Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Hosted by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. and Megan Hunter, MBA, It’s All Your Fault! High Conflict People explores the five types of people who can ruin your life—people with high conflict personalities and how they weave themselves into our lives in romance, at work, next door, at school, places of worship, and just about everywhere, causing chaos, exhaustion, and dread for everyone else.
They are the most difficult of difficult people — some would say they’re toxic. Without them, tv shows, movies, and the news would be boring, but who wants to live that way in your own life!
Have you ever wanted to know what drives them to act this way?
In the It’s All Your Fault podcast, we’ll take you behind the scenes to understand what’s happening in the brain and illuminates why we pick HCPs as life partners, why we hire them, and how we can handle interactions and relationships with them. We break down everything you ever wanted to know about people with the 5 high conflict personality types: narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial/sociopath, and paranoid.
And we’ll give you tips on how to spot them and how to deal with them.
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 influence the most challenging human interactions, those involving patterns of high conflict behavior. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Hi everybody. 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. In today's episode, we are joined by a very special guest and friend lawyer, Elaine Richardson from the uk. You'll be hearing a lot more about her and from her very shortly, and we'll also be announcing the results of our two recent polls. Thank you listeners for taking those polls. One is on child custody and the other is on women and marriage. The first, a couple of notes. Please send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
We want to introduce you first to our colleague and very good friend Elaine Richardson, who is a family solicitor in England and Wales, and she'll explain to us what a solicitor is. She's also a collaborative lawyer and accredited child inclusive hybrid mediator. I think she'll also be explaining that to us. She supervised other mediators as their professional practice consultant and supervises family lawyers as their family law supervisor. She's also a trainer and presenter specializing in domestic abuse, safeguarding and high conflict. She's the vice chair of the National Non Court Dispute Resolution Committee for Resolution, which is a community of family justice professionals who work with families and individuals to resolve issues in a constructive way. Their membership is around 6,500 people and she's been a member herself for over 20 years. She has been trained by the High Conflict Institute here in the us Oh, that's us, to conduct mediations involving high conflict and has also been trained by High Conflict Institute as well as a mediation coach to prepare and support people going into the mediation process.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
She takes this seriously, folks. She works for the charity Shared Parenting Scotland. In this role, she's worked for the home office as a truth facilitator for the Truth Project arm of the Independent Inquiry into child sexual abuse. This was a listening exercise which concluded in October, 2021 and gave more than 6,000 victims and survivors of child sexual abuse an opportunity to share their experiences with the inquiry and put forward suggestions for change. That's just absolutely incredible and just know now, Elaine, that you'll be invited back to talk about that on our podcast because I'm positive, absolutely confident that our listeners are interested in hearing about that. So welcome.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Thank you so much for inviting me, Megan and Bill, it's an absolute pleasure and honor to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Thank you. We're grateful for your time. We know you're very busy woman obviously, so based on just your bio, so we're very pleased to be joined by you and I know our listeners will enjoy hearing from you. Before we get into the discussion we're going to have with you Elaine, and just for you, our listeners today, we're starting something new called the Bring It to Life series. We're taking case scenarios, questions that you write into us and we're going to break it down and bring it to life. What's the reality like with this? How do you get through a process? How do you get through court mediation? What is mediation? Is it scary? Does it work? So this is number one in that series. Before we get into bring it to life, we're going to talk about and reveal the results of our joint custody versus sole custody poll.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So the first question was whether the poll taker was a family law profess professional or a family member. It was 100% moms except one mediator. The first question is, should 50 50 custody be an automatic presumption? Granted in every family, only one person said yes, it should be an automatic presumption. The rest said it should not be an automatic presumption. The next question was whether 50 custody should be an automatic presumption granted in every family unless one parent can prove the need for the other parent to have less time, and this was a little bit more mixed. The majority was no, a couple of not sures and only one. Yes, this was also someone who said it should be an automatic presumption. The third question, should there be no presumption and each case handled based on its own merits, everyone except two said yes. So the majority is that automatic presumptions are not the thing. So Bill, I'd like to hear from you on that.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Well, my first question is what was the total number? In other words, one person said this, how many said the opposite?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
