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Megan and Bill return for another Q&A discussion, this time focusing on two questions about paranoid personality and high conflict behaviors.
This Q &A Lab focuses on two questions about possible paranoid personality behaviors and high conflict behaviors, including:
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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 True Story 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 are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. Today we're taking your questions. It is Q&A Lab Day, and we have a couple of really good questions here that are unique, so I think you'll enjoy those. But first, a couple of notes.
If you have a question about a high conflict situation, send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, or on our website, @highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. You can find all the show notes and links at the same link as well. Please give us a rate or 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 get started with our first question in today's Q&A Lab.
So, this question has come in from a parent, and let's see here. "My 19-year-old son is a person with a high conflict personality. He is combative, aggressive, verbally abusive, blaming, and an all-around difficult person to be around. I am his number one target much of the time. I am sometimes afraid of him.
While he hasn't been particularly physically violent, he has in the past spit on me. Ooh. I recently went to the police to better understand how I could get him out of my house if it comes to that. He attends college and lives on campus, but he is having some problems there, and I fear he won't be successful. I cannot have him living with me long-term. He screams at me and terrorizes me. He blames all of his issues on others.
He insists that he was raised in an abusive home, which he was not. His father and he are estranged, and I am divorced from his father for a few years now. His father was also a screamer, so in that way, he abused all of us.
My son refuses all therapy. I have tried and failed at that, and any suggestion that he gets some only fuels his anger at me. My son admits that he has anxiety, which appears to cripple him and fuel his outburst. Still, no willingness to get help. I am at my wits end and do not want to live in fear and walk on eggshells. Any advice and guidance you could provide is appreciated. I fear that my son's presence in my life will ruin me mentally and, potentially, physically.
Two more things. Number one, my son is fixated on my admitting that I abused him as a small child. I did not. And as you might imagine, this seems impossible to concede when it did not happen and when it's such a serious thing. What do I do in this case? He becomes infuriated with me if I don't say I was an abusive parent.
And number two, how do I establish boundaries with him related to money and help and assistance? How do I speak to him about things like this when he is such a bully? All right, Bill. So, there's a lot in that. It sounds like it's a pretty tough go for this parent, but it's not an uncommon situation. We're contacted frequently by parents who are dealing with this very thing.
And I have one particular parent in mind right now whose adult child just wants them to admit that something happened to the child by someone else, and just won't move on until they admit that, and they don't even know if it's true. Anyway, what are your thoughts on this?
Bill Eddy:
Well, a whole lot of thoughts. So, first of all, a little kind of big picture view. So, we talk about high conflict personalities as having four characteristics. "Preoccupation with blaming others", and that'd be a check mark right here. "All-or-nothing thinking", it's all mom's fault, that'd be a check mark here. "Unmanaged emotions". Well, it sounds like he's screaming, he's blaming, he's all of these, so that'd be a check mark.
And "extreme behaviors". And to spit on his mother, we talk about sometimes a warning sign of a high conflict person as if they do something 90% of people would never do. Now, he's 19, he's not 12. Whereas 12 and 13-year-olds who may spit on their mothers, but not for long. But at 19, the theory is, this is adulthood, 18 and above, although the adolescent brain is in totally developed till about 25. The prefrontal cortex that says, "Don't do this thing," isn't totally developed yet.
So, it looks like you've got a high conflict pattern here. You also may have a paranoid personality disorder. Now, we don't diagnose people, but we do want you to understand some of the general patterns of behavior, because there seems to be five subtypes of high conflict personalities, and one of them is paranoid.
Now, whether it's a disorder or not really depends on how rigid it is, because personality disorders are enduring patterns of dysfunctional behavior. So, the personality disorder possibility with paranoid personality is, there's a range. Some people have a trait, some have a disorder. And we're not diagnosing anybody on this show, but we're trying to give you background information that may help.
So, if somebody has a personality disorder, then they have an enduring pattern of dysfunctional, really interpersonal behavior. So, that's possible. Or he may be more flexible and can come out of this. Perhaps this is part of his young adult development. But I have, as a therapist, worked with many families and parents with young adults with patterns of behavior like this. And I encourage you to talk to a therapist about this in your local community so that you can develop some strategies.
