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 that involve someone who may have 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, and educational programs and methods all to do with high conflict. In today's episode, we'll talk about a situation where two people with high conflict personalities are targeting each other and a family member would like some help to try to figure this out. But first, a couple of notes send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or through our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Alright, bill, so we have a neighbor dispute here, a situation where a couple of people who may have high conflict personalities are targeting each other. This is a great question from a listener. So whoever that was, thank you for sending it in. So the listener asks, could you advise how a family member can help manage a situation like this where I need to help calm the flames and get to high conflict people to stop targeting each other and limit the emotional and financial damage along with other things? H C P number one has borderline or narcissistic traits, and there's a caveat here. I'm not aware of any official diagnosis of either of the high conflict people. This is just based on my observation of behavior and interactions over many years. So I think that's very important to say right off the bat, I'm a close family member of this person and have a good relationship with him.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Although it requires many of your methods at H C I to manage that relationship successfully. H C P number two has paranoid histrionic and possibly antisocial traits. This person is a longtime neighbor of HCP one. She has a history of accusing other people of things they haven't done often with a demand for recompense. Neither of these people have very many warm or long-term relationships with anyone outside of their own family. HCP one, which is my family member, has long been a target of HCP two's accusations, but they were for small things. Recently, HCP two made a new accusation about property damage. She retained a lawyer and is demanding about 30 or $40,000 in damages and is threatening a lawsuit or more damaged claims if not paid. HCP one is furious and making extreme statements about ruining her in court. This family member h P one is obsessed with the idea of proving her wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
This is damaging his few remaining relationships and creating a tremendous amount of stress, anxiety, and sadness for his partner. I've been able to help him think about the situation more objectively through the use of ear using your statements. I'll add right there, empathy, attention and respect. Also reflecting and reframing statements and reality testing. I've also convinced him to consult an attorney to understand his options. My primary goal is to help HCP one, stay calm and not put stress on his partner especially. I should also note that it is possible that I could recruit a family member of HCP two to help out from the other side of the fence. So Bill, this is pretty common, I'd say in neighbor disputes and thankfully that these two have sub one who is looking at this logically and trying to apply some skills to it.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
One of the things really to start off with is that we're not diagnosing anybody, but you may be seeing traits of personalities that are difficult. So borderline or narcissistic traits, borderline pattern, often wide mood swings, sudden intense anger, relationship rollercoaster, narcissistic personality trait, self-centered demand for admiration, but puts other people down and is on a drive to prove they're superior to the people around them. So those characteristics and HCP two is paranoid histrionic, possibly antisocial. So we've got kind of our five high conflict personalities wrapped up into two possible individuals, paranoid, exaggerating fears, seeing them where an ordinary person wouldn't see them. Histrionic, overly dramatic. Everything's intensely emotional out of proportion, and antisocial is basically a lot of lying, maybe willingness to break the rules, break the law, et cetera. So all of these are possibilities. We like the term high conflict personality and this listener is using that term so good for you because we're not diagnosing anybody.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
With that said, the person's family member seems quite reactive and maybe getting hooked by the neighbor. So HCP two in this case is the neighbor who accuses people of things they haven't done, sad to say. But in these kinds of situations, we often recommend that you consult with a lawyer and possibly use that lawyer as the person to respond to whatever they come up with. So you just say, talk to my lawyer, I don't want to get into it. Let's talk about the weather, let's talk about the community event next week. But let's not get hooked into arguing with each other. When you have false allegations against you, in many ways, you can't win by arguing because the person may really be projecting, as we talked about in the last two podcasts, and really can't see that it's not real or that it doesn't, they can't see that it comes from them.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
