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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 TruStory 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, bill Eddie.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes, and educational programs and methods to do with high conflict. Today is the fourth episode of our new series five types of People who Can Ruin Your Life. And today's focus is the relationship, if any, between domestic violence, also known as intimate partner violence and the love you hate you types that we spoke of in the last episode, the high conflict borderline types, and then the cruel and conning types, the high conflict antisocial personalities. But before we get into that, please send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, foreigner website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
October is domestic violence awareness month, and it's a huge, huge problem. And both you and I bill have thought a lot about this and I know you've taught a lot on domestic violence, and so we're going to talk about that today in relation to two types of high conflict personalities that may or may not be driving some of this domestic violence or be involved in it. And you wrote a great research article back in January, 2024, so we're going to talk about that as a starting point. And you started it by saying for years there has been a tension between the terms high conflict families and domestic violence in family courts. Since the 1980s, family law professionals have considered most separating and divorcing families to have two fairly equal contributors to the disputes they bring to court. This is based on the family systems theory of most mental health professionals, which is that every family member plays a part in family conflicts, and each person influences each other person.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Families, which repeatedly come back to court are often considered high conflict families. On the other hand, since the 1990s, domestic violence has been recognized as a serious problem in a significant number of cases, perhaps 50% that come to family courts. Domestic violence is generally a one-way problem with a perpetrator of the abuse and a survivor who lives in fear and is just trying to cope. The problem for family law professionals is sorting out which type of problem situation exists in a given family since they often look similar on the surface with mutual allegations of abusive behavior, a lot of intense emotions and children who may have taken sides in the conflict for good or bad reasons. You addressed in this article, bill the importance of distinguishing these families with just one perpetrator of abuse and families with two significant contributors to the problem. And I think what we've seen often throughout the years is that it's confusing for the professionals who are helping in these cases and they really need to be careful not to mix up what is really going on. So let's start there and maybe give a little background bill on what your experience was in family court.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Basically, there was kind of two different issues that emerged, and when I started as a lawyer in 1993, there was a lot of talk about high conflict families, and that had been true since about 1980 because they had started to try to get high conflict families to go to mediation and stay out of court, to kind of settle down. Everybody was part of the problems, kind of the family counseling approach, family systems, everybody contributes to the problem. But interestingly, in the mid 1990s, especially with the OJ Simpson case, it became clear that there's domestic violence that's really separate from this. So what I saw is I would get domestic violence cases and I would say to the judge, your Honor, this is my client's being abused. And some judges would go, oh, okay, I see that. And others would say, well, she's probably doing something too. That's probably an equal situation,
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Takes two to tango, right? That's the common phrase.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And that still exists for some people. So you have to really keep an open mind. This could be a situation where one person is driving the abuse or it could be both. People are equally arguing, but with domestic violence, it's pretty rare. You have both people being violent, although it occurs sometimes. And the judges actually, at least in California, back in the 1990s, the law changed. So the judges could only find one person as the perpetrator of the domestic violence. The idea that, well, both people are contributing, that was thrown out and it was like, we need to figure out if there's physical violence, is there a person that's driving this? So it did switch to that, but even back then there was a lot of talk that, well, there's no mental health issue with domestic violence. And that's where by about the two thousands people started realizing, some people, researchers started realizing domestic violence seems to be associated with personality disorders in many cases, especially borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. That again, if people don't understand this, those are personalities that blame a lot and lie sometimes. So is someone lying about domestic violence or is there really domestic violence? And so that's been something that still people argue about in family court.