There are about 2020
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Responses. Okay. In some ways there's different points of view across the board here. So if we get responses, it helps understand that this is a group of people that have not necessarily had a good experience with 50 50 and want them to be weighed individually, which is basically the primary method that's existing now in family courts. There is also people that do want to have there be a presumption. My own feeling is it's better not to have a presumption because if cases get to court, it means there's a problem and we need to figure out what the problem is. As a mediator, I've had many parents come up with a 50 50 plan because they believe that will work because they trust the other parent. There haven't been significant problems and it tends to go pretty smoothly, but when you get to court, there's usually problems and so that's why I think it makes sense that they're saying they prefer to have each case handled individually. It makes a lot of sense in court cases.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Elaine, from your perspective as a solicitor, and maybe first you should explain to us what a solicitor is for our listeners and then what are your thoughts on this, Paul?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Well, a solicitor is a lawyer. It's just that in the UK we have a differentiation between barristers and solicitors, but they're all lawyers. It's just that we have two branches of the profession and so solicitors, they tend to meet the clients and support and give advice to their clients throughout their whole journey. Whereas barristers tend to be the specialists in advocacy. So you might always have a solicitor with you and then for various points where you go to court, you might get a barrister as well who will do the advocacy elements. But barristers also advise in conferences and barristers now are starting to train as mediators more and more of them. So it's very interesting the way that the profession is developing.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Wonderful. Thank you for helping us understand that. Now as to the survey, is there an automatic presumption in the UK or 50 50 custody?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
No, there isn't a 50 50 presumption and in fact, it's quite interesting the language that you use because in the UK over the last couple of years, the president of the family division, who's the chief family judge in England Miles, started something called the language project. And the language project seeks to change the language that's used around going to court and around the arrangements for children to try to take some of the conflict out of it. So very much a movement against saying 50 50, although people do say it of course in usual language and terminology, but we would talk more about a presumption that a child would have an equally close and loving relationship with each parent, each separated parent.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It does sound and feel better, doesn't it? Right away. Great. Well thank you for those thoughts. So let's now move to the other poll, which came from an episode in which we talked about whether marriage is better or worse for women based on an article that had come out in the Washington Post. So we had 27 responses, 100% of them were women. Five said that marriage is better for women and 22 or 23 said it is worse for women. And sort of the breakdown, it was a mixed bag whether they're currently married or divorced, but would like to be married, divorced, and will never remarry or have never been married or currently married. So it really ranged across the spectrum.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It's interesting that in looking at this, really depending on who you're talking to that they say it's better or worse. The biggest study that we mentioned in our report said that actually that the happiest women are women who are married with children and that it's good for them that they enjoy that and that there's a percent, but a smaller percent that see marriage as worse for women. So it may be of our listeners that they're in that smaller percentage. It's certainly an issue that's getting addressed and needs to be addressed today. But I think our conclusions from the podcast and the research that we looked at was that you can be happy married and you can be happy not married. So it really depends on the circumstances.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Right, and we did get some feedback from that episode which we expected and I wanted to just share one and get a little bit of comment on it. So this person says, I absolutely love your podcast. However, this recent episode of Married or Divorce feels really off brand. It felt to me a mom contemplating divorce to be an episode gaslighting me into staying in an unhealthy relationship. I had a really hard time getting behind the message. I didn't read the article, the episode revolves around, so maybe that is what I'm missing, but I wanted you to know how it came across in my opinion. So we do want to address this and that really let you know that our intention was not to convince anyone to stay in an unhealthy marriage.