Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / High Conflict Under the Microscope: Unveiling New Insights from a Summer of Reflection
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those that involve someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:23): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:24): We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. Speaker 1 (00:39): So this is the first episode of season three. Welcome back, all of our listeners. We're so happy to have you back again in season three. We took a brief hiatus the last couple of months and we're feeling very refreshed and ready to get back to work and talk about everything to do with high conflict in our travels. These past few months, we've been surprised when people at our training say they've been listening to this podcast and we're just very grateful for that and humbled, to be honest. Ultimately, we we're very thrilled that our work helps people everywhere. In today's episode, we're going to talk about some key points we've learned during our time away from recordings for this podcast. So it's kind of like what we learned over summer vacation. Speaker 2 (01:30): That's right. Speaker 1 (01:31): Bill's been doing a lot of writing, I've been doing a lot of training, and we just learned something new everywhere we go. And we're going to share some of those insights with you today. First though, a couple of notes send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find the show notes and links. Alright, well hi Bill. Welcome back. Speaker 2 (01:57): It's good to be back. It feels like back to school. There's a lot to teach and a lot to learn. Speaker 1 (02:02): Absolutely. So where have you been these past couple of months? Speaker 2 (02:06): Went this early summer, may, June. Went to the UK where I hadn't really explored and visited before and spent some time in Scotland meeting with our shared Parenting Scotland people who were using our new Ways for Families coaching method. Got to do a couple days of training, got to meet in their parliament building, which because you were there too, that was very exciting to be introduced by a member of parliament in Scotland. But then my wife and I went on a cruise around the British Isles, so not only were we in England, we went to Wales, which is a beautiful little country, of course back to Scotland. So I got to visit Edinburgh twice and also Ireland, Dublin and Belfast. So that part was the vacation. Then back here, got another vacation in a couple weeks ago going up the West Coast, visiting friends in Northern California, Oregon, Seattle. Almost made it to Victoria but came down with Covid. But I had no symptoms. I just tested positive because I was around someone who was positive. But that's all gone now and I never felt affected by it, but people should know it's still floating around out there, so still be a little bit aware and careful. Speaker 1 (03:38): Absolutely. Speaker 2 (03:38): So if you catch a cold and you're wondering what's up with this test yourself, because you might want to be a little less around other people for a few days. Speaker 1 (03:49): Absolutely. Well it sounds like a really good summer bill. And as for me, as you mentioned, was there in Scotland too and got to visit with in Edinburgh and went up to the Isle of Sky and see some what they call Harry Cos, which is their name for their Scottish breed of cattle. So that was kind of fun, had a lot of great times. Went to Loch Ness and then came back home and where else did I go? I went to Colorado this summer for vacation, which was really, really lovely. And the best part was being on a lake the whole time, just in our backyard basically. And watching moose moms with babies would come and eat every day and swim through the lake and actually got very territorial with each other. It was kind of interesting. We had a little high conflict drama between moose mamas, so it was a lot of fun and a few other little trips. Speaker 1 (04:44): Oh, well, I guess a big trip. I went to Australia in June and so Australia listeners, if I saw you there or you saw me, I hope we had a chance to talk. I had a great time doing a lot of training there and LA we did the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts conference and then I went to Minnesota to train a really amazing group of people who work with homeless veterans and unhoused veterans to help them get established in homes and apartments. So just doing hugely impactful work then off to Kentucky where I trained people who also do amazing work with those with trauma. And then I kind of wrapped up the summer with some training in a school system in Colorado. So that was kind of a new one for me and just very enjoyable as well. So we had a great summer and now we're going to share what we learned. Speaker 1 (05:43): And one of my first insights of the summer, which might be surprising to you, bill, because we've been talking about this or you've been talking about this a long time, and I guess sometimes it's just the learning comes at different times for different people. So it was during a training this summer as I was showing an episode of a television show that I use in my trainings to demonstrate high conflict behavior. One of the audience members pointed out something I