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Megan and Bill talk about who you should tell – if anyone – about someone in your life who is high conflict or has a personality disorder in this week’s episode. It’s a big issue that can impact outcomes whether in a legal case, in your job or in your family.
To tell or not to tell. That is a question on the minds of many who deal with high conflict situations. In a court situation, is it is a good idea to tell the judge that the other person is high conflict or has a personality disorder, whether diagnosed or suspected? The same goes in the workplace. Should HR be told? And the same question applies in any setting, such as the education environment, in mediation or even in families.
It’s tempting to want to tell everyone what you suspect you’re dealing with, but will it help or hurt your case or situation? Will it backfire?
Megan and Bill answer this vital question in this week’s episode. It’s a big issue that can impact outcomes whether in a legal case, in your job or in your family.
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Our website: https://www.highconflictinstitute.com/
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All of our books can be found in our online store or anywhere books are sold, including as e-books.
You can also find these show notes at our site as well.
Note: We are not diagnosing anyone in our discussions, merely discussing patterns of behavior.
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.
Megan Hunter:
Welcome to It's All Your fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those with someone who may have a high-conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, Bill Eddy.
Bill Eddy:
Hi, everybody.
Megan Hunter:
We're the co-founders of the High-Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In today's episode, we're going to talk about one of the questions we are asked the most, which is whether to tell someone else, maybe it might be a judge, human resources, a boss, friends, family members, anyone else, that the person you're dealing with that you're really having a challenge with and you think may have a high-conflict personality, is it okay to tell someone else about that? Should you tell the judge? Should you tell the HR person? It's a dicey area and it can have a lot of unfavorable results, even with the best of intentions.
It'll be a good one today, but first a couple of notes. If you have a question about high-conflict situations or people, send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast, where you'll also find the show notes and links. Please give us a rater review and tell your friends, colleagues or family about us, especially if they're dealing with a high-conflict situation. We're very grateful.
Now, let's talk about what to do, should you be a megaphone or not?
Bill, we get asked this question an awful lot, and it's surprising because most people think it's a really good idea to tell someone else that their significant other or the person they're divorcing or whoever it is in their life that's causing a lot of havoc and chaos, telling them they're high-conflict or they have a high-conflict personality. This can come after someone reads one of our books or goes through our website, read some articles or goes on your Psychology Today blog and, "Oh, yeah, this article's amazing. I've learned about my ex-husband, now I can tell the judge that he has narcissistic personality disorder," and they think it's a really good idea. We'll talk today about whether that's true or not.
In legal cases, do you think it's a good idea to tell the judge, the mediator, evaluator, or whoever the professional is, that you think that the other person has a personality disorder or is a high-conflict person, but they've never been formally diagnosed?
Bill Eddy:
Well, the answer is an emphatic no, don't do that.
Megan Hunter:
What was that?
Bill Eddy:
An emphatic no.
Megan Hunter:
Okay, just to be clear.
Bill Eddy:
That'll blow up in your face. If you think somebody has a personality disorder, then what happens, and we especially see this in family law, but this is also true in probate cases, this is true in the workplace, et cetera, where you say, "Hey, my sister has a personality disorder," and that's not going to help you because they're going, "Well, how do you get to diagnose somebody?" If we have everybody diagnosing everybody, it's useless information.
I have to admit that in a family law case about 25 years ago, I submitted a memorandum of points and authorities pointing out how, in that case it was a husband, my client was the wife, and how he seemed to have a personality disorder. The judge totally ignored that. At the end of the hearing, he says, "And Mr. Eddy, I fail to see the relevance of that." I said, "Well, if I'm right, your honor, we'll be back in your courtroom every year for some matter that's either frivolous or non-existent." Well, a couple years later, we've been back couple times, the judge says, "Well, I don't know what this is, but, sir, I'm beginning to agree with Mr. Eddy."
Megan Hunter:
Surprise.
Bill Eddy:
But the lesson I got out of that is that they don't want to hear about that. What they do want to hear about is what are the concerning patterns of behavior, it's not a label, label doesn't help. Unfortunately, there's a lot of information on the internet today. One of the jokes almost in a lot of legal cases today is, "Yeah, yeah. My client said the other party's a narcissist." Everybody says the other party's a narcissist, my boss is a narcissist, my neighbor is a narcissist, my ex is a narcissist.
Megan Hunter:
It's very trendy to label someone else.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah, exactly, and it's very easy.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah it costs you nothing.
Bill Eddy:
But it doesn't mean anything, and it hurts your credibility. It's as if you're saying, "Well, I'm an expert and the value of the machinery is X, Y, Z," and you have no experience in doing any of that. Basically, the answer is no, the judges don't like that. Also, mediators usually don't like that, evaluators, they also frown on that. But there's an alternative, which we can get to at some point.