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Exactly. I think hopefully the message that we want to get across is that it's a really personal and individual choice and situation. And as a divorce lawyer and mediator handling approximately 2000 cases, there's many people who are much better off getting out of their marriage. It's more looking at the big picture numerically, there seems to be more people satisfied and their marriages are working, but especially because we deal with high conflict and high conflict personalities, that's a lot of the not happy marriages and often people are better off not being married to a high conflict person and getting out of that really improves their lives. It's sad to say, but that's the reality. So hopefully people will realize we're really talking about each person making their individual decisions and assessing their individual situation. But in other words, there's no presumption that any one person should stay married or should get divorced. It's really up to the situation and the person,
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Right, as we like to say, it's up to you and if you're in a high conflict marriage, it is really, really awful and it often can be scary to even think about wanting to be married or that marriage can be good, but again, it's up to you. So thanks for sending that comment in. We appreciate getting the feedback and getting a different perspective and having a chance to provide more information. So here we go. Let's get to our first Bring It to Life episode and this is where we get, you're going to hear a lot from Bill and Elaine today. We're just going to kind of have a free flowing discussion. First I'm going to read the case that we're talking about. Then we're just going to kind of break it down and talk about it. So this is a mediation case and it involves separating parents who are professionals in their early forties, married for about 10 years, have a couple of children age seven and five.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
They separated in October of 2022 when the husband left the family home and now lives in a rented home nearby. They're in the process of divorcing and have been in mediation since May, 2023, so almost a year now. It's an all issues case, which means that they are discussing both financial arrangements and the arrangements for the children in mediation. There have been two individual intake sessions and seven mediation meetings, an exchange of financial forms, a draft parenting plan, and solicitors involved in a couple of the hybrid mediation meetings. The wife has changed solicitors slash lawyers twice since separation. The husband complains that progress is very slow and despite using some of the skills we teach here at HCI, including Biff, he is becoming increasingly frustrated because it's 18 months since separation and he believes that the wife is deliberately delaying because she is sitting pretty in the family home.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
The wife is attractive and charming and very involved in the lives of her children. However, after a few meetings, it became apparent to the mediator that the wife wishes to control minute details about the arrangements and dwells upon minor detail to the exclusion of the bigger picture. The wife exhibits manipulative behavior and the husband has explained that in the marriage he took the line of least resistance and simply caved into his wife's demands. The wife behaves in ways which she blames and accuses her husband of doing such as wanting to be in charge, not listening, harassment quickly, becoming frustrated and getting her own way. The mediator describes the wife's solicitor slash lawyer as defending her to the hilt and is concerned that the solicitor is not managing the wife's unrealistic expectations and has been sucked into the client's narrative. There's a difficult relationship between the two lawyers.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
The mediator has seen some of the correspondence and met with them in a couple of the mediation meetings. The mediator has assessed that the wife has a high conflict personality. So the question is that's the scenario. The question is how can further delay be prevented? So that's the big one. And there's other things we're going to break down in here, but the first one is this deliberate delay by a high conflict individual. How do you as a mediator get this going? Should these cases sometimes linger for a long time? And I recall in my days working in the court system, I could look at the court record, I can do it today in the county in which I live, and you can see a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy docket on the webpage for a case and you're pretty confident there's some high conflict elements involved. The longer they go, they're probably high conflict. So I will let you start Elaine and give your thoughts and you and Bill just start talking about whatever pops into your brain. You're both mediators.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Thanks Megan. Yes, we're both mediators and this scenario is described to me by one of the mediators that I supervise. So I have no doubt that this is happening across England and Wales and the USA and probably all sorts of other countries in the world. I think before I go any further, I'd better explain as well as explaining about the difference between solicitor and barrister and I'll try to remember to call them lawyers, which would be more helpful. I also want to give just a short explanation of hybrid mediation just to explain to the listeners what that involves. So it's an advanced form of family mediation in the uk. It was established in 2018 by the wonderful Henry Brown who's an international civil and family mediator and lawyer. The main difference between hybrid mediation and traditional family mediation here is that in hybrid the participants sign an agreement to mediate, which is the contract to allow the mediator to keep confidences about the negotiation.