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah. So you continued in this article thinking of terms, terms of high conflict personalities with violence and high conflict personalities without violence. In other words, the problem isn't the family, it's the individual. So if we're talking about, do you think there's a higher proportion then of people with a high conflict personality, particularly borderline or antisocial, that are represented in domestic violence cases?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yes. And there's some research that looked at 163 studies to see is a personality disorder mean there's a higher incidence or higher risk of domestic violence? And the study looking at all these studies concluded that yes, and I'll read a quote from this, and it's an article by Kon and Leham in 2021, and it said, at the global total IPV perpetration, level IPV being intimate partner violence, every PD personality disorder except for histrionic personality disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder demonstrated significant and positive effects. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest effect size, that means the significant size were found for A SPD and BPD, which are also the two most widely studied personality disorders in relation to intimate partner violence. But I also want to say that they found that, for example, not everyone who carries an A SPD or BPD diagnosis is necessarily violent, perhaps less than the majority. So while it's a higher incidence of violence with people with these personalities, doesn't mean everyone with these personalities is violent, and that's important to know, but understanding these two personalities and domestic violence makes a lot of sense because you were saying high conflict personalities with violence and without, they both blame others, but some don't get violent. Some are verbal, some pal, some withdrawal, but the ones with violence and their high conflict personalities as well, they're blaming other people and allow themselves to harm those other people.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And so why is that? Let's talk about the antisocial personality, so their fear being dominated. So let's kind of break down a situation with domestic violence. If someone has a fear of being dominated, what happens when they, let's say they're in that intimate partner relationship and it's maybe kind of been building and building and suddenly their fear of being dominated is triggered and now they feel dominated and they have to get back to feeling where they're the dominating, powerful one again in charge. So where in that mix does the violence come out?
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Well, I think where you see this most dramatically, and you see this in the news is say a woman, because antisocial personality disorder is about three quarter men, one quarter female. So more likely a woman is their target of blame. Let's say a woman gets into another relationship that gives her the confidence to leave her abusive spouse with antisocial personality disorder. Well, someone with antisocial personality for one, they're losing the person that they've dominated. And so that's threatening, but someone else is getting that person. There's a new partner and that is so humiliating that they feel dominated like, I'm being made to look like a fool. I'm being made to look like a clown. I'm going to punish both of them. And that's where you see violence come out, especially let's say the woman comes back to the house to pick up some things and gets beat up. Or maybe the man in some cases goes to try to find the woman and her new partner, and it may not even be a new partner, maybe someone that's just being a helpful person, maybe even a professional, but they target them. I think it's a primitive kind of rage, this dominance drive to punish and perhaps destroy their partner. And of course if there's a new person, but let's take the new personnel, the picture to punish or destroy their partner for not being dominated anymore by the person with this A SPD.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So let's flip it around. What's this look like with a female perpetrator?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
The difference is, first of all, people really don't recognize it's really hard to get people to recognize female antisocial personalities. And for that reason, they get pretty far, they're very good at manipulating and charming police lawyers, therapists and therapists. They get away with a lot. So they may or may not be violent themselves, but they may find some way to punish their partner for becoming more independent, not accepting their dominance. I think of a case I knew where the woman actually stabbed the man in the back with a mechanical pencil, and he went and got a restraining order, but he didn't have the nerve to have it served. So they actually stayed together another year or two. But when he did split up with her, she put her rage into spreading rumors about him and going to court claiming that he was the one who had been violent even though he had never been.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So I would say the abuse, the dominance may come out in more subtle ways, in more dramatic ways, but there's also women like this in extreme cases who have set up their man to get killed, that their partner, they're so outraged that they would become independent. Now I'm talking really extreme circumstances, but there was an antisocial woman, BYM, blanking on her name. I think it was the 1990s, and they made a movie about her called Monster, and Charlize Therone was the actress, and she made herself up to be ugly, which was really hard to believe. But she played this woman who was a serial killer, and she would pick up men and dispense with men on a regular basis, and she had very much an antisocial personality disorder. But again, these are extremes. So most people, if you get involved with someone with such a personality, are going to be dominated through manipulation, through court, maybe some abuse, but certainly in most cases, not murder, but higher incidents of violence from this personality, whether male or female.