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Hosted by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. and Megan Hunter, MBA, It’s All Your Fault! High Conflict People explores the five types of people who can ruin your life—people with high conflict personalities and how they weave themselves into our lives in romance, at work, next door, at school, places of worship, and just about everywhere, causing chaos, exhaustion, and dread for everyone else.
They are the most difficult of difficult people — some would say they’re toxic. Without them, tv shows, movies, and the news would be boring, but who wants to live that way in your own life!
Have you ever wanted to know what drives them to act this way?
In the It’s All Your Fault podcast, we’ll take you behind the scenes to understand what’s happening in the brain and illuminates why we pick HCPs as life partners, why we hire them, and how we can handle interactions and relationships with them. We break down everything you ever wanted to know about people with the 5 high conflict personality types: narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, antisocial/sociopath, and paranoid.
And we’ll give you tips on how to spot them and how to deal with them.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict people. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hi everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
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, all to do with high conflict. Our originally scheduled topic today, if you were listening in last week, was about high conflict divorce, but we're holding off on that for a bit to talk about a podcast that many of you have probably heard of called the Joe Rogan podcast, where he had a guest named Dr. Andrew Huberman. It was episode number 2195, and lo and behold, they were talking about your book Bill, five types of people who can ruin your life. One of our listeners alerted us to this and we thought, Hey, let's talk about it, and then we'll have a special announcement at the end of today's episode. So before we start, send any questions you have about high conflict dilemmas to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
All right, so Bill, we are going to listen to this. It was just a very brief part of the long, longer episode about three or four minutes, but we'll break it up here a little bit and play bits at a time and then have you, we'll talk about those. Alright, again, this is Dr. Andrew Huberman who is being interviewed by Joe Rogan on his podcast. It's interesting, this book came out in 2018, so it's been a few years and it sold really well in the beginning and continued to sell well, but we saw a big increase since the pandemic, as we've talked about many times on this show and in what we're hearing from the general public and from professionals that we train. Conflict is up, aggression is up, bullying has increased, so there's more of a need for this information. Alright, so let's listen to this first part.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
When someone's lying, it's almost like they're waiting to see how you buy it.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
So it's like their defenses are up
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Their
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Counter punch quick.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Well, they're selling it, they say it and they're like, does he buy it? You feel the does he buy it and like, Ooh, you're full of shit.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Oh, interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Let me think about this. So you are able to sense their anticipation of your response. It's like they've got queued up some evaluating whether you're going yes, no, or maybe,
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yeah, but it's not reliable. Just to be completely honest. I've been bullshitted before, but I think I'm better at it than most. And I think maybe that's, I've had more conversations with people than most people have, but it's not a hundred percent. Sometimes people are full of shit and you're not sure or have your defenses down.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
I mean, I've been badly manipulated
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Before
Speaker 4 (03:36):
It
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Happens. Yeah, it happens. Especially if you like someone that's part of the problem. You don't want them to be full of
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Shit. And some of the best manipulators certainly in my experience are people that have really figured out the combination lock of the things that I have felt deprived of and they come in and those tend to be unique things that you can't get out anywhere. And boy, somebody said to me recently, there are certain categories of humans that I can't be seduced by. I'm not talking about just sexual seduction, but I'm saying it just can't be seduced by. And then some people just are able to get past that force field. And so I consider myself pretty good at threat sensing except in that domain where my threat sensing is the equivalent of a stuffed
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Animal. My friend Tony always says that erotic and psychotic are so close to each other that it crosses over back and forth. And I think there's something to that too, that some of the craziest people are also some of the sexiest people for some weird reason you want to be with them even though they're dangerous, they're crazy. There's some weird thing going on there, almost like you want wild kids because wild kids could survive better.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So Bill, as they were talking about lying, Joe mentioned as you heard, that he is pretty good at detecting lies, but not always. So when it comes to people who are lying and in relation to the five types of people who can ruin your life, what's the connection there, if any?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Well, there's a strong connection because all of the five types lie more than average. Now some people are really careful to be purely honest in all of that, but what we see is high conflict. People often are trying to kind of fight reality and get the people around them to see things their way, which often has a spin on it, what we call cognitive distortions. They twist things into all or nothing thinking emotional reasoning. I feel it's true. So it must be true jumping to conclusions, those kinds of things. And so they often shade the truth. Sometimes they do it so automatically because it's part of their personality and sometimes they're doing it on purpose. They feel like the reason they're lying is so much more important. It's often based on really on their personality. So let me just start with antisocial personality. That's one of the five types that personality is known for lighting.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