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So as well as that, lawyers are encouraged to take part in the mediation. And so in the scenario that Megan has just explained, that's how the mediator would have met these lawyers, and that's how the mediator is aware that there are difficulties within the professional relationship between the lawyers. If they come into a hybrid meeting, the mediator would have a separate meeting called the professionals meeting with just the lawyers before meeting with all five participants. So that's the separating couple, the two lawyers and the mediator. And that's very often a really interesting meeting and exchange of views. The other element of hybrid mediation is that participants can sit with their lawyers or even by themselves in separate breakout rooms. So the advantage of having the lawyer with you in the meeting is fantastic because you get your own legal advice and support in real time during the mediation meeting. So that's just to give a bit of a background on hybrid mediation. And I know Bill that you've got elements of that in mediation in the USA.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yeah, so I would say we're able to do all of those and it's not unusual to do those. So as a mediator, I had cases, the majority of my cases, they just had the parties. They may have had consulting lawyers in the background that they would meet with between sessions, would review the final marital settlement agreement and all of that. But a minority of cases had the lawyers in the room with them. And this case is familiar in a sense that I've had cases where the lawyers actually couldn't stand each other and I think of a case that I had where while I like to meet part of the time with everybody together and some we might meet separately at separate caucuses. I remember one mediation I had the entire mediation was shuttle back and forth. This was before virtual mediations because not because the parties couldn't be in the same room because the lawyers couldn't be in the same room.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I'm happy to say we did reach a full agreement, but the lawyer tension can influence the case and also cause it to last longer because of a difficulty getting to coming to agreements. So we have here it may be we have less regulation of mediation, but also confidentiality is huge. Non-family mediations, the caucuses are almost always confidential. So the mediator doesn't share what each party says In family mediation, there's kind of a range, especially if it's using court mediators, then there's nothing confidential about it. The mediator may disclose in testimony in court what was said, what was done. They may write a report and talk about what was said and what was done in private mediation, which is what I did. I always told the parties, I'm meeting separately that I'm going to keep most of this private, but I can't promise confidentiality. If you tell me that you're going to leave town tomorrow with all the bank accounts, I'm not going to keep that secret. And if you of course tell me that you think the other parents abusing the child and that child abuse, then I'm not going to be keeping that secret. So just a few things, but I think overall our approaches are fairly similar
Speaker 2 (22:46):
In respect to that bill. Obviously we talk very early on when we meet with a client about our duties to report safeguarding or safeguarding obligations which override everything. But in terms of the confidentiality, we also explain with hybrid mediation that the confidentiality exists around the negotiation. But if the client says something that is a major life-changing thing, such as a thing you've just described, leaving town with all the money or as once happened to me in a mediation meeting where a client said to me, I'm pregnant, but don't tell him, that's not the sort of confidence that I can keep. So we do give these examples when people come into hybrid mediation.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, I want to say some things about the question that Megan is asking us about how can further delay be prevented? And I wanted to first of all, partly because of the survey question that we just talked about. So in this case the wife appears to have a high conflict personality, but that's not a diagnosis, it's a description of conflict behavior. It's not something to publicly say, the mediator professional keeps a private working theory. I need to adapt some of what I do to be more effective. With this in mind, I also want to say equally opportunity. And I've had these cases where it's the husband who has a high conflict personality, and so we really want to not say that it's men or women and that it's a diagnosis. It's more to be strategic so we can be it's equal opportunity. Equal opportunity. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