So arguing with them is one of the worst things. Just don't engage. Say hi, how you doing? Blah, blah, blah. Okay, talk to my lawyer about that. Have a good weekend. See you later. So don't engage in pointless arguments. Now, if you retain a lawyer, a lot of these cases, people threaten stuff and she's retained a lawyer demanding 30,000 in damages, threatening a lawsuit if not paid, and that's where you want a lawyer doing the response. You just can't win trying to respond yourself. Just keep it peaceful. Now, the person that wrote in is a family member of the first person. And so for you, good for you that your goal is to try to help keep things calm because that's really all you can do and that's important to do. And so giving your statements, like Megan said, empathy, attention and respect, and just help the person see this doesn't need to be the focus of your life. Don't let this take over. Give yourself some encouraging statements. You can say to your family member, give them tips and tools. Actually, a suggestion is our book, it's all Your fault. We include some neighbor disputes in there and you might even recommend that your high conflict family member read that book because it says how to handle things calmly and cautiously. Your family member might say, oh boy, my neighbor's a high conflict person for sure. You don't have to get into that. You think that he or she is as well.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Right, right. Now, what do you think about the idea of recruiting a family member of HT P number two to help out from the other side of the fence? I mean, I could see some pitfalls there. You'd have to know that person fairly well or else it could potentially escalate the situation.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, that's actually a good area to discuss because a lot of people have advocates and they're high conflict people often have negative advocates that agree with them and help escalate the problem, but they may have positive advocates, people who help them stay calm, people who help them make decisions. And if you know of such a person, that's a great idea to look at, talk to their sibling or mother or somebody and say, maybe we can both of us calm this thing down a little bit. If you don't know, you got to be pretty cautious because a lot of times there are family members who are already negative advocates for their high conflict person. And so you may get, there's a sibling that always defends their brother or always defends their sister, and now you've got a bigger conflict. So you just have to be careful of who that is. It's a good idea, but it has to be handled very cautiously and with a bit of knowledge. This is similar in the workplace too, is who do you go to who may be able to influence a difficult manager, for example? That can be helpful, but you have to make sure you talk to the right person.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
For sure, especially in families, as we all know, and I think you alluded to, you might talk smack about your own family member, but you don't allow it from the outside, so you just never know how that will go. But if you do eventually have that conversation with that person, I would approach it as definitely with some ear and Hey, we all want to solve this problem together or help our family members solve this and let's all just kind of be on the same team to do that. And what ideas do you have and try to get them talking first. Right.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Well, one thing, and I can't believe I didn't say that already, is mediation. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Bill, what
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Mediation is, there's a lot of community mediation centers, and that's a lot of what they do is neighbor disputes and they often call them lawn and leaf disputes. You're letting your grass grow too tall or your tree's leaves are falling in my yard. Those happen every day around the world. But with high conflict people, it's like it's a criminal offense. So they over overreact. But see if there's a mediation center in your community, contact them. And sometimes, because I worked with one in San Diego here, national Conflict Resolution Center and focus primarily on San Diego, but does some national training, they often will reach out to the other person in a calm, careful manner and they're trained to do this well and say, Hey, your neighbor says that there's a conflict simmering between the two of you and he or she would like to talk about this in a way to make things easier for both of you in the future.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
And we provide that service is something you'd like to know more about. That's another way to go if you don't know of a family member who's reasonable to help calm the person, because sometimes a mediator can help calm the person and you can meet together. And if there's lawyers involved, lawyers go to mediation now too. You both have two neighbors and they're lawyers come to the mediation and often they can problem solve and resolve the whole thing. And sometimes the one lawyer can talk to the other lawyer and realize there's no case here. I once did a mediation between a utility company and a plaintiff who had some complaint, and the lawyers for each of them were working from different regulation manuals and the one was out of date and the other said, Hey, can I just talk with your lawyer for a few minutes and can I do that outside of the mediation? Sure, you two go talk. They come back. There's no case because the rule book had changed and the one lawyer was aware of the change and the other wasn't. So sometimes you have a case that's building and then it goes away and doesn't even exist anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Interesting. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment,
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Bill. We are back, and we've kind of started this episode just talking about two HCPs who target each other. And we've kind of added another question on here. This comes from a family mediator somewhere in the us I've just found your podcast and I'm so grateful for the information you're sharing. My practice focuses on keeping people out of court and helping them navigate their divorce and mediation, which as you were just discussing Bill, and that's why I added this on mediation, pro mediation. So in my experience, high conflict personalities do not do well in this kind of mediation. It's as if they need the authority of a lawyer or even a judge to bring their expectations and demands into the realm of reality. They often shoot themselves in the foot as well. I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts on this. I would imagine Bill
