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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 deal with the most challenging human interactions, those involving someone with a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, Phil Eddie.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on consulting and training and coaching and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In today's episode, we are launching two brand new things. Number one, this is our first time doing it on video, so welcome to Bill and Megan's video world. We might have a few fumbles, but we think we're looking pretty good. Lighting might be a little bit off, but it's okay. Also new is this is the first of our series called Our New World of Bullies or just World of Bullies series. It is in correlation with the release of Bill's brand new book that's coming out June 11th, 2024, called Our New World of Adult Bullies, how to Spot Them, how to Stop Them, A Little Bit of a Time Twister. So we're going to get the 4 1 1 from Bill on the book, all of his research into it and what he found and all the solutions he proposes in the book. And then we're going to talk about a couple of very current recent news items that kind of have to do with bullying or we'll see if they do, maybe they don't. Bill will tell us first a couple of notes. Please send your high conflict related questions or comments to high conflict or podcast@highconflictinstitute.com and you'll also find all of the show notes and links@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast and you'll find links to the books and all kinds of things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So Bill, welcome to this brand new series World of Bullies. Your new book is coming out soon already. The pre-orders are fantastic and we've been talking about it a lot and I know you've been doing a ton of news interviews and I'm sure a lot more to come. So I just want to open the floor to you and say tell us about the book. But my first, I have one question and then just free flow from there. What made you write this book?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, it actually started in the first year of Covid. I don't think I've even told this to you, but I remember it was December of 2020 and I remember just waking up one of those days when there wasn't much happening because so much had canceled and thinking I really want to explain what's happening with high conflict personalities, but I really want to focus on the most high conflict personalities and that's bullies. And that we were already seeing more bullying in the first year of Covid. We were seeing political disputes that involved bullying. We were seeing neighborhood disputes, people in stores that were yelling at each other about masks and vaccines. And I just wanted to explain that we're on the same team, all of us humanity, we're on the same team and that we need to understand bullies not as bad people and making judgements about them, but as people we need to strategize around and set limits on and have consequences for.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
A big part of it is that we all are going to be seeing bullies that it's now part of our culture and in many ways bullies get the most news attention and so bullies on airplanes, bullies on the highway, bullies in stores, bullies in Congress, bullies everywhere. And that I wanted to explain that the dynamics are all the same and that everyone needs to learn their hidden powers because they're really hidden in plain sight. And so I wanted to list those so people know how to spot them, what to look for, but also how to stop them because what one of the fundamental things I realized people don't understand is bullies can't stop themselves. This is who they are. And so it takes other people to stop them, to set limits, to say, you can't do this, you can't go there. And there's a consequence if you do.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
That's what bullies need. They need structure. Bullies don't even think about what they're doing. They just do it. Much of it's impulsive, much of it's destructive to other people that they have a drive to dominate or destroy other people. And you said, what did I learn from researching this is really that many bullies are born this way and that many bullies learn in early childhood to be this way either from abuse or from being indulged and entitled and getting away with bullying people and getting laughed at and going, oh, that's fun. I'm going to do more of that. So it's not things that people sat down and decided it's part of who they are, and we all have to realize that and bullies may have a lot to contribute, but they can't stop themselves. So we have to restrain them, not eliminate them, but restrain them enough that their contributions can be made without them harming other people.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Some things that just start ringing in my head, or if we took cues from nature from the animal kingdom, they do a lot of limit setting and structure and they don't let the bullies take over. They do stand up to bullies. So what's happened in our polite society that's caused us to sort of devolve from knowing that we need to stop the bullies?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Well, what's interesting is I think humanity really has evolved into a fairly cooperative civilization where people do, like they stop at red lights mostly they stay in their lane. Mostly we go the speed limit, well much of the time, but that we've developed a rules-based culture instead of the biggest bully is in charge and makes everything happen. And we've been evolving like this in many ways, I'd say at least the last thousand years when in 1215, and I think I put this in the book, that in England, the Magna Carta, they set limits on the king and said, no, no, you're going to share power with the Lords and Nobles. You're not a free to do whatever you want, a free dictator or anything like that. And then we came up with constitutions, the US Constitution as a role model for the world. So we've been moving in this more and more cooperative direction.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