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Right. So what would this look like in a more moderate case? Something you don't see in a Netflix limited series with the very extreme behaviors, but something that's more moderate that someone's living with on a daily basis. Is the abuse going to take the form of verbal abuse?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Oh, definitely. That, that's common. Both of these personalities, antisocial and borderline can be very verbally abusive because they want to be in control. There's a term that really fits in here, and that's coercive control. Both of these personalities are invested in coercive control, antisocial to dominate borderline to stay attached. So they're going to be violent to try to hold on the relationship in both cases, but they're also going to do mind games. And so there's a lot of manipulation. You're nothing, you're not worthy. No one else will love you except me. And so you have to stay with me and don't visit your family this weekend. I should be all that you need. Both of these personalities talk like that because they really want to control the person's movements. And of course, being violent is part of coercion. There's some people that don't have violence who are coercive. I'm going to control the finances or your relationships or your phone use. But we see this with both borderline and antisocial abusers that it's a drive to control whatever way necessary. And it may be verbal all year along and maybe violent once a year on people find, and police sometimes say, well, how often does he hit? Oh, he hit me a year ago. Okay. And it's like, well, yeah, then you're going to get hit next week, another year. So you've got to take that whole history into account.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
The dilemma for many professionals is, okay, so this is a person who is driven, their personality type is one that's driven by a fear of being dominated or being abandoned. So their coping mechanism is to get back to a state of feeling like the dominating one they're attached and connected in so doing, should we hold them accountable?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Oh, absolutely. So setting limits and imposing consequences are essential here. One thing that's true with all the high conflict personalities is setting limits, telling people they better stop is often not sufficient. You have to say, if you don't, then this consequence is going to happen. And the best consequence for this is for them to go into treatment program to learn self-restraint. So there's 52 week group therapies for people with domestic violence that can be good for a lot of people. I must admit this is more likely borderline personality, much more potentially impacted by group therapy, antisocial less, and possibly not at all. But it's worth giving it a try is to get someone, because for borderline, it's a lot managing their impulses, those mood swings we talked about last week for borderline with borderline perpetrators of domestic violence, their mood swings may include hitting their partner. So that impulse, lack of impulse control they can gain in a group therapy antisocial may be hitting on purpose. So it's not so much an impulse control problem. And what I've heard from group leaders is they don't want judges to order into domestic violence treatment groups without them doing their own assessment. Because if they get an antisocial in the group, they may be disruptive to the group, whereas borderline may be a real contributor to the group.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
So disruptive, how would they be disruptive?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Well, they want to dominate the group leader. So they're going to say, they're going to whisper before the meeting starts. They're going to say the group leader is on cocaine. Before each group meeting, he snorts some cocaine. And that's why sometimes he seems really irritable. And other group members start going, gee, I wonder our group leaders on cocaine. And it's like, you disrupt the group that way. And I want to tell you, I'm not just making this up. When I worked in a psychiatric hospital, we had group therapy in the substance abuse unit, and we had an antisocial guy who was telling people that the staff were doing cocaine during lunch breaks. And it's like, but fortunately the other patients said to us, this guy said this, that doesn't fit. And they said, it's absolutely not true. And so we ended up kicking the guy out of the program,
Speaker 1 (20:05):
This personality type, this dominance, it drives everything and it becomes so very, very predictable. So I think the therapists and group leaders are very wise to have their own assessment to be able to do this. And so let's talk for a second about law enforcement and having two people, you're at a domestic violence call. And by the way, we are going to be speaking to someone in law enforcement who's been on many domestic violence calls in our next episode, so that should be really fascinating. But what do you do? How is a law enforcement officer supposed to figure out who's who in the zoo on a domestic call,