Megan Hunter:
It leads me to another question. What if someone has been formally diagnosed? Now, we're talking about a divorce or child custody or parenting time matter here. If you know that this person has a formal diagnosis, then is it okay?
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. In that case, it's totally different because it's out on the table, assuming it's been public knowledge, that it wasn't a confidential document that said that, but that it's out in the open. But that alone still doesn't tell the judge, mediator, evaluator, or yourself very much. It just raises a question of, well, what does this mean in this case? You still need to explain why it's a specific issue in your case. You have to describe the most concerning patterns of behavior that are associated with that. There's a wide range, all of the personality disorders that we talk about have a really wide range. Some people it's a disorder, some may just have some traits, some may be so severe they can't work, they can't function in society, and others, they're a functioning person with these problems and they may do great at their job. But mostly, personality disorders are about close relationships and that's where it shows up, the all-or-nothing thinking, the blaming, et cetera. But there's such a range that you need to say specifically what are the concerning patterns of behavior, not a psychological label.
Megan Hunter:
I also like to think of it from the perspective of the judge who went to law school and didn't go to school to be a psychologist. If you're thinking, "I'm going to go in and tell the judge that my ex has borderline personality disorder or is a sociopath," the judge may have some limited information or training about that, but at the end of the day, what's it matter? If the judge says, "Oh, okay, well, you're saying this person has borderline personality disorder. What would you like me to do with that? Ban them from the planet?" It's an interesting dilemma then for the judge, so like you said, it's about showing the patterns of behavior that go against good parenting, right?
Bill Eddy:
That's the thing, is there's several things to think about. You show concerning patterns of behavior, but it's related to what you're asking for. Let's say you're asking for supervised parenting for the other parent and you need to say why there's a problem that needs that much intrusion and intervention into the other parent's life, so if they have a substance abuse problem and they've driven drunk, or they have an anger management problem and they yell and scream a lot, then the impact of that on the child. You say this happened, this happened, this happened, domestic violence, physical abuse, et cetera, you need to talk about that specifically.
Let me give you a framework, and I might mention that this framework is involved in two books. One is our book, High-Conflict People in Legal Disputes, the second edition, and I believe it's chapter 14, it's 13 or 14. The other is our book, Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone With Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which you can buy without having to diagnose your spouse or ex, and coauthored with Randi Kreger.
In both of those books, I lay out a method that I found the most constructive, and that is come up with the three or four most concerning themes or patterns of behavior that you want to tell the judge about, say why you think there should be supervised contact of the other parent. This could be because they're physically abusive, or it could be because they're emotionally abusive, or they have uncontrollable anger, or they're undermining your relationship with the child, or they mislead and lie to professionals, or they have alienating behaviors that lead to resistance and refusal, but you say alienating behaviors of father or of mother. These are examples of the kind of themes that the cases I've consulted with frequently have.
You have these headings and if you're submitting a document, you put these bold, all caps, underline the heading, and so a judge can see, okay, there's these three or four patterns of concern. Then under each one, you list the three or four most concerning examples of that. Within a couple pages, let's say you do a two-page summary that lays this out, a judge can go, "Oh, okay. This case is different from a lot of my cases because this case has real clear examples of outrageous abusive behavior or intimidating the child," locking the child in the room, slamming the door on the child's hand, all of these kinds of things, but they can get an idea of where does this fit in my caseload, because a lot of people say that the other party is a jerk. It's like, "Well, what level of jerk?" That's the issue.
You're not going to get supervised parenting unless you have a real concern, you're not going to get limited parenting for the other parent unless there's a real concern, but you also have to support it with those three or four examples, because if you say, "My co-parent is horribly abusive to the child," and then your examples are, "Well, two months ago, he raised his voice at the child and last month he picked the child up half an hour late," the judge is going to go, "Oh, okay, that's not a supervised contact case." That's why you have to really spell it out.
I might add, if someone may or may not have a personality disorder doesn't necessarily change a whole lot about what happens. I had a case where my client had, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but she had shot herself in the stomach, she was upset, but she said it wasn't a suicide attempt, but there was a parenting dispute that upset her. She lost custody for a while and she wanted to go back to court to get custody. While she was recovering, her therapist diagnosed that she had borderline personality disorder. She got treatment for that, she was on medications for depression. She totally cleaned up her life, really addressed everything.