But some general principles are, coming from our CARS method, is first of all, try not to argue with him and just calmly, matter-of-factly, "This isn't acceptable," and, "I love you," those connecting-with-him things, which probably won't go very far, given what you've discussed, analyzing his options, giving him some choices or a choice. And this is often a matter of, "You can continue to live in my home if you do such and such," and, "Don't do such and such, like treating me this way, or you will need to live somewhere else."
So, I've worked through that scenario with many parents of young adults with extreme behavior, often substance abuse. And sometimes it helps to go to an Al-Anon group or a ToughLove group and get some support and encouragement for the fact that you're not causing this behavior, but you also shouldn't tolerate this behavior, because this reinforces his development that maybe you are all at fault and that you agree with that.
So, you want to talk about options, analyze options, don't accept his blame like this. Respond in writing. We talk about just straight information. Don't get into arguments. Certainly don't argue about the past. Don't try to give him insight into himself, and don't try to have emotional confrontations. That's some key things we've learned with high conflict personalities. Don't try for insight, don't focus on the past, don't focus on emotions, and don't label him anything, of course.
Now, a little about paranoid personality patterns, whether it's a disorder or not, some people have tendencies but not a disorder. And that includes really exaggerated fears. And he may honestly feel these things. From your description, it seems that he's really experiencing this inside. And people with paranoid personalities, it's sad, they really see the world as a dangerous place.
They're susceptible to conspiracy theories because they fulfill that idea that there's evil forces out there, there's powerful people, all of that. So, they're oriented this way in their thinking. People say, "What did I do to raise a child to be like this?" And we're really seeing that more and more of some of these extreme personality traits may be genetic, and he may have been born this way, and now that he's at this age, it's really exaggerated for him and he experiences it as a dangerous world.
Many people see a sense of hopelessness or depression because they see the world as so negative when there's so much positive at this age, there's so many opportunities, et cetera. So, understanding this isn't something that you caused. I want to agree with the idea that you should not admit that you abused your child if you didn't abuse your child. And this is a question I often get in consultations, "What should I say?"
So, what you can say is, "I see this differently. Let's talk about something else. Let's focus on your choices." So, don't make it an argument. He really seems fixated on that, as you said. And if it's clear to you that you didn't abuse him, and you can say, "We all make mistakes sometimes, but I certainly was not abusive towards you. And I won't agree that I was, but let's talk about something else."
But I think, overall, you're in a situation where pretty soon you really need to set limits with him. And that's part of our CARS method, "connecting with empathy, attention, and respect", "analyzing options", that's the A, "responding to misinformation", and just saying, "I don't see it that way. Let's talk about something else," and then, "setting limits".
And this is really where you want to say, "You've got a choice here. You can treat me with respect and civility and live here, or, if you choose to not treat me with respect and civility, you will have to leave." And that's why I think you need to see a therapist yourself to have backup, have a plan for someone that's ready to help with this, even if it may include changing the locks on the doors, things like that."
But you're in a potential risk for violence if he's been spitting on you and directing anger that way. So, you want to be very planned about setting limits and not just do something spontaneously and risk getting harmed yourself.
Megan Hunter:
Wow, that's a lot. And I think that's so important, Bill, about just having that information from someone who understands high conflict people, because as a parent, it is just so confusing, right?
Bill Eddy:
Yes.
Megan Hunter:
You've given birth to this child or adopted the child or whatever, however they came to you, and you have so much love for them, and to see that they've grown in a different way than what your expectations were or really how you wanted them to be and the values to get from you, and spitting on you definitely isn't one of those values. So, it's really one of the harder things that I think people face in life as a parent in particular. So, really good advice.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. Let me add here that they may want to get our book, It's All Your Fault: 12 Tips for Managing People who Blame Others for Everything. And included in there is an example, actually, of a young woman dealing with a brother who in many ways behaves like this, and he wants to move in with her because he's getting evicted from his apartment, and how she deals with that.