But what's interesting, and I learned a lot more than I had thought, is our high emotion media that our media that shows on screens, people yelling at each other, throwing things at each other, bullying each other, is actually influencing our thinking, making us think, oh, that's what you do, because we mirror each other. And so you see bullying in a movie, on TV, on your smartphone that's starting to become part of our culture that that's what you do. You yell at people, you call them names, you make it personal. That's a shift. And I think it's really because our technology has advanced so rapidly that as human beings, we haven't caught up with setting limits on that, but I think we can. And that's a lot of why I wrote the book. We need to set limits. We're not going to stop this, and I don't need government policies that say everybody has to be nice to each other, but we all need to learn skills at setting limits when people really aren't nice to us.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
And I have to say that the mirroring is really fascinating because I know you and I have been co-founders of this company for close to 18 years now. I noticed early on that you started every email with Hi Megan or Hi Susie or whatever, and we all have adapted to that. And it's rare when I don't come back with High Bill even though it seems like that's too much extra work. And sometimes I don't do it because I'm in a hurry and I just send it off. But you really can kind of set the stage, set the culture, and set the communication culture really with things like that. So that extends into how we behave in culture. And I want to share a piece of good news with you because I know you're not a social media fan or user, but I'm a recent person on Instagram and I really, really like it and something I've learned from it. There's a lot of different accounts that just show everything in the world. One of them, maybe more than one, is about Karen's quote, Karen's the women who yell at people. And frankly, there's a lot of bullying that they show on there. And I think what that does for people who see it, there may be some who gravitate toward it, but I think for others it helps us check our behavior a bit.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
So we might be seeing, and I know that's happened even with me, if I'm feeling frustrated with somebody at a restaurant, check myself, don't say something rude just because we've really become acclimated to that in our culture that that's kind of what you do. Even if you've been raised to be polite and mattered and respectful, I think it's kind of seeped in a bit. So that's a bit of good news. I don't want to be a Karen.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, and I think you're right that there's a lot that we see that's good, that helps us become more a lot of information. And of course now that we're on video and people can see us, we're part of what people see. So hopefully they'll mirror us being friendly and smiling and hopeful and informative, rather, we're not throwing things at each other or it's not Jerry Springer.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, we've never done that.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
So I think all the media, the technology, I'm not someone against that. I just think we have to learn skills to manage it and find balance because I don't disagree with entertainment. I think a movie that shows buildings blowing up and people shooting each other and all that stuff is okay if it's part of life but doesn't dominate life. And I think we're starting to see the balance tip too much. And that's the problem to me. So I think we can use video, radio, everything for good, and we can have nasty bad stuff as a part of our lives. That's entertainment that we know is entertainment, and we know this isn't the way to talk to people in your family. And that's what's been getting blurred because there's so many bullies now, I think.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, going back to where you started at the pandemic, it seemed that it was so divisive about the vaccines, about masking from the beginning to the end. It became a very divisive thing, and some loud voices on either side of every argument got louder and it seemed to influence and infiltrate into the rest of us. And you found yourself taking sides or you found yourself disgusted when somebody that you thought was a friend suddenly felt oppositional to you and started being rude and kind of mean, and maybe even bullying a little bit because they perceive you have a different opinion than they do. I think this, it's probably spurred on the bully culture a bit, unfortunately. So I think the book is perfect timing. As you and I both know in our trainings everywhere, and I talk to a lot of people, you talk to a lot of people in our work, whether we're out on the road training or just taking phone calls, and 99% of the time people are saying Conflict has increased, aggression has increased, bullying has increased, the gloves are off, so we got to get the gloves. I dunno, is that on the right way to say it?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I don't think so, but we have to take everybody's gloves off. That's right. Just be kind. Good. Unless it's a boxing entertainment program, they can have gloves for entertainment, but not for real life