hadn't really thought about before, which is these were people, the high conflict people in the episode thought they were so special. And what the audience member had picked up on was that the woman said, I have a God-given talent to cook. And now that one statement alone doesn't mean this is someone with a high conflict personality, but if you look at it in light of everything else that was happening in the entire episode, you go, okay, now I start to see that this is someone who thinks they're very special, more special perhaps than other people. And then a bit later, both the husband and wife say that they met in Las Vegas and they were so very special because they had the most beautiful women in Las Vegas coming to their table to see them even more beautiful women than Hugh Hefner had. And they just see themselves as very special. So I don't know, bill, that was probably a no-brainer for you. Speaker 2 (07:11): Well, I think we're seeing that more people more open about that they really think they're special and the idea of special is you feel like you have a special skill, special talent, and everybody else does too, and that we're different. But the problem comes in when people say, I'm superior to everybody else. And I think that's the message that we're hearing. And unfortunately people with narcissistic trades are getting more and more comfortable showing that in public and they don't realize how it offends other people. And so you can have a special talent, but don't gloat and present yourself as superior to the people around you. That's going to create conflict for sure. I like to think we're all equal and we're all different and we all have some talents and we all have some things to say. So it doesn't mean we're superior. Speaker 1 (08:11): So it's a good way to, if you hear something like that, sort of put the antenna up, don't make an assumption or jump to a conclusion, but get that antenna up. Another quick one that I just recently picked up on was watching an episode of Dateline, which I've been obsessed with this summer. There's a lot of high conflict that's happening there. This particular episode, a woman who murdered her husband and they had three young children, so it was extraordinarily sad. The first trial was declared a mistrial because the jurors couldn't reach a decision. So the prosecutor decided to try her again and a trial date was set. So she went and had I V F and became pregnant in the meantime and they had to delay the trial. So who knows if that was a delay tactic or a manipulation tactic, but regardless, she was convicted in that trial, had the baby, and then went to trial, was convicted, went to prison, and Dateline went to her in prison and they asked her, why did you go have I V F and conceive a baby when you thought you could be going to prison? Speaker 1 (09:23): And her response, this is what stupefied me, well, it's just because I'm such an amazing parent and I thought there's that special, I think I'm so special and I'll obviously combined with probably trying to manipulate the outcome potentially. Oh, another thing about her, she also set up a foundation in her own name because she'd claimed that she had been abused in her marriage and that was never proven. But now she was setting up a foundation in her own name to help women of domestic violence. And I just think that's kind of odd. And I think I'm so special that I'm going to name a foundation after myself. Speaker 2 (10:05): It's interesting because sometimes people have foundations named after victims of domestic violence and other victims, but it usually isn't the person themselves. And the self-professed victims sometimes are the people who are manipulating and like you said, in this case, what in many ways a blatant manipulation to avoid a prison sentence. And it sounds like it didn't work for her, which is a tragedy for the child who won't have one of the parent well either parent for many, many years. Speaker 1 (10:38): Right. Alright, so Bill, what's one of your new insights? I think you mentioned something about vulnerability in high conflict situations. Speaker 2 (10:47): Yeah, it's interesting because I've been a fan of Renee Brown who talks about the value and importance of making yourself vulnerable in relationships. And yet I find with high conflict situations that the opposite is what my advice often is to people and to myself. Because in high conflict situations, you're dealing with many cases of bully whose goal in the conversation isn't to solve a problem to dominate you. And so if you make yourself vulnerable to that person, say, well actually the reason I'm worried about such and such is I have this problem. And next thing you know they're telling the world you have this problem. And they keep saying, well see, you have this problem and that's why. And so they manipulate your vulnerability. It's sad, but sometimes people tell exactly the wrong person their, and that person takes advantage of it to manipulate them and also to tell other people that may not have been ready to be told. Speaker 2 (12:04): And so my suggestion is that when you're in an equal relationship and you're both committed to strengthening that relationship and having a good relationship, that making yourself vulnerable and sharing some of your vulnerabilities is