Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Q&A Lab - Answering Listener Questions
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 that are 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're the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In today's episode, we are taking listener questions, so thank you for sending those in to us. There's a lot of them. We'll get to a few today, mostly covering family situations, psychopathy, and ADHD. First, a couple of quick reminders. We'd love to hear from you about your high conflict situations. Have you dealt with someone with a high conflict personality, been a target of blame, experienced violence or abuse, or maybe you simply dread just seeing that person again, but might have to at home tonight or work tomorrow? Send us your questions, and we just might discuss them on the show. You can submit them by clicking the Submit a Question button at our website, highconflictinstitute.com/podcast; emailing us at podcast@highconflictinstitute.com; or dropping us a note on our socials. Please note that we are not diagnosing anyone in our discussions in any episode. We're just discussing patterns of behavior and how to improve interactions and manage relationships with someone who may have a high conflict personality. You'll find all the show notes and links at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast as well. Please give us a rate or review, and tell your friends, colleagues, or families about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation. We're very grateful. And now, on with the show. It's really great to be taking some listener questions and to see how many we have amassed since we started the podcast several months ago. Let's just dive right into the first one. "Hello, Bill and Megan. If a high conflict family member accuses you of basically not living up to their expectations, should I address the specific accusations from my perspective after providing empathy, attention, and respect? I'm new to the podcast and, so far, haven't heard about conflicts being discussed or resolved outright. Is the technique more of a deflection? Should I ignore hurtful comments?" Oh, I like that last one a lot. All right, Bill. What do you think? Bill Eddy: Well, this is an excellent question. It's really quite broad. I think we have in an earlier episode something about our CARS method, which is four steps, really, for dealing with conflicts. EAR statements that show empathy, attention, and respect are really one of several techniques that you can use. Your statements are often a place to start. As you said, it's good to, after you give empathy, attention and respect, then you may choose to deal with issues. Now, one of the things with family members who may have high conflict personalities is... We have a saying that's often helpful. That is, the issue is often not the issue. The personality is the issue. You need to really decide, is there a real issue here or is it just the way the person approaches all conflicts? They may just be blaming because that's how they approach all conflicts. That's one of the key characteristics of high conflict people with high conflict personalities. So first is deciding, is there an issue, really, that needs to be addressed here? Second thing is the past is often a quicksand when you get to dealing with high conflict people. You can just get stuck; you get deeper and deeper the more you try to resolve the past. In terms of resolving a past issue about past behavior, it's often just not going to be possible if this is their personality. Now, a reasonable person might say, "Well, gee, I wonder what my part was in that." High conflict people don't look at their part in things. They don't connect the dots back to what they did. You've got to decide, is this a real, current issue that needs to be addressed, or is this an old issue, and it may be better, just as you said here, deflecting from that subject and focus on something else? Now, we talk about analyzing options and choices. That's the A in the CARS method. Connect with empathy, attention and respect, then analyze options or choices. That's where you may choose to go if you have an issue that does need to be addressed about the future, how something is going to be handled, are you having somebody joining you for dinner, if this is a family issue, things like that. That's where it helps to look at choices and bounce it back to a high conflict person and say, "Well, here's the choices as I see it." Then maybe they'll choose choice A or choice B. It may not make you happy, but it may resolve things at this point, or for now. Another thing is acceptance. High conflict people don't accept the past and things that have happened. They keep fighting about the past, trying to relitigate the past and even change memories of the past, but that's really not going to help. In many ways, as human beings, we have a system of grieving and healing that we go through for loss. There may be something in the past that you regret, wish it could have happened otherwise, but again, it's in the past. You don't want to focus on the past. Especially with a high conflict person, focus more on the future. You may have to set limits with them and say, "If you do XYZ, then I'm going to have to do ABC. I can't be part of that." You can say what you can be part of, what you can't be part of. High conflict people may treat you badly in the family and yet expect you to do favors for them. Well, you might say, "If you do this, I can't do