that most human beings seem to have some degree of empathy at birth, and they see six month olds being soothing another child at the daycare center or something like that. A little bit of that. On the other hand, it seems like much of empathy is learned and is learned in the first five, six years of life, and that if you have parents that show you empathy, you're going to absorb that. That's modeled for you. Speaker 2 (22:25): But empathy in many ways is something you feel. It's like, I feel this for this other person. And I mentioned earlier that we share with all mammals, seven emotional systems, and one of them is caring. And another is what the researchers and the researchers I'm quoting from have a book called The Archeology of the Mind. And they look at how history of brain development and such. But the point is they have this other emotional system called panic grief, and it's not real clear from that what it means. But what I interpret from how they explain it is that we care about other people, especially when people are in a state of panic or grief. We want to help them. And you see that with animals too, when there's an injured animal or something that there's just an intense trying to help you see this in elephants in Africa. Speaker 2 (23:33): You see this in all the different mammals. And so I think that it's partly inborn, partly learned in early, but it's also somewhat cultural that there's people you should hate and people you should care about. So it's something that can be influenced, and that's why we give air statements. We want to influence a conversation to work with. Someone comes out and says, you're a piece of dirt. You've done everything wrong. I hate you. You're impossible. And you respond within your statement is, I really hear your frustration. Tell me more. I want to pay attention to your concerns. Or I can see this is a hard day for you. And it's like a lot of people melt with that. It's like, oh, I don't have to fight you. You're coming on as a friend, so it's variable Speaker 1 (24:35): And you made it all about me. Speaker 2 (24:37): Right? Speaker 1 (24:38): Which is what the high conflict personality needs, right? Speaker 2 (24:41): Yeah. They point the finger to blame and you don't care. And I'm the victim here and stuff like that. Anyway, so that's general information. But we know we have two personalities in particular that are known for their lack of empathy. And once again, the antisocial personality and the narcissistic personality, I mean, that's one of the criteria for narcissists is a lack of empathy. So it's built in for some people, maybe even from birth, they or early childhood lack this empathy. But then there's 10 personality disorders and they're tied up with their internal distress and social impairment. And one of the big studies looked across all the personality disorders, see what they had in common. And one of the things they found they had in common is an inability to care about the needs of others. And to me, that's basically lack of empathy and that all 10 have that. Speaker 1 (25:52): Interesting. Speaker 2 (25:53): Yeah. But you mentioned Megan, that some people seem to have too much, and we think often of borderline personality disorder with that. These are people who really care about their partners, about their children and cling in many ways and just have all this empathy, but it puts the relationship out of balance as well. And some people would say maybe that's not empathy, that it's really attachment that they want to feel secure. You have an analogy, I think, Megan, where it's like the air hose when you're in outer space that they'll die if they can't connect to you, your air supply, right? Speaker 2 (26:42): Anyway. So I think understanding there's a set of people with difficulty with this and that to some extent, I think people can learn. When we did that series, remember Megan, the series of interviews with domestic violence experts, one of them, I remember I asked them, there was three of us interviewing 16 experts. I asked them, can you teach domestic violence perpetrators, empathy? And he said, I think so. And part of what we do is we give them examples of talking to their son or daughter and seeing what they feel like when they see them hit the other parent, things like that and exercises where they learn empathy for what do you think the other person is going through? And he said, maybe 70% can learn some empathy and strengthen that empathy. And the 30% is pretty much the antisocial. Speaker 1 (27:54): Makes sense. Speaker 2 (27:54): You can to some extent, I think it's worth trying. And certainly in family court cases, we try to get people into counseling and learn some skills and learning ear statements is one of the ones that we eventually teach people. Speaker 1 (28:12): Yeah, it's a little bit of a complex area because we're talking about some who do have this overactive empathy and they're fiercely loyal to a family member or to the concept of family. And almost, I think the empathy can be overdone or misplaced maybe is a better way to put it, where they're putting so much effort into a nonprofit or helping other people and yet sacrifice themselves. So while this personality type may be very self-absorbed, it can also be, and here's the nuanced part, very focused on others, so much so that they don't focus on the true needs of themselves first. So we see that empathy going out there, and it is a fascinating journey. I think that a lot of people go on and as they heal in their growth, then they start to get more of a balance. And they're probably always going to have that high level of empathy, but maybe get some empathy for themselves as well. Speaker 2 (29:21): And people can give themselves encouraging statements, say, you can do this, you