In fact, that's one of the criteria for mental health professionals is that they are chronically deceitful, which includes lying and conning. So what's part of their personality? But let's take another borderline personality. People with that have a fear of abandonment and are willing to lie to avoid being abandoned. The most dramatic example I remember reading about was a woman whose boyfriend had decided to split up with her. She was too intense for him. And so he said, I want to split up. You're too intense for me. She said, oh, oh, that's terrible. I just found out this morning that I'm pregnant. And so he was like, oh my goodness, if she's pregnant, I can't split up with her. I'm going to have to do the right thing and marry her and raise the child. And so he marries her quickly and six months go by, seven months go by, eight months go by, nine months go by. There's no baby. It was completely a lie. But the reasoning was emotional is that she was desperate to hold on to him. And so that's the basis of a lot of lies that you get with these five types of people.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
So the brain is just finding a way to feel, okay, the brain is finding a path back to safety and the vehicle is lying. In some cases that would be the cognitive distortion, yes.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
But in many ways I think it often leads more deeply a sense of I can't survive without this person and therefore lying in the service of survival is okay,
Speaker 1 (08:16):
But not a conscious thought, the exact conscious thoughts, it's just all the brain manufacturing, whatever it needs to manufacture to keep that connection going, right?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yes. And if you picture the person as about 18 months old as a child and her mother says, sorry kid, I'm leaving you. And walks out the door closes the door never comes back, that child won't survive. And a lot of people with borderline personality disorder had attachment disruptions right around that age, around 18 months. A lot of that kind of got into their thinking, their psyche, and this is through no fault of their own. And that's so important here is understand these disorders, these high conflict personalities were formed not because people chose them, but usually in early childhood, if you're 18 months old and your mother leaves you, you're going to die. So you have that same feeling about abandonment as an adult. And we see that drive a lot of high conflict divorces. Lying is part of the package and it's really sad because the person feels like that's their only choice.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And we heard Joe and Dr. Heman also talk about manipulation. We all like to think that we don't get manipulated by people or that we can detect when we are. But is that always possible?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Well, first of all about spotting lying, we're really not good at that. And all the research says that we're really not better than guessing that you got a 50 50 chance of being right. You guess somebody's lying or that they're telling the truth. It's like a coin toss just cost a coin and you'll be as accurate.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Really?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
So that's what the research says. But do you think based on our expertise in high conflict, that we can have a better lie detector, a manipulation detector?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I would like to think that, but I am not so sure. What I also learned early in my years as a lawyer is I remember reading a study that said it's better to read documents than to watch somebody in cross-examination. And the reason why is if you have a high conflict person and you're cross-examining them, they have a lifetime of knowing how to lie. They're skilled at this, and if you watch their body language go, oh, he just seems so honest and sincere. I've consulted on cases like this where we were able to figure out the person is lying, but they convinced a jury, they convinced judges, and it's a sincerity that they can convey. That's why antisocial personalities are good at conning people and people to do all kinds of things they wouldn't do if they knew the truth. So we have to understand, especially antisocial personality, and to some extent, narcissistic personalities are invested in fooling you and they have a lifetime training in that.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
And you're not going to catch their lie just looking at their face. But if you read documents, and this is great, in legal cases, I get to read documents and find out this is what they said to this person, this is what they said to that person. This is their behavior. This is when the police caught them three years ago and they didn't tell you about that, but we found that case. Then you start putting the pieces together and realize this person's lying. But if you just looked at them, you'd probably be convinced they were telling the truth. So we're not all that great at that, and we need to be humble and know our limitations and dig for the facts rather than guessing based on somebody's face.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah. So I think in my own experience, I've become much better at suspecting falsities and people who are lying.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I think you are better at that because you've been trained in being suspicious,
Speaker 1 (12:32):
But it's also a calculation as well, knowing the fear basis of these personality types, these five types, you can kind of compare it against the other 90%, which is what Joe and Dr. Huberman talked about quite a bit, was that 90% of everyone else. And when I think, okay, 90% of other people would never do this thing and things aren't adding up and that's just not normal, then I really get my antenna up, my spidey senses. And I think maybe I was probably pretty vulnerable about that in the past. I was susceptible to being probably conned somewhat of a big heart combined with good spidey senses. So I probably started from a low bar to begin with. Anyway, so let's move on to something else they were talking about, which is threat sensing. And I know in my trainings, I've been talking a bit about how to create a threat reduced environment, which may be a little bit confusing to people, but they were talking about they're pretty good at threat sensing except in this domain, meaning this 10% of perhaps high conflict people. And in fact, I think Dr. Hu Erman said he has the equivalent of stuffed animal at threat sensing. So I think it's a matter of awareness and really being skeptical as you said earlier, and doing that calculation. What do you think?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Again, we have to be humble about our limitations because of how we can be manipulated. I know there's some people that do threat assessment in the workplace and they have criteria and checklists and such things to consider. I think you and I might be a little bit more aware, but I wouldn't count on myself. I'd want to get an expert to say. And what's interesting is I went to a threat assessment for college campuses training, and it was led by an FBI guy who had previously been in the Secret Service checking for threats. Threats. What's interesting, the research I was telling you earlier about lying, they say judges, college sophomores, customs agents, all these are no better than average, but there's one group they said that was better than average and it was secret service. And it may be because they're so threat focus, so deception focus and danger focus.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