Speaker 1 (13:33):
In a structured controlled environment. Right, right. Exactly. Also, as kind of observed that is the world got stressed out about the pandemic and the stay at home orders and just the loneliness and all of this anxiety increased. Everyone's anxiety increased because of the unknown. We didn't know what was coming. We didn't know what was happening. We'd never lived through anything like this before. So when was it coming for us? So we were all living in sort of that right brain fear mode for quite a long time. And when you're in more of a fear state, even if it's a moderate level, we're going to be more on edge. And when we're on edge, we're going to be crankier and spicier and probably engaged in conflicts perhaps that we wouldn't have engaged in before. And those with the loudest, most extreme voices that have the bullying maybe from birth, right, they just got louder.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah. Well, what's interesting is if a bully personally attacks you, not physically, but verbally, then we're good at this. We're training people in all of that to not react and to not engage at the same level. And I think maybe a majority of people don't automatically react as intensely as a bully. But because we're in an age of bullying and we're all anxious, we're like we react faster. One thing the internet's done is shortened our attention span, which has made us more emotional and less reflective. And so we're kind of more raw. And so if somebody starts to bully us, we're either ready to fight or to just head out the door or frozen. Were reactive more than overriding our responses. And part of the book is how to override your responses to not let these primitive emotional powers that bullies have trigger primitive emotional responses in us.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And that's the thing, it's below our awareness, but we have fear, we have rage, and we have caring for people. This is all in common with all mammals. And you're talking about going back into the animal kingdom. We have the same seven primitive emotional systems that all mammals have. Fear, rage, caring, what I call love. Loyalty is the caring. And then if somebody is in a panic or grieving, we automatically feel like reaching out to them. So you put the caring and panic grief responses together. I call it love, loyalty, and bullies trigger that. It's like everything's, your life is a mess. You're a crazy person and I'll take care of you. And so people go, oh, okay, here's my hero. And in domestic violence cases, they say, you don't need anybody else but me because you're a mess. You're a crisis and you can't count on anybody and all those people out there don't like you. And it triggers all this primitive emotional stuff in us that makes us submit more to a bully, a domestic violence perpetrator. And I talk about that in the book, that people don't even realize how their self-esteem is going down, and they're accepting more and more what the bully says. And that's all primitive stuff. So I want to make it out in the open and have people understand what's happening and how to override all that.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, I love that. Made me think about people getting isolated. Often when there's a bully, you end up becoming very isolated. Who will believe me, or I'm embarrassed to tell anyone. A bully will often have us walking on eggshells. So we just become more and more isolated in that. And then yeah, your self-esteem goes down and confidence goes down, and depression probably goes up and maybe drinking and other things too. So there's a huge impact. The relational impact and bullying is tremendous. I wonder then in your book, did you talk about a point where someone, you've tried everything, you've tried everything in this new ability book and the bully won't stop then?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Well, that's part of what I talk about in there. In fact, that's the first power. The first hidden power I talk about is unrestrained personalities that they don't restrain themselves. And for those who know, I talk about personality disorders. Some three personality disorders sometimes are present in bullies, narcissists, of course, because they lack empathy. And so they don't feel for the other person, and they're just willing to step on them to get ahead. Antisocial personality lacks remorse. Remorse stops most of us from hurting other people. Oh, they lack that. It's almost like a key ingredients missing. And so they're charging forward and willing to hurt people without even paying attention to whether it hurts them, if they want what they want. And if you're in the way, tough luck, I'm going to hurt you. But also borderline personality, where it comes out more like domestic violence.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