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Figuring out between antisocial and borderline? They don't have to figure that out, but figuring out who's telling the truth and who's actually been abusive is a problem. So they get to a house and woman says them, he was beating me up, and they separate people and then they interview 'em, ask exactly what happened, and you start hearing two very different stories. So say the guy says, I didn't touch her. She said, if you don't give in on writing this check to buy this thing that I want, I'm going to call the police and say, you're abusing me. Well, who do you believe? Sometimes that's true, and sometimes that's not true. And so police are kind of on the spot and often they feel they need to take someone in, they need to arrest someone even if they're going to release them. So it's not all that easy to figure out at once, but I think the more experienced the police officer, the more they're able to tell what spoke is and what's really true.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Alright. Okay. Well, let's take a quick break, bill, and we'll come back and we'll talk more about borderline violence. So we've talked quite a bit so far about the antisocial personality and knowing that they need to dominate, but what about the borderline personality and what's this look like in terms of violence and starting with how the lead up is? So we have this person who's driven by a fear of feeling abandoned, and now they have their spouse saying, you know what? I can't take this anymore. I'm actually walking out the door today. Right now, that triggers that fear of abandonment even though they may have been raging at their partner and their partner's finally fed up. And you would think that most people would have insight in that moment and say, I better hold off. But that borderline brain doesn't, right? That personality doesn't the high conflict personality. And so instead it kind of self sabotages until the person's kind of finally had it and says, okay, bye. Even if they're just taking a break to go drive around the block or go get gas in the car or something. But it triggers a bigger fear in that person. And is that the moment that they may snap and violence occurs?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
It's quite possible, but I also want to mention as a footnote, that may be the moment that they totally shift gears into pure charm and may say, oh honey, I'm so much better than I used to be and I'm going to be I love you so much. And I'm,
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, IM sorry.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Some people call this hoovering like the Hoover vacuum cleaner, where you kind of suck the person back into the relationship that happens with this personality more than the antisocial. This personality really is wide mood swings. And so you may get that just when you think I'm going to get hit, you get all this charm. But also this is when someone leaves, there's something like seven times greater chance of serious injury or death. So people need to be, and when I have clients in this kind of situation, I say, you need to be in a safe place when you let your partner know that you're ending this relationship. And so they may be at a lawyer's office or they may just have gotten maybe in a woman's shelter, and then they let their partner know, then they have the lawyer serve the papers on their partner so they're in a safe place.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
But yes, and let me read another quote from this research by Collison and Ham, which we can mention in the show notes says, in explaining why perpetrators with BPD were more likely to commit seriously violent and aggressive acts of IPV, they found that their emotional processing biases such as interpreting a partner's ambiguous facial expression in an overly negative manner or anxious attachment and interactional alcohol and drug use, serve to increase the risk of both severity and frequency of IPV perpetration. So the borderline's personality because of this attachment, but often a higher incidence of alcohol and drug use with all the personality disorders, but that really increases the risk of violence. But also they have processing biases that they see their partner's ambiguous facial expression and see it as hostile. These are reasons that the borderline personality is more prone to domestic violence than the average person or the other personality disorders except for A SPD.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
And with that borderline, it's hot, not calculated rage. Am I correct?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yes. It's more reactive. And I like the term, think of their anger as hot anger and the antisocial is cold anger, calculated anger I'll get her next week when she's not expecting it, versus the borderline, it's like impulsive, lack of impulse control, emotional violence, and then regret and remorse. So they may right away say, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. It's really the different dynamic is it's about lack of emotional control versus antisocial, which is really a more predatory cold personality, which also I think these go back historically into primitive times. These were survival mechanisms, sad to say, but they don't work very well in modern life.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So you kind have two ends of the spectrum here with the antisocial, you have no remorse if there's some violence, if there's abuse of any kind, they're not feeling badly about it later. Whereas on the borderline end, there's maybe extra remorse. Is that fair or is that going too far?
