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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 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 (00:22):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and conflict influencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching programs, classes, all kinds of things, whether it's for you and your professional life or in your personal life. So today we're going to focus on something that every parent faces when you have children, which is setting limits and following through on those limits and maybe even setting some or imposing some consequences. Kids need limits and they can really test us. If you are a parent, you know this, if you're in the workplace or just about any place in life and you find that it's hard to set limits yourself, it's probably going to be really tricky for you in parenting. So listen in today and we'll all learn together. So Bill, we are so excited about your new book that's coming out here in about a month called Slick Solutions for Conflict Setting Limits and Imposing Consequences in Two and a Half Steps. So we're going to apply that method to parenting today. First of all, why don't you just give a brief background or introduction I guess, about the book.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, so one of the things in dealing with conflict that just keeps coming up for me is that parents, professionals, people in everyday life are really not following the limits that are set by society and each other, and that we really need to strengthen our skills at setting limits and imposing consequences. And one thing I've found especially true with people that like to violate the limits is that people often just set the limit that they don't have a consequence if someone violates it. So you can't talk to me that way. And the person says, well, yes I can. I'm just going to keep talking to you that way. And it's like, well, please don't. And what you need is to say, if you keep talking about me talking to me that way, I'm going to end this conversation and we'll talk when you're ready to talk civilly.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
And you can do that with children, you can do that with employees, you can do that with employers, strangers, et cetera. And so the idea here is setting limits needs to also have imposing consequences attached to it either as a threat so that people know if you violate my limits, this is what's going to happen or imposing the consequence. And so in many situations, those two steps really do need to go together, but there's a half step that people wonder about and that's giving the person a statement that shows empathy, attention and respect, an ear statement. And about half the time you want to give an air statement to motivate change and to let people know, our relationship secure, this behavior just has to change. And so that's the two and a half steps. So what I found and others found and certainly is that we're used to just saying Stop.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
And we're not used to attaching the consequence and a statement that shows empathy, attention, and respect. So that's the idea behind the method and the need for it. Today, everyone needs to learn how to do this because a lot of limits just aren't respected in society today. And we need to train children how to deal with society and the fact that there are rules. And of course we deal a lot with family law and divorce where the rules seem to go out the window and children don't know what's okay. So that's why we want to talk about children.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Okay, well let's start with the little ones. I remember my mom saying to me when I was a young parent and I was pulling my hair out with toddlers and things, and she and others would say, oh, you think they're hard now? Just wait until they're teenagers. I guess the toddler years or the training ground for the mid years and then teen years, but probably setting us up for life, hopefully and setting our children up in a good way. I know I failed on that a lot. There was a lot of what you said, limit setting, but without the consequence or there would be the threat of a consequence, but no follow through. Yeah, which is just not good. So I was thinking while you're talking about just yesterday, I was at a funeral service and it was for an older gentleman and he was just the sweetest, nicest, kindest man, and his grandchildren stepped up to the microphone during the service and talked about how if they were doing something, they shouldn't even have to get a reprimand from him.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It was just the look that they didn't want to disappoint grandpa. And I thought, wouldn't it be so nice if we could all just get a look and problem solved? But as we know it's not the case. So let's say for some parents, they have it in the bag, they know how to set limits, they know how to impose consequences For others maybe with a more challenging child, toddler, 4-year-old, 3-year-old who throws fits or let's say this is a child who sort of intentionally hurts a sibling and maybe when mom and dad aren't looking pushes the sibling or does something kind of naughty. How do you set a limit or impose a consequence on that?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Well, let me first say my background, my perspective comes from several places. One's being a child and family therapist for a dozen years, also being a kindergarten teacher for four years. So I got the five year olds also being director of a child development center for a university starting basically with two and a half year olds going up to six. That was Seattle University. I lived in Seattle for three years and that was a lot of fun. So I've worked with this age group a lot, and what's interesting is so much of it is about really redirecting behavior. Often parents think of being rigid. If I'm firm enough with my limit, they'll of course follow it, which of course they won't because they're having a hard time controlling their bodies. And what's interesting, 2, 3, 4 year olds is their ability to manage their muscles is just kind of coming online.