A lot of that is people with borderline personality patterns, that there's a lack of self-control and bullies often have a lack of self-control. So these person three personalities are present. They have more bullying than average. And so I talked briefly about them, but it really is they don't stop themselves and it's part of their personality. And say in a workplace, people go, oh, Joe is just out of line, but he's going to realize it soon. Or Jane, she's going to come to her senses and then they don't. And everyone's kind of waiting for them to take care of it, and they have to be stopped. People around them have to say, Hey, that's enough Joe, or that's enough Jane. Bystanders have to play a role, and organizations have to have policies and enforce their policies. So the more we set limits on bullies and impose consequences, the more everybody's anxiety level I think will go back down. Again, that's in many ways part of the book, just making people aware, but also how to stop bullies and it's setting limits and imposing consequences individually and collectively,
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Which you now call slick, slick solutions, setting limits and imposing consequences in two and a half steps. I'll let you know right now, this is a surprise to you, but I taught that for the first time a few days ago to a group of people who deal with a lot of bullies in the course of their daily work just by virtue of what they do. And they loved this. They loved having something solid to grasp onto, set a limit. Here's how you do it. If you have to set it again, set it with the threat of a possible consequence. And then if that limit is violated, then you impose the consequence. It's really pretty simple. It's much easier than people think. And so I think it's for many people going to be just a game changer really, particularly in high conflict situations. You have to have this. It's not all about just having empathy, right?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
People say, I was really nice, and they still were a jerk.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
And it's shocking. It's just such a world of opposites. We think that just by being kind, that we're going to change the world. And yeah, it's great to be kind, but for people with people who don't stop themselves, we could still be kind. Setting a limit is a kindness, setting a limit and imposing a consequence is a gift, so it might keep them out of trouble or something. So I just wanted to let you know that it's very successful and being used already. And I know you just came up with, I mean, you've been talking about setting limits for a long time, but adding the imposing consequences piece as something, a technique that people can grasp onto very quickly and easily,
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I should say a little more about the half step also. Yes. So two and a half steps, first step, as you said, Megan is setting the limit saying, what's the behavior I expect and not to cross this line? And then if you have to imposes consequences, and that's where I found, and in the book, people really hesitated. They would set a limit but not impose consequences and not even threaten the consequences. And often bullies stop at the threat of consequences if they know what will really happen, like losing a job. And I had examples in the book, people, if you don't change your behavior, you're going to lose your job. Unfortunately, in two cases, they couldn't change. They sued their companies, they lost their jobs, and they lost their lawsuits. So imposing consequences is I think the big step that's in the slick setting limits imposing consequences.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
But the half step is about half the time you want to give them an ear statement, empathy, attention, and respect, say, now, this is, I want to help you and that's why I'm doing it. It doesn't help you if I let you get away with walking on my toes or whatever you're doing. And having empathy and saying, I know this is hard. I know this is disappointing. Hang in there the way you would talk to a child and maybe an adolescent, but there's some bullies that you don't want to do that with because they will manipulate you. They'll say, well, if you had empathy for me, you would sign this blank check. If you had empathy for me, you'd bail me out of jail after whatever behavior yesterday. Or if you had respect for me, you'd let me walk all over you, or you wouldn't set limits on me If you had respect for me, how dare you do that? And so they put energy into twisting your empathy, attention and respect to distract you and to wiggle out of having the limit set. And so that's why I said half the time, don't do an your statement, just stand firm with your limit. And a lot of bullies actually respect that. They go, okay, this guy's really serious, and there's no hooks for me to manipulate him with. So that's setting the limit and posing the consequence, and half the time, giving an air statement. And half the time not,
Speaker 1 (25:13):
I know this is going to sound quite ridiculous, but I think prison is probably the best example of setting limits and imposing consequences, right? There's a pecking order and the people that set the limits and impose the consequences are really in charge.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
And I have in the books several examples where it really was the legal system and prison that had to be used to stop. And I'll give one of the most recent big examples is Harvey Weinstein. So Harvey Weinstein got away for decades, not just sexually harassing women, but sexually assaulting them, raping them. He had a lot of negative advocates, which is a chapter in the book also who covered up for him, threatened the people who had been abused if they spoke up about it. And so he got away with it, and that enabled him to keep being a bully and being a dangerous person. And they said about 80 women. And the final result was he went to prison and he's in prison now, and he's got two prison sentences, I think one in New York and one in Los Angeles. And one of them recently got set aside. There was some problems with it, but they don't think it's going to go away. And he still has the other one in Los Angeles. So there's consequences for this behavior. And you know what it represented to society, that's a limit for society. You can't get away with this even if you're a big deal movie producer,