Six months later, she got custody back because two things, one is she really demonstrated that she really got into recovery and did a good job, and the other is the other party was a liar. He lied about enough things that we pointed out to the judge and the judge says, "I've got two people with problems. One's working on their problems and the other isn't. If mom keeps this up, she can have the child back again." A diagnosis doesn't mean you never see the child again, it's that kind of issue.
Megan Hunter:
What about telling a therapist, or even your own lawyer, let's say, in a family case?
Bill Eddy:
Well, those are two quite different professionals around this issue. Your therapists feel free, therapists are used to talking about this stuff. They may be able to explain why the person may or may not have these characteristics. They should be careful not to say, "Here's my diagnosis of your co-parent," because they haven't met that person, but you should be able to talk pretty openly with them about that.
With the lawyer, it's mixed because some lawyers make the presumption that if one party has a problem, the other party probably has an equal problem. If you say, "My husband's a narcissist," the lawyer's going to go, "Okay, then you're probably a narcissist too, or maybe you're a borderline," or something like that. There's a chance they're going to look negatively at you if you use these terms.
On the other hand, it is confidential. You could say, "I have concerns about the patterns of behavior. They seem to fit someone with a personality disorder from what I've read on the internet." The big thing to discuss with a lawyer about a personality disorder in a legal case is that if somebody has a personality disorder, they're very unlikely to change. A lot of judges just figure, "I'm going to give the personal lecture and then they'll change, they'll stop doing that thing that got them into trouble." Well, we learned about 40, 50 years ago that that doesn't work with addictions, because the judge would say, "Sir, can you look me in the eye and promise me you'll never drive drunk again," and the guy says, "Yes, your honor. I will never drive drunk again. I swear, I promise, never, ever, ever again." Then on the way home, they have a drink, next thing you know they're drunk and they drive and they kill somebody, because that's part of their problem, is they don't have that kind of control.
Courts learned long ago, you have to order people into treatment if you really want to keep them clean and sober and not driving drunk. In many ways, that's the same thing here. In family law cases, judges sometimes say, "Well, given the situation, I would give one person primary custody and the other would have very limited contact, but I'm sure you'll stop doing the things you were doing before so I'm going to give you a 50/50 plan." Well, I find that really frustrating, because if there's a big problem that one has and the other's pretty reasonable, in about half of cases one's reasonable and once got one of these personality issues, and in that kind of case, that's not what you want to order, but there's this belief that people are good people, people can change.
Well, it's not a question of good, just like Betty Ford was an alcoholic and a pill addict and she was a very good person, but she also had an addiction. That's the problem with personality disorders. People can be good people, but they have behavior, especially conflict behavior, that may be out of control and needs to be restrained. That's one thing we count on the courts to do. You have a discussion like that with your lawyer, say, "These are the reasons why I think they're not going to change. I think they have a personality disorder, I can't say for sure because I'm your client and I'm not a therapist," is what they should say, but you can raise this concern that the other person's not going to change and the court needs to know that and I can give you a lot of examples of why that's the case.
Megan Hunter:
In a family case, that's a lot of good information there and it led me to think about someone who's not divorced, but they're in marital counseling and they go to a therapist and I hear people saying, "My husband is has a personality disorder or has a high-conflict personality." They say this to their therapist. To me, it seems to be starting off on a pretty rotten foot. Is it a good idea to tell your therapist or any marital counselor or any coaching or anything like that?
Bill Eddy:
I think if you can meet separately with them, and a good marital or couple's counselor will give a chance to meet separately, especially if there's domestic violence and those issues. You can say, "I don't know for sure, but I'm concerned about these patterns of behavior. I understand that this is probably pointless to do couples therapy if the person's not capable of changing anything. I just want to give you a heads up, I'm concerned about that." That way the therapist will be paying attention without feeling like you've jumped to a conclusion.
Some therapists have told clients, consultation clients of mine, like a year earlier, before I was involved, have told them that your couple's therapy is pointless because the other person can't change and they've got these other bigger problems. It's rare, but sometimes they're told that. Frankly, I think that's helpful to know, other than spending a year trying to change yourself because the other person's not engaged in an effort to change.
I think, privately, you could say you have concerns about that, but it's more important to say the pattern of behavior.
Megan Hunter:
Now let's go into the role of the professional. Let's say you're the judge, you're the lawyer, you're the therapist, and you have a client come or litigant come in and say, "My so-and-so has a high-conflict personality, they have antisocial personality disorder," but the big however is to be very cautious about someone saying this to you, because often, someone who with a true high-conflict personality, as we both know, doesn't know that they do. They think it's the other person, and so the professionals often get it backwards or don't know what to believe or who to believe. That can be a real dilemma, number one, if you just believe someone right out of the gate without investigating. We've both heard of cases like this, where maybe in a family court case a therapist believes one client that their ex is a sociopath or a narcissist or something. They really can get the case backwards and almost, in a way, harm a case. Do you see that very often or hear that very often, Bill?