a very positive thing. But when you're in an unequal relationship where the other person may be wanting to take advantage of you or dominate you, that that's someone that making yourself vulnerable to isn't recommended. And in fact, you may want to hold back on some information because of how it will get misused. So that's my thoughts. I don't know if you have thoughts about that, Megan. I Speaker 1 (12:48): Think there are certain people who are very forthcoming about information and I think they might not even consider themselves a vulnerable person. They just think they're sort of an honest, authentic person and they're just going to humble themselves so to speak and share information that they probably shouldn't. And like you said, it's like giving a weapon to your enemy. Honestly. I guess you didn't say those words out loud, but that's what kind of came to mind is you're really giving someone a tool to use against you. Speaker 2 (13:22): You're absolutely right. I like that. Yeah, Speaker 1 (13:24): So a good one. Alright, my next learning was, and this is something I've known about for a few years, but haven't really done a lot about in my other company, I have a small publishing company called Unhooked Books. And about four or five years ago, I met a man from Australia named Lo and Clark who has extensive training and knowledge in the field of trauma and dissociation. And he's just a really fascinating guy. So he had discovered he's very much into linguistics and classical art and just ancient Greece, anything to do with languages and learning. And so he was reading some script on a statue I believe in ancient Greek text and he couldn't figure it out. And this was kind of the first thing he couldn't figure out really. He, because he'd studied so much and he would problem solve and figure it out. Speaker 1 (14:22): So eventually he realized that what was happening is the writing wasn't going from left to, and then the next line left to right, left instead it was going left to and then right to left. So back and forth, back and forth. And after studying this and thinking about it, he realized that this could be beneficial to people who have been affected with trauma or still have unaddressed trauma because it can stimulate bilateral connection between the hemispheres of the brain and get people maybe stuck in some right brain emotions sort of shoved over into left brain and what I like to call whole brain these days. So I tried it a few years ago and with some long texts that he had done this way and I noticed that I was hyper-focused within about, I don't know, 10 seconds, 20 seconds maybe after you get used to doing it a bit. Speaker 1 (15:18): It takes a little practice to get your brain trained to keep reading that way. And then in about a minute or so in, I could tell that my breathing had slowed a bit. I noticed I wasn't distracted by outside noises or sounds or thoughts. A few minutes in I noticed I had tears in my eyes and the contents of the material wasn't emotional. So it was a fascinating experience. Ultimately, I published children's book he'd written that was written in this Back and forth style, which he calls Empowerment Script. Unfortunately, we were releasing it at a big trauma conference in March, 2020, and they shut the conference down because that Speaker 2 (16:00): Was timing day one. Speaker 1 (16:02): Yes. And he'd flown from Australia and we were doing this huge release and it just didn't happen. Anyway, so the last couple of trainings in here, just the last two weeks, I put some of the empowerment script writing on some slides and I showed them during my trainings and had the groups I was training read them silently to themselves. So the first couple times, not a huge impact, but a training I did last week, a man stood up and he had this smile on his face you've never seen before. And he said, look, I've been dyslexic my whole life and reading has always been a struggle for me, and I just read this without any struggle and with absolute ease, and I actually could feel things happening in my brain. And I mean, I was absolutely stupefied and really happy. So that to me is a big, big deal. And I'm hoping to take this further and help maybe get some books published in Empowerment Script for people with dyslexia. We're at least going to explore it, Speaker 2 (17:10): Clarify, if I understand. So you read a sentence from left to right, then the next line you drop down and read from right to left. Correct. Then the next line you drop down and read left to right, so your eyes never have to switch over and start again on the next line. You don't lose a line or anything. That's fascinating. And it's interesting about the brain because the right and left hemispheres, maybe how they work together gets eased for some people. That's fascinating. Speaker 1 (17:41): And there were a couple people who had revealed in the training that they dealt with some trauma in their lives and they'd done E M D R and some other trauma treatments, and this was a little bit hard for them to read. And I asked them to read it three or four times and they said it got easier each time, but they felt kind of a block. But after some time it got better. But with dyslexia it was immediate. There was an immediate ease. And I do want to point out too, that a