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Right? And I think it emboldened the others to speak out in similar situations. So you have the limits and consequences imposed by the government, by the laws and rules of society. And then within the prison itself, there's a pecking order of prisoners, right? They set limits like nobody's business, and people respect them. They know who can be crossed and who cannot be crossed. So they give us an interesting example. In fact, there's a Netflix documentary right now of a prison and maybe a Midwestern state in the United States, maybe Oklahoma, where the prison warden decided to let the inmates out of their cells instead of having to be in their cells for, I dunno, 23 hours a day or something. Just ridiculous amounts time. So let them out and let them figure out how to make things work. And so if they could structure their own society and create their own rules and keep within the rules, and he gave them some freedom, he set the limit, told them what the desired behavior would be and what the consequence, you pick the consequence.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
The consequence will either be good, we're going to try it for 30 days. And if you screw up, the consequence will be bad. You're going back under sit in your rooms all day. But if you can behave to this level, then we'll continue it another 30 days and we'll keep reviewing it. And I think people underestimate the power of just setting the limit and definitely underestimate the power of imposing the consequence. So we just have to all get better at that. So with that, let's take a break and we'll come right back and we're going to talk about two recent news cases. Okay? We're back talking about the bullies and what to do. So we're going to talk now about something that happened just recently in the us, in the halls of Congress, and it was some, I think maybe three women involved in sort of a kerfuffle is a nice way of putting it. So we're going to play the audio here so you can hear it, and then Bill's going to comment it right after that.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Do you know what we're here for? We're here about,
Speaker 4 (29:24):
I don't think you know what you're here
Speaker 3 (29:25):
For. Well, the one that's talking about I, I
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Think you're fake eyelashes are messing up.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Hold on order. Mr. Chairman, that's beneath order of your committee.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
I do have a point of order, and I
Speaker 6 (29:40):
Would like to move to take down Ms. Green's words. That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you appearance of another person? Are your feelings hurt her words down? Oh, oh girl, baby girl. Oh, really? Don't even play, baby girl. I don't think we're, we are going to move and we're going to take your words down. Thank you very. I second that motion.
Speaker 7 (30:03):
You agree to strike your words? Yeah, I'll agree. Okay. Ms. Green agrees to strike her words. I believe she's
Speaker 6 (30:09):
Apologized. No, no, no.
Speaker 7 (30:10):
Okay, hold on. Then after Mr. Perry, you'll be recognized then. Ms. Green,
Speaker 6 (30:14):
I'm not apologize. Well, you're the right. I am not apologizing. No, let's go.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I'm just curious just to better understand your ruling. If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach, blonde, bad, built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities. Correct?
Speaker 7 (30:32):
A what Now,
Speaker 6 (30:35):
Chairman, I make a motion to strike those
Speaker 7 (30:38):
Words. I don't think that's a
Speaker 6 (30:40):
Part of it.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Okay, bill. So that was more than a kerfuffle. So what happened there? Is that anything akin to bullying?
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Well, I think so. And maybe I should define bullying in many ways, it's making it personal, making a person feel physically threatened, emotionally threatened that you're demeaning to them. And it's not one incident, it's a pattern of behavior. But the idea is when you say something personal about the way somebody looks, the way they dress, their sanity, their morals, their intelligence, especially in front of other people and making people uncomfortable, that's bullying. And I've got a definition from the American Psychiatric Association, I think at the beginning of the book, but it's really making people uncomfortable, making them feel threatened, whether social standing or their physical existence. So as soon as somebody makes a personal statement about somebody, I think you're getting into bullying, especially in a big public setting like Congress, where the whole world can watch if they want these committee meetings that they have.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
So what could have been done differently in this particularly particular situation?