Bill Eddy:
A lot, definitely. High-conflict cases, that's a common concern. The way to really address that is to have three theories of the high-conflict case. Most high-conflict cases have one party saying the other is acting very badly, domestic violence, substance abuse, child abuse, alienation, false allegations, those kinds of things. You've got to consider the possibility that that's true. You also have to consider the possibility it's not true at all and the person saying that has a high-conflict personality and one of the primary characteristics of that is a preoccupation with blaming others. They can be persuasive blames, because they've had a lot of practice at that. You have to consider that possibility.
That's where you find out that people get locked up for years that may not be guilty of anything, and yet they persuaded other people that they were. That's rare in family law cases, you don't get locked up for years, but in criminal cases, there are people who want to put business partners, neighbors, et cetera, in jail by making up stuff. It's not out of the question.
There's three theories, the third theory is that both people have contributed to the problem, both people may be abusive in their words and behavior. I believe that any professional in the legal field especially needs to be aware of these three possibilities and consider them. Otherwise, it's what we call confirmation bias. If you have a theory, well, the husband must be right, the wife's done these terrible things, that's confirmation bias. If you don't consider the other way around, then you're at risk of proving to yourself that you were right, because you spin all the information in favor of that. That's one thing I get as a high-conflict consultant, is cases where that's happened and how to try to get the court's attention to that it's actually completely the other way around, sometimes with success, sometimes without success.
But this is legal examples, let's look at, say, workplace examples. You're doing a lot workplace training and consultation in the workplace. Do you think this is a concern or that it's safe to say someone's got a personality disorder or high-conflict personality?
Megan Hunter:
It's interesting and I think it's been evolving the last few years, but I'd say, bottom line, it's not a good idea to go to HR or to your boss and say so-and-so has a personality disorder. Number one, like you said earlier, you don't know. You're not a clinician, you can't diagnose and you really got to have to focus on those patterns of behavior and getting those laid out.
But I remember years ago, maybe 12, 15 years ago, when we first started HCI, I talked to a large utilities company, to their HR department. They just wanted to spend an hour with me to see what kind of information we have, like what kind of training we give. I talked about these five personality disorders, as we often do in our trainings, and they shut down very quickly. I was a little taken aback because usually the information is so readily accepted and people are very interested in it, but this group really shut it down. I asked later what was the reason behind that and they said, "Look, we don't need to know this type of information, and once this type of information gets out, then employees might start using it to get disability and all different kinds of things." They just didn't want to talk about it.
I think, in general, now that we're 15 years on, there's a lot more information for human resources departments and there's a lot more sophistication, but still not a good idea. It's more about just understanding what the behaviors are that are contrary to competitive workplace and an efficient workplace and anything that's outside of the alignment of the company's mission and goals. Those things have to be addressed. Probably not a great idea to talk about HCPs and personality disorders at work.
Bill Eddy:
Good to know, and good for people to know. Let me add a little nugget here, and that is I did training for Social Security judges back in the Washington, DC area several years ago. I think over three different trainings, they had about 300 judges each, there's about 900 Social Security administrative law judges. People don't realize that's the largest law firm, probably in the world.
Megan Hunter:
Interesting.
Bill Eddy:
But one of the things they emphasized then was personality disorder doesn't decide any of their cases, it's the behavior and does the person have impaired behavior that would lead to disability, not simply a diagnosis. With that said, I've also spoken with employment lawyers and done trainings in Canada where they are starting to say that could be considered a disability. It really depends on where you are, but even so, I think you're right, you don't want to be the person that's deciding that an employee or a manager has this problem. You want to get the professionals to do that for you.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah, good idea. Wrapping this up, the last question, and maybe it'll be the most interesting to the majority of our listeners, is what if you have a family member or a neighbor or a friend who's really displaying some less than stellar behaviors and you think that they have this disorder? Now, what comes to mind is one particular friend, a family friend, who was getting a divorce. They decided it would be a great idea to send, I don't know, 15 or 16 copies of your book, Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone With Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, to all of their soon-to-be ex's family members, just so that family members would understand what he was dealing with, with their own daughter.
Bill Eddy:
How did that go?
Megan Hunter:
I told the guy, "Don't do it, it won't end well for you." He went ahead and did it, and it backfired, completely backfired.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah.
Megan Hunter:
I think in the majority of cases ... I guess it's a little bit different with families, if something is pretty serious, then it's family that does need to take care of it. How is that handled?