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And so they don't know what to do with this, but what gets their attention is the consequence. And consequences don't have to all be negative. That's one of the things we talk about in the book is that consequences can be positive. So Johnny, you need to put down that block. It's not okay to hit your sister with the block. We build things with the blocks. So let's look at what you can build here. And so you may be with a 2-year-old just redirecting their energy because they're still learning and so punishment or timeout maybe really not what they need at that age. Then three, and here's an interesting fact that I didn't know for years and years, do you know the most violent age in the human lifespan
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Is age
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Three? It's age three because the child has all this energy, these muscles that are coming online, all this can do stuff, and their body doesn't yet know you can't do some of what you feel like doing. And so when you think about it, three year olds are throwing, hitting, doing all these things, and that means that's the age where they need to start learning that it's not okay to do those things. So your scenario, let's say three year olds hitting their 2-year-old sister with a block needs to do a couple things. One is be redirected, let's build a bridge or let's build a wall. And that's what we do with blocks. We don't hit our sister with blocks. So you need to give the message of what to do and what not to do. And that's often helpful is don't just say don't do this, give them something to do.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
So you're redirecting them, but this is also a situation where it really helps to give them your statement, some empathy, attention and respect. I know you're upset Johnny, and so we use words, we're going to use words, and we're going to build a wall here. We're not going to hit our sister with the block. So it's redirecting, but also the consequence may come if that behavior's repeated where you have a little bit of timeout, some people have a timeout chair or cushion rug, whatever it is, but nothing that's severe. Some people say you're going to have time out for 10 minutes. Well, a three-year-old can't do that for 10 minutes. I like the idea where timeout is no longer than the child's age, but get them thinking because you want to start thinking, we use words when we're angry, and I see you're angry, Johnny, and I can understand that, but we use words,
Speaker 1 (10:29):
But do consequences work for everyone? Because we hear so many different, I guess, parenting styles, we see loads of advice for different types of children, right? There's a DHD and a D, D and ODD and just all these different autism spectrum and different behaviors. So I think parents and teachers are faced with such so many challenges now that maybe they weren't in the past. And I mean I grew up with, and I think you probably grew up with consequences and all kids needed consequences. And I still believe all kids need consequences, but I've heard some people say consequences don't work on every child.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Well, I believe that it's what is the consequence? Because consequences do work on all humans, all children. I mean, you can stop somebody from doing something by putting them in a room where they can't do it. I worked in a psychiatric hospital for three years where we had basically a padded wall room where you had a big time out and you go in that room, you can punch the walls screen, do whatever you want, but you're not going to hurt the other kids. So I think it's a question of what are the consequences? And with kids, it needs to also be positive as well as negative. And one of the things I learned with kids in mental health treatment in psych hospitals and some schools is starting about five, is you do star charts. And it's like when they have good behavior, they get a star.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
When they do good behavior five times, then they get something, a toy or a Eminem or something that goes with getting enough stars. And that kind of system surprisingly, was used and I think is being used in some prisons with young adults who are actually motivated by earning cigarettes or earning free time or earning something. And that they've found that the very structured kind of behavior and positive consequence as well as negative consequences work, especially with young adults who have behavior problems that got them into prison. So I think it isn't a question that consequences don't work. It's finding the right consequences. And one of the things that we put in the book is five questions to ask yourself in imposing consequences. And the first one is this consequence proportional to the limit that I set. So let's say a parent says to a teen, you're coming, you've been coming in late after curfew on the weekend, so I'm going to take your cell phone away for 24 hours.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And that may be a realistic proportional thing, but the parent gets angry and the child's, how dare you set limits. I'm going to come home whenever I want to. And you're a really stupid blankety blank, blank parent. You don't know what you're doing, you don't know what everybody else knows. It stays and you go, well, if you're going to talk to me that way, I'm going to take your phone away for a week. Well, I can talk to you even worse. I can call you or I'm taking your phone away for a month. That's not proportional, it's not going to work. You're going to be