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Well, this really follows from setting limits and imposing consequences because there was no limit set and there was no consequences. So pretty quickly after the one woman said nasty comment about the other person's appearance, then, and I forget which one went in first, but the woman who was the target made some other derogatory personal attack back. And that was very dramatic. And a third woman who wasn't one of the two that were targeting each other joined in and basically started making also personal comments. And so you've got three people now personally attacking each other with a lot of gusto, a lot of intensity, which shocked the chairperson of the meeting. And to me, there's four people that made mistakes there, the three women that made their personal attacks on each other, but the chairperson didn't do what needs to be done. And this is a lot of why I wrote the book, is to warn people, bullies are coming to you, they're coming to your house, to your job, to your committee meeting.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
And so you need to be prepared. And we have actually been preparing people for this for the last, I think about five years when we developed the respectful meeting policy. We've used this at homeowners association meetings, some companies. And the idea is that the chairperson of a meeting has the right to interrupt somebody who's being disrespectful and to tell them they need to correct their speech to be respectful full. And if they don't, then I'm going to stop the meeting and we'll take a break or I'll have you removed from the meeting or I'm going to end the meeting. So there's a consequence. And so you give the person a chance, you set the limit, you say, please speak respectfully. If you don't, then I'll need to do this. And they continue to speak disrespectfully, then you have to impose that. So what the cheer person should have done is when the first person made the personal attack on appearance of another person, they had a gavel, they should have banged their gavel and said, wait a minute out of order, you need to stop.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Do you agree to stop doing that? And the person probably would say, yes. Okay, then we can proceed. They say, no, I'm going to say whatever I want. Say, okay, I'm calling a break. And you have to be quick with that. You have to just jump in when people start doing this. And my hope is that more and more people chairing meetings will be ready to do that. Now, there's an added piece that we suggest with this, and that is meetings, like public meetings, meetings where you think somebody might be bullying somebody as you put a little notice out either on the meeting or on the meeting table that says, we follow the respectful meeting policy here, please speak respectfully. Or the meeting may have to be adjourned or you may have to be removed. Something like that. And I've got that in the book, the actual paragraph that I recommend people use. But that's what people have to do. And more everybody's going to have to learn how to do this, and that's sad, but that's what we're facing today. And if everybody does this, we're going to have a calmer, safer, happier society.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Agreed. Agree. Alright, so let's switch now into another recent news item. And this is about Instagram social media again. So this is from one young woman to another young woman. And so I'll just read it to you. Hi. I was wondering if I could purchase your username from you. I just got married and this is my new name. So the person she's written to writes back saying, Hey, congrats. Yeah, that's my name too. I just googled and it said that selling my username on Instagram would get me banned from Instagram. So they don't allow, there's a policy, there's a limit. So the original, the asker says, I purchased my username in the past. So actually that's not true. Celebrities do it all the time. And that's how they all have their handles as their full names. So weird that I didn't know there was another family name out there like this.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
I see that you're not that active on here, but started Instagram in 2018, but changed your username three times. Is there any way I can get you to change your username one more time and give some laughing emojis? The responder says, I use this Instagram name for private stories and I don't want to get banned. Sorry. So the asker responds with, I actually don't believe that your name is Catherine Asland, who would make their fake Instagram account, what they call it, a Finsta, which is a kind of a private account. Why would you make that your actual name? I reported you to Instagram and they're actually able to tell me your real name. I really hope I don't know you because that's really going to be embarrassing for you. The responder says, you can report me, ask her, respond. I just did, and my fiance did too. So responder says, you're asking me to do something to get my account banned. I doubt Instagram would take that lightly ask or response. I'm asking you to change your username because you're pretending to be someone you're not.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
So eventually goes on that it's illegal to use your real name, and I'm reporting you my fiance's, reporting you and goes on. The family I just married into is the only ask one family in the us. The responder says, I'm not American. And the asker says, do you have proof? That's your name? I would love to see that. So here's the final thing. The responder says, why do I have to send you any proof of who I am? This is my account. I've had it since 2018. I'm sorry, we share the same name, but just because you got married doesn't mean you can have my username. If you were nice, I would've considered giving it to you for free, but you weren't. I reported you for asking me to sell my account and another report for harassing me. Have a good day. There it is. So I don't know, bill, any bullying going on here?