Bill Eddy:
The best thing is, if someone's concerned about a friend or family member, is get a consultation with a therapist and say, "Here's my concern. What do you thinks going on here? What should I do?" The therapist can usually help with saying, "That's going to backfire," or, "Here's some things you could do." Where it gets to the point that family and friends may need to do an intervention with somebody, then I think we're going to start seeing that in the coming years, like developed in the substance abuse field. That is family and friends get together and say, "Look, we can't continue to support you or have you living for free here," or whatever it is, "Given how many things you've broken, how many jobs you've quit, how many people you've gotten into legal trouble, all of that. We're going to withhold our support unless you go into some kind of treatment."
There actually are starting to be treatment programs for personality disorders, primarily borderline personality disorder, which often overlaps with eating disorders, substance abuse, et cetera. In that kind of setting, it would be something that people may talk about, but you want to have a professional lead that kind of intervention and have the professional give guidance to the family. Talk to someone who's got experience with this. Generally, you don't want to say it, but discuss it openly with a therapist to get some tips.
Let me give you an example with friends and family. I consulted with three adult women who realized at one point, from the internet, that their mother probably had borderline personality disorder. They got together at one of the holidays and met with mom and said, "Hey, Mom, we figured out what your problem is. You have borderline personality disorder." Well, Mom said, "Get out of my house," and Dad agreed, "If Mom says get out of the house, you need to get out of the house." Mom said, "I don't ever want to hear that again. I don't want to talk to you, leave. I'm not going to ever talk to you again," which helps demonstrate some of the impulsive of all-or-nothing thinking of that personality.
Megan Hunter:
Sure.
Bill Eddy:
But that's not what they had expected or what they wanted. They asked me for a consultation and said, "How can we recover from this?" I said, "Well, first of all, you need to admit that you don't know what's happening and that you're not going to bring that issue up again. Then, look to have a light relationship with your mother. You live in different cities, you don't have to change her and you're not going to change her. Write notes and cards from time to time, share experiences, and realize you're not going to have a deep relationship with your mother, that's just not in the cards, that she's not open to that, but you can maintain a cordial relationship." They were sad that their father supported the mother against them rather than supporting them against the mother, but a lot of times people just aren't open to this. You may just have to grieve and heal that in your own therapy, that here's somebody that's not likely to change.
Clearly, that one blew up. If they had said, "Mom, we think you're under stress. It might help to get some counseling," and Mom said, "Oh, okay, I'll do that," that's a different story. But if Mom says, "No, I have no interest in that," then leave it alone and have a level of relationship that you can have that's positive and realize you're going to have to get some of those needs met from other people because you're not going to get it from a family member with a personality disorder who's not open to any change or reflection.
Megan Hunter:
Right. If you're listening to this and you have a family member who may be having some real struggles like this, it's just never a good idea to say to them, "You're high conflict," or "You're a borderline, you're a narcissist, you're a sociopath." It just never goes well, particularly when you're maybe engaged in a battle with them and they're very upset or they're in a rage, it's just not the time. In those moments, it's about calming the situation down, making sure everybody's okay and other things can be talked about later, but it's still not a good idea to tell someone they have a personality disorder.
If you're listening to this and you don't have the means to seek a therapist or get counseling, just do some reading, do some journaling, talk to some people who might be able to give you some really objective advice and information and just make sure you take care of yourself. With that, we'll wrap it up. I think, in summary, would you agree, Bill, it's just not usually a very good idea to tell anyone that they themselves have a personality disorder and it's not a good idea to go spread it around elsewhere either.
Bill Eddy:
Yes, absolutely. That's the lesson, I think, from today's episode. Just know that you can read about this. We're going to talk about this, but we're always talking in general terms for background knowledge. We're not encouraging you to go out and deliver this news to anybody. Keep it to yourself, a private working theory, if you even have a theory.
Megan Hunter:
That's the key.
Bill Eddy:
That's what we've both concluded, yes.
Megan Hunter:
That's the key.
You'll want to stay tuned for next week's episode when we'll be talking about a child, whether it's a teenager or maybe even an adult child, who may be exhibiting high-conflict traits. There are many, many parents who are concerned about the behaviors of their teen or adult children and they really don't know what to do about it. People who are very sophisticated in so many areas of life, they're really stumped by what to do about a high-conflict situation. We'll be talking about that.
Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. Tell your friends about us, and we'd be very grateful if you'd leave a review wherever you listen to us. Until next week, have a great one, and keep learning about high-conflict situations so you can manage it and influence it in your world. Until then, keep striving toward peace.
It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts at trustory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.