lot of people ask whether the letters are also turned around. It's not. It's just that the lines go back and forth instead of left to right, left to right. So I was quite excited by that. So our listeners, if you're dyslexic, stay tuned for more. We might try to do some publication soon with that. So that was mine. What about yours, bill? I think you had a new insight on alienation and estrangement. Speaker 2 (18:36): I've been dealing with cases and also seminars about parental alienation or child alienation where a child resists contact with a parent because of badmouthing by the other parent and estrangement where a child resists contact with a parent because of something that parent is doing, like child abuse, domestic violence or intense emotions with the child. And what I've been realizing is professionals really in general, family law professionals dealing with custody disputes tend to understand one or the other, but not how to discriminate between the two and often jump to conclusions. And this has been something I've been thinking about all year, written about confirmation bias and things, but just really being surprised at how little professionals seem to really grasp these differences and how important it is in solving a problem. So for example, if there's a child who's been abused by a parent and that's why they're resisting contact with that parent to take an alienation approach of saying, okay, you have to be with that parent and not have contact with the other parent for a period of time, couple months or something, is the absolute wrong thing to do. Speaker 2 (20:09): On the other hand, if you have a child who's been alienated, badmouth as a parent that's favored as badmouthing them, the other parent, and you go, oh, okay, then they don't need to see that parent and we're just going to stick with this one parent, the favored parent. We don't want to rock the boat with the favored parent. Well, you're basically destroying the potential to have a relationship with the other parent who may be the healthier parent. And part of why it's come to my attention is there's starting to be a political efforts around this by people who understand one but not the other. And so that's going to be coming at the federal and state levels and something people are going to have to become more informed about. So just realizing this summer, how early stage we really are as a culture and understanding this, and it reminds me of alcoholism and how 50 or 80 years ago, people are like, oh no, don't talk about it. And now we understand it and know how to deal with it. That's what we have to do with these issues too, for the sake of the kids. Speaker 1 (21:27): Absolutely. And hopefully those who are teaching in our law schools and all of the professional associations that deal with family law will really, the information is there, the answers are there. So if we could all get on board a little bit better together, really help children and families. So with that, we're going to take a quick short break and we'll be right back. Listeners, if you're loving our podcast, we'd love if you'd subscribe and give us a five star review so other people can also hear all these great tips. We'll be right back. Speaker 1 (22:07): Okay, and we're back. So Bill, this was kind of an insight for me, but also a question that came up in a training this summer, and usually I know how to handle most of the questions that come in, and sometimes though I have to go away and think about it to form some thoughts, but really it's focused on how to handle a really disruptive person in a group setting when it's kind of a surprise attack, so to speak. You don't know it's coming. So I guess what typically will happen is the person who's kind of on the attack will have it be about some really significant issue, something that means a lot perhaps to the other person and maybe is offensive or whatever it is. And so the group, then we'll focus on that issue, right? Let's say it's something very maybe about politics, for example, or a school issue. And there are lots of those going around these days. So we tend to focus on the issue instead of focusing on the what to do. And I think that can be one of the hardest things to do because we want to, if we're being attacked in a group setting and it's maybe a gut punch to us, we want to defend ourselves. And so we focus on trying to defend ourselves instead of handling the situation. So what would you advise in a situation like that? Speaker 2 (23:38): This is what led a few years ago to developing the respectful meeting policy because I was being asked by people what to do when they were being treated disrespectfully or blatantly interrupted in a group meeting. And what seems to happen ordinarily is meeting facilitators, managers, most people are nice people. And so if you're going ahead facilitating a meeting and someone interrupts and attacks you for doing it all wrong or raises an unrelated topic and all of that, what nice people tend to do is first of all, listen and then try to respond to the content of what the interrupter is saying or doing. Well, what we've learned is surprise attacks or a characteristic of high conflict people, it catches people off balance and they can get away with stuff. So what we have to do instead is focus on setting