can make this, you can get through this. You've done it before. So that's one of the things we teach is people to give themselves encouraging statements or empathy, attention, respect, statements. One thing I wanted to add, I just remembered is that we're talking about people who don't seem to have empathy for each other, but they have empathy for animals. And one thing I see is it's not unusual that people have difficulty with other people that have decent relationships with pets. And I think it's because it's the lack of the threat, but also in many ways the control. It's like, I can control my relationship with you so I can care about you because I'm not worried you're going to leave me. Speaker 1 (30:19): Just feels a lot safer, right? It's just less to fight against. Speaker 2 (30:23): Exactly. But also this comes up with children. There's a lot of people who we see, for example, with narcissistic traits or borderline traits who seem to be decent parents, but they can't get along with a partner. Being able to see those relationships as different things has helped in family law where we've got parenting plans where parents will have almost no contact with each other, what's called parallel parenting, and yet they may each have half the time with the child and generally have a decent relationship with the child because they don't feel that threat that brings out their most adversarial behavior. Speaker 1 (31:10): Right. Well, thank you for that question, Stephanie. That was fantastic. We're going to do one last quick one here, and it is from Lorraine. She says, the high conflict person seems rehearsed in their demands. How can we non-high conflict people assert ourselves quickly when we haven't had time to process a response. We hear this all the time, don't we, bill? It's like, how do we stop in that moment? It can be the hardest thing in the world to do. She says, it always seems that they view me as not having any me as not having any boundaries. The effort required to defend my territory and boundaries doesn't seem worth it. And she says, this is isn't a co-parenting situation. So how do we assert ourselves quickly? I like to say what I teach in the conflict influencer classes is stop before engaging. It's one of those befores you have to remember, I can't engage. I just have to stop. I can't take the bait. I can't do what I would ordinarily do in every other situation. Speaker 2 (32:12): Well, to me, I think it comes all back to preparation that we need to practice conversations with people that accuse us of things or push back or all of that so that we're physically comfortable with not being pushed around with having some favorite phrases. And one of mine is it's not about me. I tell these to myself and they say, you've done everything wrong, bill, Eddie. And I'm thinking to myself, even though they're saying my name, it's not about me. Something that's going on for them, Speaker 1 (32:51): For them. Speaker 2 (32:51): And that really helps me pause and think, let me think what's going on for them. What do they need right now? Oh, I'm going to give 'em an your statement. And something about them that I have empathy for or respect or just one of the most common is Tell me more. I want to understand what's going on. That gives me time to think. And often when they say more, it's very different from the first thing they've said that you've done everything wrong, and then you find out they're having a really bad day. And somebody else didn't treat them with respect that they thought they should have and that I was the next person they came contact with. So having some phrases that help you pause, but also practicing conversations where people push back at you and you don't get pushed over because boundaries are a huge issue in society today and relationships. Speaker 2 (33:52): And that of course comes down to the book that we just put out starting getting ready to put out Slick solutions, SLIC, setting limits and imposing consequences in two and a half steps. You can't just set limits, so you can't talk to me that way with high conflict people. You need to say, you can't talk to me, me that way. And if you do, then I'm going to end the conversation or I'm going to turn this over to the district attorney or whatever it is. They need to know that you can't be pushed around. And there's another phrase that I like, and that is, even I have limits, right? So if they think you're a pushover and you have a lot of empathy, that you also have limits, and letting them know that, letting yourself know that helps you not get pushed around as easily. Speaker 1 (34:52): Yeah, I love that. Be prepared. And it's okay to let people know that you have limits. So stopping yourself in that moment means being prepared every single day, and then it becomes habit, and then it becomes this place of freedom in your mind, in your relationship where you don't feel hooked, you don't feel like you're taking the bait every time, so it just becomes your new norm. So thank you for that Bill. And thank you all of you listeners, we appreciate you so much. We still, wherever we go, we have people comment up and say, I've been listening to your podcast. It's not like they're recognizing us on the street necessarily, but if we're in a training or something, maybe you Bill, they might recognize you more. But anyway, we're very grateful. Speaker 1 (35:45): So we'll put a few links in the show notes. We'd love it if you'd give us a hit that like button or give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen, tell your friends about us. We'd love to help even more people. So keep learning, keep practicing the skills and be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True Story fm for high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.