that anymore," those kinds of things. Those are the general principles. Last is, should I ignore hurtful comments? In many ways, it's often wise to ignore hurtful comments, because they're really not about you. They're about this person venting their frustration with what they've gotten themselves into. Megan Hunter: One of the hardest things in the world for a lot of people to do is ignore those hurtful comments, because they hurt, right? Bill Eddy: Yes, but much better to deal with those with somebody else who can be empathetic with you and say, "You know what someone said to me today? Megan, you know what someone said to me today? It was just horrible." And you can say, "Oh, that's too bad." Then I feel better. Whereas if I get that person to say, "Oh, that's too bad," which will never happen, I just get stuck in the quicksand again. Megan Hunter: Yeah. I see a lot of folks that do get in that quicksand, I guess having this wishful thinking or this false belief, or hopeful belief, I guess, that that person will have some empathy back, or some understanding or some insight. You just have to put that in a whole different column. You're just not going to reach that with them. You're not going to feel that empathy or that understanding. It just ends up going around in a circle, and you get right back in the quicksand. Bill Eddy: Yeah. I think that sums up, really. This is a good general question. Megan Hunter: Just one more note on it. The listener asked, "Is the technique more of a deflection?" I guess it's a deflection, but I'm curious, would you think of it as more of a diversion, diverting from conflict? Bill Eddy: I think it calms the conflict often, so that it maybe makes the conflict unnecessary. You switch to an EAR statement with empathy, attention, and respect. The other person calms down too, and now you may realize you don't really even have a conflict. I wouldn't say it's a deflection or a diversion all the time, but there may be times where you say, "Wow, I hear how you're feeling. I'm sorry. That's frustrating" or "I'm saddened that that's frustrating. Now let's talk about what we can do today," and in a sense, deflect or divert that issue, put it on a shelf somewhere, because it doesn't need to be addressed. Megan Hunter: Okay. Well, good. I hope that was helpful to the listener. I'm sure it was. Now we'll move on to an issue about a friendship. Here it is. "How do you decide when to use EAR statements and BIFF to create connection with an HCP, and when to just take distance or avoid them? I have an old friend who has many borderline high conflict personality attributes, which led to a pattern of volatile and very personal-feeling outbursts and manipulative behavior. I've expressed boundaries and discomfort with them in the past, but it only seems to trigger more intensity and blame, which makes me less enthusiastic to try again. I've often discussed with my own therapist the pros and cons of reaching out again with new techniques such as BIFF, but I'm wary of successfully recreating a connection that will be upsetting or difficult for me all over again in the long term." I think probably a lot of people do struggle with this. How do you make those decisions when you have a dilemma? Bill Eddy: Yeah, and it is a dilemma, a very real dilemma. The way I look at it is it's a question of how close or how far to be. The reality is we all have... They say our brains are made for about 150 relationships. We have people we're closest to, we're farther from, and that you to decide how close or how far to be. It really depends how severe it is, the person's behavior. If they have borderline personality traits and are a high conflict person, the high conflict part is blaming and the borderline part is generally mood swings. Some people have it very severe and very blaming, and you're probably better off to not even be in a relationship with them. But there's other people with borderline traits, for example, maybe even personality disorder, who can be delightful to be with, as long as you're good at setting limits and knowing when it's time to be separate from them, when to be together. It may come down to thinking about, is there a reason that I do want to be in a relationship with this person? Maybe this is somebody you like going to movies with, but if you're around them for four hours or longer, something is going to blow up and you'll get blamed for something. Maybe this is somebody you're in a club with, and you enjoy the club activities. Maybe you've been on a committee. In a low dose, it works fine, and this is a creative, friendly person. People with personality traits span the whole range of intelligence, abilities, all of this. It's just the difficulty in close relationships where they become blaming and angry and unable to manage their emotions. My answer to this person would be, are you interested in a relationship for some reason, and can you manage a relationship that gets the most out of it for that reason, without getting into the troublesome parts? If you can work that balance, then, of course, using EAR statements and written BIFF responses may be a way to reconnect, but be careful you don't raise expectations. That's the other huge, big area. Don't raise expectations now we're going to be best friends and get together every weekend. That's the thing, is set your expectations realistic. This really helps in the workplace. You get someone borderline high conflict behavior in the workplace, someone you start to get to know; get to know people