HCPs are men and women and maybe roughly 10% of the population. And there's horrible stories with men as HCPs and horrible stories with women as HCPs. So it's about the personality, not the gender, but in a case like this appears to be the wife. It's not unusual. I think of many cases I've had where one person really wants to hold on to what they have, especially a nice house. If you can drag this out, you can stay there. So a few things I want to say about this. First is delay should not be resolved by the mediator. That this is an issue for the parties to decide how fast or slow they go. But the mediator can explain the impact of going fast, going slow and that the parties may want to keep things in mind. One of the things when this is happening and one of the parties is frustrated, I want to move on.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I want to get a house and I need the money from selling this house to get a new house. And so we can't just keep delaying this. Well, the mediator can say, and often in my mediations I did is just so you know all your options, all your choices, so you can take your time and really work out a lot of these minute details. You can move fairly quickly, get the house on the market, sell that independent of when you get the divorce done and when you work out all your details. But keep in mind that if it doesn't go fast enough that one of the parties may drop out of mediation and go to court. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do that, but I'm saying that's a reality, that's a consequence of it taking too long. And often people go, oh yeah, I don't want that to happen.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
And they may pick up speed a little bit and I've had cases where just about everything was agreed on, but dragging feet getting out of the house. And so the other party's gone to court and got a court order to put the house on the market and to get the house sold. So it's educating the parties is a huge part of mediation but not deciding for the parties. So with all these kinds of things where they're differing and people say, oh my goodness, what should the mediator do? The mediator should put it back on the party's shoulders and say, you have a dilemma. People resolve this differently, but it seems that one wants to move slow and one wants to move fast. How do you folks want to resolve that? Because it's up to the two of you as long as you're in mediation. But keep in mind, one of you may drop out if there isn't enough balance here,
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Right? So let's talk about projection and bullying behavior. Often in high conflict or cases involving someone with a high conflict personality, you'll get projection. And we did hear that in this case scenario, the wife blaming the husband for things that she was actually doing and then also some bullying behavior. So how do you negotiate with a bully? And Bill, I'll put a little plug in here for your new book coming out in June, our New World of Adult Bullies, how to spot them, how to stop them. And so I would say you probably have some expertise on bullying now.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Well, thank you. Yes, I've been studying that and in many ways studying high conflict personalities. The bullies are people with high conflict personalities who are the most high conflict because they want to dominate or destroy the other person. And it sounds shocking to say that, but I list 60 examples in the book and you get the feeling some personalities are different. They really want to dominate, maybe even destroy the other person. And so having, recognizing that's how they think, and some people are born this way, some people from early childhood abuse or entitlement become this way, but there are people like this. And so it's important to know that.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
And by destroy bill, it's such a big word, it has such so much meaning behind it, but it can be somewhat nuanced, destroy might be a reputation smear campaign lying about you, but it could be even bigger. What do we see that's bigger? What is the range?
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah. Well, it is the full range because part of it may be just really smearing somebody, like you said in high conflict divorces, there's a percent of people that want to destroy the reputation. The other person, they go around the community saying, my ex is a child molester when it's not true. Or that my wife just slept with the whole football team and it's not true. And so you get these extremes of verbal stuff, but when you look around the world, we see bullies on a larger scale. You see criminal behavior, you see mafia kind of behavior. You see dictators and such that this is a personality. And what's interesting is people just don't realize that this is a personality in waiting to come out. And so sometimes you do see this, I'm glad to say in most high conflict forces, we're not seeing that level of bullying, but unfortunately there are murders. There are people who kill the other party, kill, kill the kids and kill themselves. So there are some people, for one reason or another, driven to destroy others. It's very small percent. But that's possible. Dominating is more what you see,