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Punished.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
You're going to be punished as the parent. And so that's why proportion really matters, and that's where kids learn 24 hours a teen can learn, I really need to be home on a curfew, but a month there's no learning. There's just all resentment and sabotage and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
I've made that mistake as a parent for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I think all parents do.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah. Yeah. We just keep amping that up and work, work. I'll tell you now. Yeah, you mentioned the five questions from the book. Is the consequence proportional to the limit that I set? Have I considered positive consequences as well as negative consequences with,
Speaker 2 (14:57):
And that's especially important with kids don't make it all negative,
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Otherwise they start feeling I think a little downtrodden and discouraged. And number three is the consequence, safe
Speaker 2 (15:10):
And safe for the person setting the consequence and also safe for the person that's suffering the consequence. So you had to think that through so you don't punish a child like locking them in their room or strapping them to the bed or something. I mean, this is terrible. I only mention these because in extreme situations some people have done this and it's not the way to go, but people didn't know what else to do.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, parents can really get to their wit's end for sure. Number four, am I ready to enforce my consequences?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
And this one is so important because in today's world, parents feel like they can't impose consequences, but they feel like, well, the other kids get away with this. And of course their kids will point that out. Well, you're the only parent in this neighborhood that cares about such and such, and so it's so unfair that you're, and so are you ready to stand with your limit and impose your consequence even when they guilt trip you that you're so unfair.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
And sometimes as parents, as humans, we forget that what consequence we impose or threaten to impose, and then we have to remember it. So you maybe write it down so you don't forget you some support from someone else. And then number five, do I need to get help in imposing my consequence? And sometimes you do perhaps meeting with the teacher and ing that do with the teacher. Now, if we move into the school situation into that environment, teachers are busy with a lot of students. So what if they have one student who's constantly misbehaving because they're bored or for whatever reason and the teacher doesn't have enough time to give special attention to this child, and the child keeps getting these notes sent home every week. Let's say like a kindergartner first grader. What's a parent to do? I think parents feel pretty trapped and stuck. They don't know is it the wrong teacher student scenario? Should the teacher be doing more? Is my child impossible?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah. Well, I think this is where it's so important for parents and teachers to work together and having been a teacher and not actually having been a parent, but a counselor to hundreds of parents, I think this is so important and our likes to divide people and have parents see teachers as being mean to their kids or teachers see parents as too loose and permissive and stuff like that. But parents and teachers need to support each other and get together, get together. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, if I had any difficulty at school, my parents a hundred percent supported the school.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Your teacher said, you're in trouble for doing this, Billy, and we totally support the teacher. So you're going to also have some restriction at home because you got in trouble at school. And that kind of thing is where children learn pretty quick. But if it's divided, if the parents undermine the teacher or the teacher undermines the parents, then it's not going to work. So I would say getting together and talking about what can we do here? And we have an example in the book. I think it's a 16-year-old boy who's into gaming after school and doesn't do any of his homework and his grades are going down and mom and teacher get together about this and what should be done. So mom has some consequence. She unplugs the wifi when she leaves for work. So he can't do the gaming online and do his homework when she gets home from work, he gets home before she does, then he's done some of his homework.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So that was the case in that scenario where mom says, you've got to do homework first and then gaming because he doesn't get to the homework, and if you don't, then I'm going to unplug the wifi and you won't have access to it until I get home. So he pushed the limit and self-control, got distracted, got excited about the gaming and forgot about the rule. And so mom had to impose the rule and then he started doing better. But then another issue is he's using AI for his homework. And that's a big issue with teachers today. You're not learning if you're using ai, that was another thing that was going to have a consequence. Parent and teacher work together on that. So if the teachers told the mom that the grades continue to go down, there's a problem with this, then mom would impose more consequences. But because Johnny or whatever his name was, learned that mom meant business with unplugging the wifi as he cooperated with what she wanted. So that's part of it is learning that the parent's going to follow through, follow through. So important with kids and adults too.