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Well, I think the bullying is when people insist, when there's been a no and they insist, and especially when it starts bordering on personal or threatening that other people will get involved or legal action and those kinds of things. I think about a lot of reasonable people might've gotten partway into that discussion and said, oh, I wasn't aware of that policy. Let's look into that and then get back in touch. I hope you'll think about it, but that's one of today's problems is the rules aren't really clear. And so people insist that other people are being idiots, not following the rules as I understand them
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Or as I want them
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Or as I want them. Yeah. So I think early on it didn't quite seem like bullying, but then it started feeling like bullying because there was this insistence, even when the person kept saying, no, our culture is still working with that no means no, which part of no, don't you understand? All
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Right? Right.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
We have to respect that more. We can't just bully people into giving in. And interestingly enough, I have a terrible example in the book early on about somebody that wanted a Twitter handle. I think they really bullied the person and ended up having a SWAT team come to the person's house.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Oh dear. They called
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It swatting. So I didn't know about swatting until I researched my book. Horrible. So things like that. Yeah, terrible stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
That's an insane, insane bullying tactic. I mean, that's a very extreme, I didn't get people killed so bad stuff. So it's interesting because I think we think about bullying as just this big aggressive ugliness, and we see that there's a range of bullying, and it's about, like you said, it's when it becomes personal, it's when it's repetitive and that so, and insistent and in this case, turning in someone for something that they didn't even do. It's just insanity. It's ridiculous. And just takes people's time.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Lemme just add something so we don't end without saying this. The last chapter talks a lot about what can be done and that many bullies can be coached to reduce or stop their bullying behavior. That's the goal. We don't want to eliminate them. We want to coach them to take off the sharp edges, the sharp elbows, so that they can be productive citizens, they can contribute, they can enjoy life without bullying other people, hurting other people. So enough of that, some bullies just aren't going to change even with coaching and really need to be restrained in a bigger way. And that's when we get into prisons and such like that. But we're optimistic, and that's our whole business as High Conflict Institute, is that we can help people manage situations with high conflict people and even with bullies, the most high conflict people. So there is hope, but there's work to do, and that's what this is about.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Absolutely. That's a great way to end it. And I'll just add one thing. My favorite page of the book so far is the dedication page where there's a picture of all the little fish and your dedication says to the targets of bullies around the world. You're not alone. And it has this image of what I call an army of fish. So I thought that was fantastic, bill. I really love that. So thank you for writing the book and thank you for discussing it today. We want this book to change the world.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Thank you listeners for taking time to be with us today, and we hope this will be helpful. We have all the links to the book, and we're having three bullying webinars coming September, October, November. One for families, one for communities, and one for workplace. So Bill will be teaching those four weeks each. We have all kinds of links to articles in here. So take a look. Next week we're going to be joined by a special guest, Michael Lomax, who is on our team here at HCI, one of our speakers, trainers, mediators, and we're going to talk about, again, second in our series of world of bullies, bullies at work and bullies in mediation. 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 tell your friends and colleagues about us and give us a review. Give us a thumbs up, let us know. Let the world know if you like what we have to talk about. Until next time, keep learning. Keep practicing skills. Read this book, be kind to yourself and others and set a lot of limits while we all try to find the missing piece and keep the conflict small.
Speaker 8 (44:30):
It's
Speaker 9 (44:30):
All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.