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Sadly. What we know in the UK is that the statistics from the Office of National Statistics tell us that two women a week are murdered by a former partner. A domestic homicide is really a big problem. That's the extreme end. Of course, coming back to this case study, I think what's really difficult here is this person who is exhibiting the high conflicts behavior doesn't look like a bully at first appearance. Okay? So part of the description that Meghan gave was that she's a attractive, she's charming, she's really involved in the lives of her children. She projects and says that her husband has done all these terrible things and the mediator's experiences that actually it's the wife that's done the terrible things. But it is really difficult, isn't it? Because we perhaps have some sort of unconscious bias about what we perceive a bully to look like and how we perceive a bully to behave. And how, I know I've heard you talk before now, bill, about this public persona. And in the case study of course, I also think that the wife's lawyer has been drawn in to this public persona that the wife has. If you could throw any more light on that in terms of bullying behaviors and are unconscious bias.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Before you answer that bill, we're going to take a short break and we'll be back in just about 30, 45 seconds and we're back. And Bill Elaine's just talked to you about how we can handle and kind of look at beyond the charm at that personality and waiting. And by the way, that's the first time I've heard you say personality and waiting. It's really fascinating, but you're right. It's the charm, charm, charm, charm, charm. Wonderful person, wonderful person. But when things don't go their way, the personality and waiting is no longer waiting.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, I'm glad that you said that and that the idea of a public persona and a private personality is so important in legal disputes because high conflict personalities are only looked at briefly. And if you have a court hearing that's 10, 20 minutes or you have a trial that's three hours or maybe even six hours, often people can look so good. And then under the surface you see this one example, I think we just had news that OJ Simpson died and his case was huge in the media in the United States in the 1990s because he was one of the most charming people. But the final outcome he lost in a civil trial really seemed to prove that he did in fact kill his ex-wife and another friend. And that this is an example, one of the most charming people in the world, but anyway, it could be men, could be women.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So the thing is they often will engage their lawyers. Some lawyers, I think of them as negative advocates that enable their clients to act badly, cover up for their client, excuse their client, fight for their client's bad behavior. Other lawyers get emotionally hooked but aren't invested in that, but they don't realize what's going on. In either case, you're negotiating with a bully or bullies. And there's a few principles to put in here. One is to avoid giving in, and in this scenario it was described that the husband caved into his wife demands. Often in family law there's this saying that no good deed goes unpunished. And giving in may set a pattern of being taken advantage of. So avoid giving in, be solid with your lawyer or solicitor on how far you're willing to go on an issue and don't start there. Start with what you want and negotiate with the idea that you do have a limit, that you do have some place you really don't want to go beyond that you both agree on with your lawyer.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Think in terms of win-win negotiations that you have proposals that will benefit both sides and say, I'm willing to do this for you if you're willing to do that for me. Also, staying calm and patient is something that people really don't think about is if you look agitated in a hurry, frustrated that communicates to a high conflict person that they've got you under their control. And so the more calm you can be, the less they feel confident themselves, the less they feel like they can dominate the process because you're not emotionally submitting to them. And you might think, I'm not submitting, I'm getting angry. But often when you're dealing with a bully, your own anger is helpless anger, it's frustrated anger and not calm and rational. And I can prevail in this process kind of anger. And that comes much more by staying calm, being deliberate, knowing the facts of your case.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
And I often find that high conflict, people don't really know the facts of their case. They're just bullying. They just try to verbally snow the other side. This also happens in court, I might suggest and getting chances to meet separately with a mediator to talk it through and get help. So I think you can negotiate with bullies, but also don't feel trapped in mediation. I tell my clients that I consult with who are going into mediation, give it your best shot, but don't feel like you can't go to court. Court has established a lot of standard procedures and values and you may do better than court than a bully wants you to do in mediation. And that's something to be aware of that there are bullies like mediation because they can intimidate the other party often more than they can in court. So just know you have choices, you have backup alternatives.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
And Elaine, what's your experience with bullies in mediation? Do you encounter it very frequently? What's your process and how have you handled
Speaker 2 (38:11):
It? Yes, I encounter bullies frequently, and I think that's the same for most mediators that I speak to unfortunately. I think that a lot of people have that approach that Bill's just described as thinking that they can somehow get their own way and continue to manipulate in the mediation process. I think they don't have that perception of, and therefore that's why they can be attracted to mediation. I've also found that if there's been a bully and this person hasn't been recognized as having bullying behavior in the relationship, then the other person who you could describe as the victim of the bully can be very poor at setting boundaries. That's how the bully's been able to get away with it in the relationship. And so that's how I think when I do my coaching work, that's something that I often come across and concentrate on. And that's where actually the high conflict institute resources are fantastic because I can give resources to people to say, go away, take a look at this.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