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So that begs the question, why don't we follow through? I mean, underneath it, it's fear, especially as kids get older, let's say teenagers, even in an intact household where the parents are still married or let's say a single parent household where the other parent isn't involved and they've always been raised, the child's always been raised by this one parent, there can be a great deal of fear that our child's going to reject us, is going to run away, is going to go online and meet someone. I mean, there's a lot of fear that drives this and for good reason these days. So how can a parent overcome that fear of setting the limit? And we'll talk about the divorce scenario next and co-parenting, but even in an intact household, how do you overcome that?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, I think it's parents supporting each other and also who your children are around. So if parents have kind of a community of activities, so you have the school, you have some activities, sports that the child may be involved in, music activities, do you do 'em at home or do you do 'em at some stranger's house and saying, you've got to do this in our house, you can get together with your friends, but you need to do it at our house. Those kinds of things. It's got to be a sense of support. And that's the question number five, do I need help with this? That parents need to support each other, teachers support each other to set limits. In today's world, one of the big, really positive thing that's been happening I think is a lot of high schools now take the cell phones away at the beginning of the day, put 'em in a pouch in a special place, and then the kids pick 'em up at the end of the day. And that's a place where there's really a unified effort to set limits and that it's working because all the kids can't have their cell phone all day. And kids are saying that they appreciate it. They don't have the willpower yet to deny themselves, oh, I got to look here.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Most of us don't. Even adults.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yes, adults too.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah. So I think it's tricky, right? As a parent, we know what's out there in the world and we don't want our kids to leave our homes and be exposed to things that we then have zero control over. So we kind of weigh things out and we go, okay, well I guess I can lessen the limit, reduce the limits, and not impose consequences in order to keep my child in my home instead of sneaking out at night or going towards drugs or something. And I think that drives so much of this, and unfortunately then things get out of balance.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Well, I think you got to start early and that's why it's interesting. When I ran the child development center for Seattle University, occasionally we have kids with difficulties at three, four, and five. And typically they had parents who either were super permissive or overwhelmed, and I remember one woman, single mother had a four-year-old and she was overwhelmed. She was working full time, she'd come drop the kids off in the morning helping set limits and helping her set limits and support our limits and us supporting her was so important. So you really had to start at three. I think that you can't let kids get away with stuff when they're five years old. They're punching the other kids, they're throwing things, they're swearing at the teachers. You can't have that. You got to start teaching that at three when they're learning how far can I go?
Speaker 2 (24:37):
And I've seen parents laugh at their kids breaking all kinds of rules. Cute. And it's funny, that doesn't help. You need to start being consistent. So by the time that they're 12 and 13, they're so used to knowing what the rules are and how to follow them, that when they break the rules, they're breaking tiny rules and they're not going to devastate their future and they're not going to run away from home and get in trouble with the police. So all kids are going to break some rules, but you want them used to big rules that you don't break. And also good communication with them that there's a problem. Let's talk about it
Speaker 1 (25:19):
All well and good for those with a three-year-old. Now let's shift to the 16-year-old who has been in, let's say psychiatric hospitals a couple of times, lots of bad behavior, lots of suicide threats. So you have now this whole extra layer, which is a reality for a lot, a lot of parents. The child might be sneaking out at night, maybe running away, is talking to much older people online, getting involved in lots of things. And so you have that weighing on you. And now let's add into it, it's a divorce situation and and then new stepparents involved as well. And misbehaviors start happening with the 16-year-old at one household behaving and the other household stealing money, stealing things. And then when a 16-year-old gets in trouble for it and gets caught is then threatening suicide. Now you have parents who feel like their hands are tied because they don't want to do anything that's going to put this child over the edge and do the unimaginable and the worst thing, and now it'll be terrible. So setting limits in those circumstances do we do,