So, It's All Your Fault, I think, will give you an overview of some of these patterns, and so you realize it's really not your fault. It's not about you, it's about a problem he has. And look at how you can set boundaries and give choices, but don't tolerate this kind of behavior.
Megan Hunter:
Good. And that even addresses a situation that I've been dealing with in a consultation with a family where the adult child really wants the parents to admit that a really terrible event happened to them. And they find themselves engaging in this back and forth. And you just never will win that with someone who honestly believes that this happens and happened to them and you have no idea whether it did or not.
So, is it paranoia, was it reality, was it both, who knows? So, I think that's really helpful information. All right. So, let's move on to another question.
"Just before the pandemic, I quit a work team I'd been on for four years. It was a team with a few other people. We were close-knit, and because we traveled together, we knew a lot about each other. The first confusing incident was that the person who was sort of the leader deleted me as an admin on our social media pages.
After a few days, he let me know that he did it because he thought I'd betrayed the group by sharing something on the page that was from my own personal page. The fallout was awful. Over time, other odd accusations happened. Typically, they happened over things or events that he did not predict or control. When something didn't go his way, I was blamed for being shady and sinister.
He accused me of recording a conversation with my phone, when in reality I was just unlocking my phone. Ultimately he accused me of sabotaging our team for a variety of things. He is also into conspiracy theories as well. He was very hard on me, wanting to knock me down a peg, point out my flaws, critique my work product, or really lay into me if I made a mistake. He also accused me of stealing, and there were just a variety of other issues.
After I left, I was erased from the team's history, but even though it hurt and I ended up losing some friends over it and had to find a new position, I don't regret leaving this situation for my own piece peace and sanity." So, Bill, let's talk about this. Is there some paranoia here? What about high conflict? What are your thoughts?
Bill Eddy:
Well, Megan, there's a lot of brown to cover in that question. So, let's first start with that the listener was in a four years in a work team that turned out to have this level of suspicion and blame, all of that. And first of all, about the four years, one of the things we're trying to help people learn is that people with high conflict personalities who blame a lot, tend to have a narrow range of behavior that they repeat and repeat, and that you start seeing signs of this, usually in the first few months.
And many people stay quite a while, even three, four years or more, thinking that things are going to change, that, well, this is just odd, this is out of the ordinary behavior, something like that, and it's not. If you see this pattern, it's this narrow pattern of behavior, especially if a person has a personality disorder.
The definition of that starts with an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that impacts social life, in other words, interpersonal with other people. So, for many people, they wait too long. It's a lot harder to get out, and nasty things happen. So, once you start seeing this pattern, you may want to consider, "Is this what I want to do for the next several years if a year from now, two years, five years from now the exact same behavior I'm dealing with?" That's really undesirable.
So, with this, what we see, and going back and forth between high conflict personality and personality disorders, so let me just comment a bit there, the high conflict personality is what we have seen and observed in legal disputes as a pattern of conflict behavior. It's not a mental disorder, it's not a diagnosis, it's a description of conflict behavior. Preoccupation with blaming others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors, that they do things 90% of people would never do.
So, that's the high conflict personality. In terms of personality disorder, that's an enduring personality. That's a pattern of thinking and behaving that doesn't change. The person lacks self-awareness. They don't even know they have this pattern of behavior that it would qualify as a personality disorder or maybe just traits of a personality disorder. In either case, there's a lot of overlap with high conflict personality and personality disorders and traits.
So, the main message here is, what you see is what you're going to get and what you're going to get and what you're going to get. So, wishful thinking is one of the things that people often have. Understand that the person doesn't see they are part in the problem. So, the blame is often a 100%. It's all somebody else's fault. And it sounds like, from the listener's description, that the person that was doing the blaming did that with a lot of people, and that's often a warning sign.
Whether it's disorder or traits, the thing is, with traits sometimes people have some awareness, or maybe they can change a bit. The disorder is that it's really this enduring pattern. So, it's good to understand what this situation is. Now, this really leads to talking a bit about paranoid personality disorder, because this is one of the five personality disorders that overlaps with blaming high conflict behavior, and certainly the listener's situation had that. So, constantly being criticized.