You probably are dealing with a bully. This is the way that you might need to change your behavior because you're not going to be able to change the other person's behavior. And so these are extra tools in your toolbox if you like. But it's quite a challenge I think for the person who has been the victim of bullying behavior because they've always had a problem setting boundaries. It's possibly why the bully was attracted to them in the first place. So this lack of setting boundaries probably goes back a long, long way possibly into childhood. And so trying to get them up to speed and trying to give them some coaching and support and helping them to set boundaries can actually be a really big ask.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah, let me add to that. The coaching is a really great opportunity to role play and practice that the person can set boundaries and say, I'm willing to do X, but I'm not willing to do Y, and this is as far as I can go on this issue. When you're negotiating, even I have boundaries is a saying. I like to encourage people to tell themselves even I have boundaries, even I have limits.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Oh
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Look, that needs to be a T-shirt
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Probably for a lot of parents as well, when their kids push the limits, even I have boundaries.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
I was just talking with my little 4-year-old grandson this morning about that today at preschool when one of your friends says, don't touch me or don't get it in my space, what are you going to do? You have choices.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Yeah, choices.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Four year olds can be little bullies.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Well, actually, I don't know. I'll just throw this in as a side comment. People don't know the most violent age of human beings and it's three
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Oh, well, hallelujah. We're one year past that.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yep. Well now they're starting to, maybe the second highest violent year is for, because now they're starting, they have the impulses without the control, and now they're starting to get the control. So anyway, but with bullies, it's building up because you mentioned Elaine, someone may have had a lifetime lack of ability to set boundaries, but I also see for example, in domestic violence cases where the victim survivor has been kind of beaten down emotionally and their self-esteem has really gone down. In the new book, our New World of Adult Bullies, I give an example of a celebrity, a singer who got into a domestic violence relationship and her self-esteem drop so that she almost couldn't get out of it. And so it can happen even in a year or two that someone loses the ability to set boundaries that they may have had up to that time.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
So when you're dealing with a bully, people don't expect bullies in their lives. And the reality is today we're growing bullies faster than probably ever. A lot of that's our media, tv, movies, social media, et cetera, is teaching bullying behavior. So we're seeing it more. So everybody needs to learn more about setting boundaries. That's why coaching, you can role play with your coach, what you're going to say, what you're going to do, and gain some confidence. And then if you go into mediation and you're dealing directly with the person, whether you have a lawyer with you or not, you know how you're going to do it, how you're going to deal with it, and that can really help a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Alright, well look, there's a lot to unpack in this case. So what we're going to do is come back next week and talk about more aspects involved in this case, some upcoming case changes in the UK that Elaine's going to advise us about, plus a lot of other really interesting stuff. So regardless of what your role is, I think you'll find it very interesting. So of course we're very pleased Elaine to have had you today and we'll have you again next week and our listeners will be looking very much forward to hearing that again. And thank you as well, bill.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
We will have all of the links we've talked about today, Elaine's Richardson, family Law Practice link in the show notes, and we have a webinar, a couple of webinars coming up April 19th and May 10th. That bill will be talking about bullies. April 19th will be bullies in families and May 10th will be bullies in the workplace. So we'll have those links. They're free webinars, one hour, I think they'll be super enjoyable. And a link for our pre-mediation coaching service we offer here at HI training for mediators. The bullies book. We got lots of links in there. So check out our show notes. Send any questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. We'd love it if you tell your friends and colleagues about us and leave a review wherever you listen. Until next time, keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuel's, 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.