Speaker 2 (27:36):
I think that's pretty accurate. That borderline is devastated with their own response and they're so desperate to make up for that because at some level they realize this kind of behavior to hold on, the person is going to be a motivator for them, more likely to leave. And so they really are sorry, but they couldn't control their emotions. But this is where if they go to a group program, learn self-control some cognitive lessons to shift their thoughts, to be able to say, I don't have to react right now, or that she isn't leaving, she's going to the store, she's not leaving me. Things like that to learn. And they can. And that's exciting to see people that have been through domestic violence group therapy had a guy in a 52 week program, he said, this really helped me, but he wouldn't have been there if he hadn't been court ordered.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, and that's great that there is help. And then I guess the rubber meets the road when there's some tests down the road and you get in a situation, again, probably in an intimate relationship where you're going to be tested and with the borderline brain, it just seems to happen so quickly, they just can't stop themselves. It's like snap. Whereas the antisocial brain, I dunno, is it less of a SNAP app?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I think so, yes. Because they're already kind of at an emotional distance and so they're like, this is happening. And they're already thinking strategy, what can I do to keep this person from leaving? Or what can I do to punish this person? But it's not the same emotional level. See, the thing is people with borderline personality care and they really care. They care for other, they want to be cared for. There's a lot of empathy, sometimes too much empathy. People with antisocial personality disorder don't care. They don't have remorse, they don't have empathy. Or if they do, it's a small amount or it may be for just one person in their life and other people that are willing to hurt and they really don't care about. Now, before I go further, I want to say these are all generalizations. There's specific behavior within these ranges, more or less severe. Some people, some antisocial may have a little bit of empathy. Like they say, mafia people have some empathy for their family, but not for the rest of the world. Well, if they're abusive in their family, that empathy didn't go too far. But yeah, so that is a difference between these hot anger, cold anger.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
So we could probably talk about this all day and we will be talking more about this in the next few episodes, but if you are a person who is in one of these relationships right now and you've listened to this episode and you're thinking, oh dang, this is more serious than I thought, or validating that it is as serious as I thought, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, I think first of all, they should really talk to a lawyer or a therapist and talk about what their options are and develop an approach to what they're going to do and whether they're willing to try to get the person into some kind of counseling for this or whether they're willing to leave what their situation is. And one thing that for professionals who are listening, it's tempting for professionals with domestic violence cases to want to take over the person's life and protect them and make all their decisions. And that's a big mistake. You still have to give the person choices. You still have to respect that they need to make adult decisions. You can strongly recommend things, but when therapists say, you have to leave this person, you have to get divorced. That's not good that you want to get them safe. But Pearson needs to make that decision.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
And you don't want to be the one that the perpetrator comes to your office and they say, Hey, I understand you told my wife she has to divorce me. Who are you to say that? And then they sue you or whatever. So you have to talk about options, but let them know, for example, if you're being strangled, strangulation is the worst predictor for eventual spousal murder. There's a 10 times greater chance that you'll be strangled to death by your partner than if they hadn't ever tried to strangle you. If someone holds a gun to your head, five times greater chance of death. But strangulation is 10 times greater because it's such an impulsive thing. So if you're a therapist or a lawyer and you have a client that's had that, and you should ask if they've experienced that, you need to inform them of that and say, if these are your choices, but you're at very high risk here. I really hope you'll make the decision this way, but it's up to you. I respect your adulthood. I respect your judgment. I'm not going to take away your right to make your own decisions
Speaker 1 (33:12):
And give them some referrals to domestic violence hotlines and some cautions around even how to research that and that. And we will put some links to those in the show notes today as well. Well, we've talked quite a bit about this. We're going to talk more in the next episode and a couple more episodes after that. But is there anything else you'd want to wrap with today?
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Well, I just want to say people do have a lot of choices and there is a lot of help for victims of domestic violence or survivors of domestic violence. For example, women's shelters, restraining orders, going to court, family court deals with this a lot nowadays. There's self-help clinics with many family courts. We're going to put the domestic violence hotline phone number in the show notes. So you have a lot of options. Get yourself first to a therapist or a lawyer and talk about what those options are because you really have a lot of potential and there's so many people going through this, and when you see people come out the other side so much stronger and happier, it's a wonderful thing. So no one should end up having to live this way.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Well said. Thank you, bill. Thank you listeners for listening today. And like we both said, there's lots of links in the show notes to what you need in your countries. And if you're not in the US or Australia or Canada, which will have all those numbers in the show notes, Google wherever you are and find help for yourself. And if you're a professional, we have a lot of information and courses and books and things that you can read that will get you trained up. On this. Next week we'll continue our five Types of People series where we'll be talking with a law enforcement officer who has a lot of experience with this, and we're going to talk about whether this can be predictable or not. So in the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing skills, be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small 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 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.