step by step, so you see, "Whoa, is this someone..." It's easier to not get in too deep than to back off if you did. Ease your way in. Realize there's a lot of high conflict people out there. We estimate maybe 10% of people. Doesn't mean don't have a relationship. It means have good boundaries and manage your relationship, if you can. If you can't, then there's going to be some people you're healthier to not be around. It is a dilemma. Megan Hunter: What would be a healthy way to set a boundary, set a limit with someone? Let's say you've made the decision to reconnect with this friend, and you're going to try to take it slowly, step by step. How do you set a boundary about your time or what you'll tolerate? Bill Eddy: One thing is don't talk about your relationship with the person. That's something they recommend with alcoholics and addicts in recovery. They talk about their relationship with everybody, and it's too intimate. It draws people in too close and then things blow up. Instead, talk about things. Talk about outside things. Talk about interests. The description said, "I've expressed boundaries and discomfort with them in the past, but only seems to trigger more intensity and blame." That's exactly what happens if you talk about relationships with a high conflict person. They get defensive. Don't trigger defensiveness. You might say, "I've been out of touch for a while. It'd be nice to get together for dinner" or "It'd be nice to go to a movie." Then just do that activity and don't raise expectations of going beyond that. Megan Hunter: Being BFFs. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Remember, high conflict people and people with personality disorders, that comes out in close relationships, so maybe don't be as close. Then you may be able to have a stable friendship. Megan Hunter: Yeah. You can be a supportive friend without being too close. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Megan Hunter: Or too distant. Bill Eddy: It's finding that balance, not too rejecting, not too close. Yep. Megan Hunter: Right. Okay, good. Thank you for all that. Now we'll switch into a little bit different area here, and not necessarily our expertise. I think you'll have a lot to say about that, Bill, or a little bit to say. Here's the question. "Can you talk about ADHD behaviors that create chaos, confusion, and external projection that are very damaging for the non-ADHD person? Also, please talk about why it is very difficult to detect, especially when ADHD coexists with HCP traits." Bill Eddy: Well, this is a confusing area. ADHD is a mental health diagnosis, attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder, and it's not an area of specialization for us. We focus a lot on personality disorders and the interpersonal side of personality disorders, which is really the high conflict behavior in many cases, but not all. Now, attention deficit has some similarities. It's an area where people's functioning is impaired by, generally, the inability to pay attention, the energy of hyperactivity over a period of time. What happens is that can create chaos. The person isn't intending to, and often intends not to, but it's just part of their nature. It's like it emanates from within. It's beyond just cognitively telling yourself to calm down. People with ADHD just have this extra energy and lack of focus. If it overlaps with high conflict personality, again, the theme of high conflict personalities is blame, and so you get someone who's hyperactive, has a hard time focusing their attention, and it's all your fault. "Look at what I did. I spilled my soda, and it's your fault. You made me do this," that kind of thing. Or "I didn't get my project done, my paper in on time, and the dog ate the paper," or whatever it is. It's difficult focusing. The question really comes to, when it coexists with high conflict traits, you're going to feel the brunt of it if you're around someone like this. I've been told, and I'm not an expert on ADHD, but by people who are, that our techniques are very helpful for people with ADHD. Megan Hunter: Our meaning High Conflict Institute's what-to-do techniques, right? Bill Eddy: Exactly. Megan Hunter: With high conflict situations. Yeah. Bill Eddy: Yeah, the skills we teach, so EAR statements, empathy, attention, respect, "I can see how frustrated you are, and I recognize that," something like that. Our BIFF, brief, informative, friendly, and firm, writing. Setting boundaries is such a big issue with high conflict people, and that's an issue with ADHD, is people can't stop themselves, so you need to stop them and say, "You need to sit down right now. I need to tell you some things. If you don't sit down and let me tell you some things, I'm going to have to leave and do something else for right now," something like that. Maybe they're yelling at you over the phone. You say, "You're going to have to stop yelling at me on the phone, or I'm going to hang up. I see you've chosen for me to hang up. Okay, let's talk later when you can be calmer." Things like that are helpful with ADHD. If it's a big problem, you need to consult with someone that really specializes in that, a therapist, for example. Sometimes, for some people, medication is helpful. Those are some possibilities. But from the skills for dealing with high conflict people, yes, they really can be applied with ADHD. Megan Hunter: Right. I've just been reading some research on overlap between borderline personality disorder and ADHD. Because the overlap between them includes