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I think, again, you've got to work together. And I know from doing a lot of divorce mediation that getting parents together with their new co-parent with mate after divorce has sometimes been very important and effective so that you've got a child like that. The parents need to be on the same page about child behavior. They don't have to have exactly the same rules, but the message has to be at dad's house and with your new stepmom, you have to follow their rules. And at mom's house and new stepdad, you have to follow their rules that we're going to support. Even if their rules are more strict than ours or looser than ours, we're still going to support them. You can't come and get us to help you violate the other parents' rules. So you really need to collaborate on that. And what we've seen, and it's sad, I've had cases now as a consultant where there's kids 11 and 12 who are suicidal, and it's because the parents are in so much conflict. It's always the parents are not on the same page. They're so opposed to each other and trying to get advantages by being, let's say the lose, happy, fun parent versus the boring responsible parent that you've got to get people on the same page dividing a child against themselves. And that's one of the real tragedies today when you get really young kids reporting that it's always because parents are in a really high conflict situation.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
So how do you get that other parent on the same page? I mean better than anyone, someone with a high conflict personality isn't going to want to be on the same page to help this child. And so let's say you have a dad and a new wife, the stepmom, and they're doing everything they can, but not getting support from the other household, even though asking for it and doing everything they can, whether it's through individual conversations or even through the court or through a parenting coordinator, but they just can't get that. So then in that situation, what's a parent to do? You just keep setting the limits and limits imposing the consequences, and just do your best.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
See, this is where family court plays a role in family court judges. And I know as a mediator, I always say, try to mediate your case, and that's better for better than court in general. But some cases need a grownup in the room, and that's often the judge. And what the judge can say is, we're going to change the parenting schedule, and if you don't do this and this and this, then you're going to have less parenting time. What's interesting, we have an example in the book of a judge telling a dad, in this case, you're getting your daughter to school late. You've got to correct that. Or I'm going to have to take away some of your weekday overnights because your child's not learning responsibility. Follow the rules. And they're standing out at school, they're missing every other day, they're coming into the building late.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
And then next hearing, there's an accumulation of lates and judge says, dad, what's going on? And dad says, well, I get there. I'm in the lot on time, and I'm teaching my daughter her times tables and some of her words and this and that. So we're working on schoolwork together. But when she goes in, yeah, usually the school's already started, but I'll try to do better, your Honor. And Your Honor says, I said to you like three months ago, try to do better. And here you are again with this problem. So I'm going to change the schedule. You're going to mostly have the weekend time, but weekday nights just seem like they're not something you're able to handle, and I gave you a chance to find out and you've demonstrated that you can't change. So I'm helping things change. So that kind of thing a judge can help with. Now we see sometimes more and more actually where a child's resisting contact with one of the parents and they may be doing something poorly and the schedule needs to change, or the other parent may be badmouthing that parent and interfering with their contact. And so that needs to change. So courts can change the schedule and sometimes that's the consequence in these high conflict divorce cases.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, no easy solutions, but I think parents need to just continue to set limits, impose consequences, use ear half the time and just keep moving on. So, well, good. Bill, I know we've talked about parenting in the past, but I think it's so important and really driving home that message that this has to be instilled early on when kids are three years old and so they learn it for life. Most important thing of all. So thank you, bill. I think it's just such an appropriate topic for you to talk about as a former kindergarten teacher, and for me, having been the mom of three little ones had a fair bit of experience.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
You had the hands-on experience there,
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Hands-on failing and succeeding a little bit here and there. So learning lessons all along the way. But we're going to wrap this one up and we'll put links in the show notes to the new book, and it can be, it's called Slick Solutions for Conflict, which you can get on Amazon, you can get it anywhere. Books are sold. We're doing pre-orders right now, which is really, really important in the book world Pre-sales. So get it now. It'll also be available as an ebook soon, so be watching for that. And we are grateful that you are listening to our podcast and we'll look forward to seeing you next time. If you're looking for training or consultation, coaching, online courses, anything like that, we are here when it comes to high conflict. So visit us@highconflictinstitute.com or conflict influencer.com regardless of whether you want this in your professional life or personal life. So until we see you next time, keep practicing and keep learning. Be kind to yourself and to others while we try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
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.