So, someone with a paranoid personality, and this is about 4% of the general adult population, is preoccupied with fear, with sense of danger. It's exaggerated. They misperceive what people are doing. For example, they thought the listener was stealing from the team, from the company. And that's something that's quite common with people with paranoid personalities.
In fact, some research suggests that paranoid personality is the personality disorder most likely to sue their employer because they perceive their employer as out to get them or blocking their career or stealing from them. Maybe their pocketbook, they misplaced it, and so they think somebody's stealing that for me and they send out a complaint, and then they find it was behind a cabinet or something like that.
So, there's a lot of this misperception, suspiciousness, lack of trust, and feeling betrayed. So, the listener described that they're blamed for betraying that person. And that's something that you're going to hear from people with paranoid personalities, regardless of what you do. It's like seeing through glasses that say, "Betrayal is everywhere around me," and so they put that lens onto whatever their experience is.
Being deleted as an administrator in the account and then being erased from the team history, this is really common with high conflict personalities. This is your all-or-nothing thinking. They can't tolerate the ambiguity of, maybe this isn't true or maybe there was benefit to having the listener's contribution as a worker, as a team member, rather than all or nothing.
Real life, there's not much that's all or nothing in real life, but people put that spin on it. And that's what personality disorders are, is they put a spin on things, they distort things, but they're somewhat related to reality, and that's why other people believe it.
Now, what you get when they start seeing that you're out to get them, you're betraying them, you're sabotaging the team, you're stealing, you're doing all these things, is they often engage in a smear campaign. They start telling other people that you're doing all, because they honestly believe it. That's part of the tragedy of this. So, you get a smear campaign against you, and it's, what do you do?
Megan Hunter:
Yeah, challenging situation, and so frustrating to be falsely accused and to be erased from an important part of something you did in your life.
Bill Eddy:
Well, one suggestion is to use our BIFF responses, our BIFF response emails, for example. Brief, Informative, Friendly, and Firm. And with this approach, you can say, just briefly, what the real information is. You can say, "Just for your information, such and such didn't happen, and this is what happened."
Megan Hunter:
Would it be seen by others as this person being defensive after being accused of stealing and copying other people in on that email than if you come back and say, "I didn't steal"? Is that going to continue the back and forth and be seen by others as defensiveness?
Bill Eddy:
If you're really brief and matter-of-fact, if you have a calm tone about it, then it usually doesn't come across defensive. So, "For your information, such and such didn't happen, and here is what did happen," you can explain the stealing thing. A lot of times people think someone borrowed a piece of equipment with a group or transported it to a meeting or something, and they think that the person's stealing it when in fact they're helping and they're bringing it back.
So, you could say, "For your information, that wasn't a situation of stealing. I was taking it to the meeting and afterwards I brought it back to the office." So, that just provides information. Now, if there's a concern that, like you send this out to a group, is just say, "If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me."
And what that shows, rather than getting into an argument or two pages or a paragraph is fine, and what that shows is that you're not defensive about it, you're happy to talk about it if anybody has any questions. And for our experience, and we've been teaching BIFF responses for over 15 years now, what happens is, people don't respond, they don't want to find out more. They figure, "This is somebody else's conflict, and I'm just going to steer clear of this one." So, BIFF responses can be a good tool that you use.
Megan Hunter:
And that they copy other people in.
Bill Eddy:
Yes, yes.
Megan Hunter:
So, another thought comes to mind about paranoid personalities, and that is the difference between the chemical imbalance, for lack of a better term, of paranoia, someone with a paranoid versus paranoid personality disorder.
Bill Eddy:
It's interesting. Just briefly, people wonder why aren't people paranoid? Why is 4% of the population paranoid and more people who don't have a paranoid personality disorder but just some traits? And it seems like it really goes back in time, back to the personality gene pool, when it was beneficial to be paranoid, that let's say you're in a war zone and there's a 30-years war or something like that, like in history in Europe.