things like impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, and interpersonal impairment, it can really make the diagnosis very difficult. It's less important, like you said, to really focus on maybe the labeling of it or figuring out what it is, and instead focus on what to do and using the skills, because those skills really work across the board with any upset people and people who are needing those around them to help them by setting some limits. Bill Eddy: One thing to add here is all the skills we teach, EAR statements, BIFF responses, setting limits, making proposal, we've just got, I don't know, dozens at this point of skills, don't hurt anybody. You don't have to figure out, "Does this person have a diagnosis of something? Therefore, I'm going to write a BIFF response." You write a BIFF response to healthy, ordinary people, to anybody. Think of these as healthy, practical people skills. Megan Hunter: Yeah. I know you love the people skills terminology, and I do too, because this is what it's about. It's about people skills. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Megan Hunter: Another listener submitted a question about ADHD, and I think we've answered most of it. They're also asking, is the person who's responding to someone with HCP, with a high conflict personality, if they have ADHD, could it get messy? Again, I think we probably just would say, let's focus on the skills, right? Bill Eddy: Exactly, in other words. But keep in mind, if things get messy, is you always have choices yourself in how close to be or how far to be. In some ways, this is similar to the question from before. You don't have to accept bad behavior towards you. The question is, can you manage the relationship, or do you need to get more distance in the relationship, or is this a relationship that needs to end? Those are all dilemmas with no clear-cut answer. You have to figure yourself, often with the help of a therapist. We always encourage counseling if you're dealing with someone who's difficult. Megan Hunter: Yeah. If you're not in a position to be able to attend some kind of counseling, I've found that people can do a little bit of analysis themselves, like using analyzing options in our CARS method. A way I've been looking at it lately is saying, "You've got a dilemma." HCPs bring us dilemmas, and we have to make decisions about them. Because we have our own default of how we make decisions in relation to our relationships with other people, using these skills like BIFF and EAR can take a little bit more time, because we forget sometimes; we just automatically react. I've found that using a dilemmas-and-decisions list is a great way to analyze options. The first part is just that it slows you down. Instead of just reacting, you're saying, "Okay, I need to stop. I need to do something different here and figure out what choices I do have." Then make that list of all your options in the matter about the dilemma. Then cross out any that are coming from your own strong emotion that may be pretty negative or aggressive, anything that's extreme, anything that is defensive. Basically, you're left with the best option, both for you and for the other person. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Those are good suggestions. Megan Hunter: Yeah. I've been using this a lot in coaching. What I've found is every week there's a new dilemma. "What do I do about this, Megan?" I say, "Okay, do a dilemmas-and-decisions list, and then analyze it." It's really fascinating. It's almost magical what they end up with, because it just strips away all of your own high conflict thinking or your overly emotional thinking, because you're emotionally hooked perhaps, and maybe some of your thoughts are a little jumbled because you are emotionally hooked. I've found it to be pretty useful, and hopefully that would be helpful in any situation like this. Bill Eddy: That's helpful with ADHD because it helps the person focus, people around them and the person themselves. That's a real good suggestion. Megan Hunter: Nice. All right, so now we're going to take yet another huge shift and we'll go back to a question about a current world event, the war in Ukraine and Putin. We did an episode on this a few weeks ago. I know, Bill, you've written an article that's received quite a lot of attention about Putin being, perhaps, a malignant narcissist. The question is, "How did you come to suggest malignant narcissism rather than psychopath in regards to Putin?" Bill Eddy: It's really easy. I think he qualifies easily for both. They're slightly different types of diagnosing. With psychopath, you're often talking about people in the prison population. You're talking about people who not only lack empathy and remorse, but may enjoy hurting other people. The mental health professionals, the psychologists and all, have a Psychopathy Checklist of 22 questions that they ask. There's a lot of studies done with prisoners, and many of them fit this. I'm not going to go through this because we're not teaching people to diagnose other people in this show, but more to be aware of the types of problems. The background. Yeah, so you've got he really doesn't have empathy, doesn't have remorse, is happy to lie and deceive. We've seen that so well. There's the conning aspect. These characteristics that I'm describing right now, lying, deceiving, and conning, also go with antisocial personality disorder, which is part of the malignant narcissist. That's a narcissist plus antisocial personality. But not