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Mediation is one of my favorite things, and I basically have done mediation over a period of 40 years. So I became a therapist and was doing mediation while I was a therapist, then I became a lawyer and was doing mediation as a lawyer. So I got about 40 years in on this. And the outcome about conflict people is maybe half, maybe 80% of them can actually be helped to settle their disputes in mediation if the way the mediation is managed is done well and done carefully. And guess what? I wrote a book on that with our colleague Michael Lomax, who's also a speaker for High Conflict Institute, and we wrote a book called Mediating High Conflict Disputes. And over actually 12, 15 years, we each were using that in our own practices as mediators and lawyers and found that a different structure may really lead to more success.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
With that said, having an authority say something can be very helpful, and that's why as a last resort going to court is how some of these disputes have to end up. But having a lawyer, having a mediator who can meet with the lawyer and the party for each side often can help calm things and reign in their expectations because as you mentioned, they often have unrealistic expectations and need to hear from an authority figure that they're being unrealistic. And I've had mediations where the lawyer said, bill, can you meet with me and my client? And then the other party and their lawyer, we take turns with that and I say, sure, happy to do confidential sessions like that. And when I'm meeting with their client, I realize the goal is the lawyer wants me to tell the client they don't have a case because the lawyer doesn't want to be the one to say that.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
And I explained why your case isn't going to go anywhere for this and this reason, I've had a lot of mediations had cases like yours, unless you can think of a proposal that might solve this informally in terms of a legal dispute, you don't really seem to have a legal standing and may not have understood that before. So I don't think you have a case. So now some mediators will say that and some don't. They'll stay totally neutral. And so you need to decide what kind of mediator you're looking for. One that's going to tell you the law and tell you what they think of your case or a mediator that's completely going to facilitate the discussion. So depending on whether it's family mediation, workplace mediation, personal injury mediation, business dispute mediation, you may get a really purely facilitative mediator who doesn't give you any kind of boundaries on your case, or a mediator who really educates and says, this is how your case might go. Just so you know you have that in the background. But in mediation, people can agree to almost anything. They don't have to stick with the legal standards. They can give more or take less depending on how they choose to do it. And sometimes they'll get less in one category and more in another, which a judge can't make them do, but by agreement they can do. So mediation's often the place to start.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
And is it true that I've heard research over the years that when you're in mediation because you're making these decisions for yourself, instead of having decisions made for you, you're more likely to stick with them?
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yes, that's also true. You're absolutely right. When people participate in making the decision, they're more likely to carry it through. And that's an important thing. I've seen judges make hard decisions and parties walk out of the room, out of the courtroom and say, well, I'm not going to ever do that. And it's like nowadays, just because the judge orders, it doesn't guarantee people will behave. So the more they participate in the solution, the more likely they are to behave around the outcome.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And do you think that's true for all the five high conflict personality types?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
I would say yes. The one that I'd be most cautious about that with is antisocial because antisocial or really good at lying. And one of the slippery things with antisocial is they'll make a lot of agreements and then they just won't do any of them. So you think, oh, good, he finally agreed. I had a case like that with a guy who had a lot of construction around his house and waste and danger to kids. He just wasn't proceeding to repair his house. And this six neighbors took him to mediation. He said, yeah, yeah, okay, you know what? I'll sell the house. And they go, oh, great. Everyone walks out relieved the guy sells it to his girlfriend and nothing changes.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Oh, no.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah. So they had to go back and fight that. But generally, I'd say majority of cases, you get more cooperation if they participate in the decision. So that's where mediation can really help. But sometimes you got to go to court so you've got choices and that's important to know.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, I suppose it's not a perfect solution every time, but I think in the majority it's typically a pretty good solution and helpful for everyone and helps keep cases out of court. And who likes to go to court? Most people don't. Alright, so thank you for that question and we do hope that the information's been helpful to everyone listening, thank you again to all of our listeners tuning in and listening to us each week.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Next week we're going to talk about high conflict divorce, child custody in alienation, which is always a very, very hot topic for our listeners. So send any questions you have to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast and tell all your friends and colleagues about us, and we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a five star review so we can keep growing and helping more people around the world. Until next time, keep learning and practicing so you can be confident in your human interactions in high conflict situations. As you do, your life will become more peaceful. 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.