And someone who's paranoid is watchful and may realize and discover that they're in danger where other people aren't paying attention. And they're, "There's an army coming over the hill. We've got to get out of here. Everybody run," when it may be the paranoid person that's so suspicious. They're looking around for armies coming over the hill.
So, this is a trait that's had survival value throughout the years. But in a modern setting, especially in a modern office or something like that, such sense of betrayal or mistrust is really misplaced. We have to trust, we have to work together. We can't succeed if we're always suspicious about everything.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah. What comes to mind for me is someone who often will say, "Well, you know, this person, I can tell they don't like me because of the way they looked at me."
Bill Eddy:
Ah.
Megan Hunter:
Then, a smear campaign comes.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah.
Megan Hunter:
And I was walking past that person in the grocery store, and I just could tell by the look on their face that they don't like me, and it just sets up this distasteful going forward relationship, if any, or a lot of campaign smear. And it also brings to mind a case I was consulting on between a community center and a church where the community center wanted to rent the church for daycare during the week when the church was empty.
Maybe I've given this example in a previous episode, I don't recall. But it would've been, really, actually a nice deal for a very small church, but at the end of it, the church folks, pretty much led by a couple of people who probably have some of this paranoia believe that the city would declare eminent domain and just wipe out the church just to get rid of the church. And all it was, was this place wanting to rent the church for a daycare center for its employees during the week.
And I thought, that is not what most people would do. If 90% of people would not think this thing, then there's probably some type of high conflict behavior associated with it.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah, I would think so. And that's a good way to measure is, would 90% of people make that kind of a great leap and lock into that, because a lot of things we say, "Check it out. Don't assume anything, check it out." But a lot of these more paranoid beliefs, people just lock onto, and then there's nothing that will shake them from it. It's, "We know you're out to get us. We know what you want, what you're up to. We know what you're thinking," and we just don't as human beings. Sometimes it is true, but you've got to check things. Don't make assumptions. That's such a big part of all of this.
Megan Hunter:
It is. And just one last thing, and then we'll wrap up here, is that children who grow up with a parent with paranoid personality, I think for them it's almost like being in a cult in a way. They really absorb these fears and suspicions of the parent, and I think it probably skews many adults' perception of others based on how they were raised in this type of environment. Would you agree?
Bill Eddy:
I think mostly I would agree, but the part that's maybe more flexible is I think it depends a lot on the child's own inborn traits. And I've seen cases. I had a divorce case where I represented the mother, and the father was had paranoid personality, was put in a psychological evaluation. He had traits of that.
And he persuaded the boy to totally mistrust the mother. Even though she had the majority of time, he kept chipping away at that, "Well, what's she doing now? You can't trust her. You can't trust the school teacher."The boy get in fights at school and he'd say, "You can't trust the other kids." And the boy ended up moving in with him and living with him from 16 to 22 or something and not making friends, because he adopted his father's perspective, which is the way you were describing it.
But there's other people that grow up and they go, "My father is weird, you know. He just so believes all these things, and I don't buy it at all." So, I think part of it's genetic tendencies and part of it's the upbringing. So, it could be, but isn't always that way.
Megan Hunter:
Okay. Fascinating. I hope this has been helpful for you, our listeners, because I know it's been helpful for me. We're always learning here. And just remember that this is not about diagnosing anyone, labeling anyone, demeaning or denigrating anyone. This is about understanding humans. The more you understand what's happening in conflict situations, what could be happening under the surface or under the hood, so to speak, the better you can adapt your expectations and your approach and really help yourself find some peace.
Next week we'll be talking about whether people with high conflict personalities can change. So, that will be an interesting one because we get this question so much, and so you want to listen into that. And if you have any questions, send them into podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, or submit them to highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. Tell your friends about us.
And we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a review wherever you listen to our podcast. Until the next episode, have a great week and keep learning about high conflict behavior so you can handle it in your life and find the missing piece.
It's 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, show notes, and transcripts at truestory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.