getting too deep into diagnoses, you can read that article, as Megan mentioned, is to realize there really are people out there like this. That's what catches people by surprise. People really don't believe there are people willing to be this harmful and destructive. To be frank, I think political leaders have been caught by surprise of how willing Putin has been to be a butcher, really, and to wipe out communities. The thing is, we talk all the time about patterns of behavior. Whatever it's called, look at his patterns. He did this in Syria. He did this in Chechnya. He did this in Crimea. He's a sneaky, dangerous guy. Maybe that's the best diagnosis. If you know you're dealing with a sneaky, dangerous guy, you want to get people together to set limits on them, and you want to get out if you're in a relationship with them. They can exist in a one-to-one level. They can exist in communities and the workplace. They can exist in almost any group of people. Most don't have this, but some do. The psychopath, they say, is about 1% of the U.S. population. About 4% have the antisocial or sociopath personality. That's a lot of people if you're looking at one out of every 25. If you've got 150 friends, you may have one or two of these folks. The thing is, we don't want to scare people. We just want to make people aware and to realize, in today's world, it helps for you to know there's some people you need to be cautious around. Megan Hunter: For me, that was new information, about our brains have room for about 150 relationships. I find that fascinating, number one, and number two, especially in relation to social media, where some people have hundreds or thousands of so-called friends. I know many are just followers, especially for celebrities, but for those of us who... Not me or you, of course. We're not into social media. But a lot of people do have hundreds of friends on there. I think it's just got to be overwhelming for the mind to try to think of all of those. Although, I guess if your brain has capacity for just 150, it'll probably tell you to slow down or stop, right, at some point? Bill Eddy: Well, maybe I should say 150 meaningful relationships. Megan Hunter: Meaningful. Yeah. Bill Eddy: This doesn't mean close, so maybe coworker relationships, people whose names you know, and you know something about them. If you figure relatives, and if you've been around for a few years, you can think of people that fit in... I have a college roommate that's probably one of those 150. I've got some other friends who I don't see very often, but they're in that 150. Some of the research suggests that, as human beings, if you go back in time, before we became agricultural and we were hunter-gatherers, that we tended to live in communities of about 150 people, so that our brains may really have adapted to having a community that size. That makes today's world very confusing because many of the people you deal with today you know nothing about, but they'll confuse you because they'll act like a friendly person. That's where we get people like Putin as leaders, and countries thinking, "Oh, this is a good guy. He'll make us feel good," without realizing, "Hey, is this guy a con artist? Is this guy deceptive, lying, all of that?" Our brains are trusting, and in today's world, you've got to be a little more cautious. Megan Hunter: That's so true. I was thinking about my 150, and faces and names start popping into my mind. Fortunately, I can still remember the names. Just in my family alone, I come from a large, large family, and there's at least 150 right in that, so there's my community. I'm full up. Anyway, well, that was really fascinating. You'll find a link to our books and some more links to articles and some courses that we have for both professionals and individuals to learn how to use BIFF and EAR and setting limits and making choices and proposals and all kinds of things. Those will be in the links. One of the best books if you want to learn about the CARS method and really understanding the different personality types is It's All Your Fault!: 12 Tips for Managing Others Who Blame Others for Everything. Sorry, I'm trying to remember the subtitle off the top of my head. Bill wrote this, I think back in 2008 or '09, and it's a classic. It's the standard. It's where we point people, really, for getting some really good information. You can get that anywhere books are sold. Next week, you'll want to listen in as we have a special guest. Her name is Catherine Mattice. She's the founder and CEO of Civility Partners, which is an HR consulting firm focused specifically on helping organizations create respectful and positive workplace cultures. We've been doing a lot more work in this, and getting a lot of requests from organizations about bullying and just workplace culture and high conflict situations. She'll be talking with us about civility, bullying, and all those workplace conflict issues, so you won't want to miss it. Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, or submit them to highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. Until next week, have a great week. Keep learning about high conflict patterns of behavior so you can avoid it in your life, manage it in your life, and influence those around you who may have a high conflict personality. In that way, you will find the missing peace, P-E-A-C-E. It's All Your Fault is a protection of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at truestory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.