limits on the attack is that's out of order, that's inappropriate at this time. Speaker 2 (24:54): If you want to add that to the agenda at the end, we'll see if we have time. But you need to focus on interrupting them. And that's what's so hard. People feel rude. Well, I don't like to interrupt people and say yes, but with high conflict people, we have to interrupt the pattern of high conflict behavior. So it's not responding to the content. In fact, it's setting limits on the interruption and saving the content for a time that's appropriate. We have a whole article on the website about the respectful meeting policy and that that's a way to stop. Now, if a person won't stop the policy proposal, the method we recommend is to take a break in the meeting. Say, okay, everybody, we're going to be taking a 10 minute break and then stand up and hopefully other people will get up now to take the break. Then you go talk to the interrupter and figure out how you want to deal with this. Or someone else talks to the interrupter. In worst case scenario, you then end the meeting prematurely because there's such a disruption. Now that catches high conflict people quite off guard, they're kind of almost speechless because they're used to dominating or hijacking the discussion. So that's a nutshell response, but I think we're seeing more of that and that really needs to be the focus is setting limits on the interruption, not responding to the content. Speaker 1 (26:38): And that can be so hard to do, but one of those things where you have to override your hijacked emotions and defending yourself and just like you said, set limits in the moment. Alright, and so our last, what I learned this summer is about a recent court case that you've been looking at in California regarding domestic violence restraining order. Speaker 2 (27:02): So this case was one in which a judge denied a woman a restraining order, domestic violence restraining order. The woman presented the fact that there had been a history of domestic violence, that the man had made recent threats to kill her. There was text messages in which that was said, so he couldn't deny it. He denied that it was important, but the judge denied the restraining order because the woman then, after these things were said and done, got in the car with the man and drove to the grocery store with him, the judge thought, well, that means that she's not really scared of him. She's not really in fear for her life. And so found that her complaints really didn't merit a restraining order. So that was the trial level judge. The appellate court says, no, no, no, you need to seriously consider giving a restraining order in these kinds of situations. Speaker 2 (28:10): And it's the totality of the situation, not just the single thing that said that you need to take into account. And there also doesn't have to be recent physical violence that disturbing the piece of the person, putting the person in fear for their life is sufficient if the court considers that as a credible threat. And this is someone who had physically been abusive in the past and to other people as well. So the appellate court said, no, no, you've got to seriously consider this. And one thing that was written in there that I thought was really helpful, and by the way, if people are interested in the case, it's Vincent versus Kinsey. Speaker 2 (29:03): One thing that was written in there is there's no proper way for a victim of domestic violence to behave and that you may see inconsistencies like going to the store to get groceries for the children because the man was going to pay for it, who's the father of the children with his food stamps, but he wouldn't give her the food stamps, so he would go to the store and pay for food for the children with his food stamps. And so that's why she got in the car, even though he had been saying things like this. And she did have fears, but she didn't see that she had a choice. So I think it's important to recognize there's no proper way to behave as a domestic violence victim, and a judge has to have a more open mind to the totality of the situation. Speaker 1 (29:54): Probably in many cases, people are in survival mode. I mean, how else would that woman pay for her groceries? Or maybe she doesn't have a car, maybe she's not allowed to drive the car. There can be so many, many things, and so I think many people are just trying to survive. So good. I think that's a very important piece of information for everyone to consider. Speaker 1 (30:23): All right, well, we hope this information has been helpful wherever you're listening. Thanks for listening to us and coming back for season three. Next week we'll talk about group high conflict. Is there such a thing? In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. We'd love it if you'd tell your friends and colleagues about us, and we'd be really grateful if you'd leave a five star review so we can help keep growing and help more people around the world. Until next time, keep learning and practicing so you can be confident in your human interactions. In high conflict situations. As you do, your life will become more peaceful. It's all Your Fault is a protection of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True Story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.