But anyway, what he said is he had a case where as a secret service that there was a woman had been writing threatening letters to the president like 15 years ago. And so his job was to have lunch with her once a month just to make sure she wasn't escalating too much. But he said she had a therapist and he got her to give him permission to talk to her therapist. Her therapist had absolutely no clue that she was writing threatening letters to the president. It was just totally off the radar. And she had never mentioned it and he never had, there was never any suspicions in that direction. So I think, I guess I want us to be really cautious about, you might think, but consult the experts and consult more than just the way people look. One of the big things I should say, I think his name's Paul Ekman, the guy that read faces, that studied faces in all these different cultures.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
One of the things he says, there's no obvious thing that someone's lying, that everybody scratches their nose when they lie. That's not true. But he said, if you see changes in the person's behavior that they're doing something different from what they normally do, then maybe there's an increased chance they're lying or an increased chance that they're a threat, that they're dangerous. So noticing changes, and frankly, this is so important for parents, if they have teenagers, for example, who are doing fine, and suddenly there's a lot of things that change secretiveness, maybe threats. Maybe they're saying, I feel like I hate so-and-so I wish he was dead. That you have to pay attention to things like that and things that are a change.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, interesting. I didn't know that about detecting line because you see a lot of courses online about how to detect lies, and there are lots of people claiming to be experts, and maybe there are some, but that's a really interesting note there that it's the changes because lots of people scratch their noses and any of us can be nervous, but it doesn't mean we're lying, but we may have the same action scratching our nose or shifting in our chair or something. So well, let's take a break and then we'll come back and we're going to hear a little bit more from Joe Rogan and Dr. Huberman, and we'll talk more about that. All right, we are back, and now we're going to listen to a bit more of Joe and Dr. Huberman talking about conflict and drama.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Well, I'm listening to a really good book that a really smart person suggested to me called Five Types of People That Will Ruin Your Life. And I only wish I had read it years ago. And here's the main takeaway, that there are about 10% of people out there and it cuts across all the standard labels of narcissists and borderline and all that. They include some of that, but they depart from that and they just focus on what, this is a guy who's a psychologist. It's written by a guy who's psychologist, he's worked a lot on conflict resolution over the years, courtroom type stuff, et cetera. And he says, in this 10% of people, they're high conflict people, but within they like conflict. They feed off it, they like drama, they like conflict, they like creating it. But within that category, it's pretty evenly divided. He claims between women and men. And then there's a further division where about half of them play passive and victim, but are highly manipulative. They use other people to try and basically harm. And then the other 5% are very aggressive and abrasive.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Alright, so as you heard Dr. Huberman say, bill, he loved your book and thought that it was really interesting to read about people. There are actually a smaller percentage of the population that are difficult people than he and probably the general population believe, because I think it's because that one person in our life makes it seem huge. There's so many people like this, but it's really typically just a small number of people. But there are people who conflict, people who like drama, people who like creating it. And then he talked about from the book, five types of people who can ruin your life that this type of behavior, this high conflict personality is evenly divided between women and men. So is that true?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yes. Yes. I would say the breakdown of these five types is like say I mentioned borderline personality disorder and the big study that was done 20 years ago, the only one of its type in the United States, they studied like 43,000 people. Anyway, they came up with, it was right around equal men and women with that. And as a therapist, I'd always thought that was primarily women in the past. But the research supports the idea that male people with borderline personality, and this is mood swing and we'll talk more about this in the coming weeks, but white mood swings, that also fits men who commit domestic violence against their spouses or partners. And so that personality is present in a percent of men and a similar percent of women. They said in that study about 6% of adults, other things, other studies say 2% of adults, but that's just one example. Narcissistic personality, primarily men, but significantly women histrionic personality. Turns out the study showed about 50 50,
Speaker 1 (21:18):
And that's always completely shocking to people.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yes,
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Because we have this built-in bias, as you and I both know, we've pulled audiences around the world about whether they're more female or male of these types or about equal. And every single room we've ever had, at least from my experience, it goes the same way where they get the narcissist statistics correct and the antisocial, but not the borderline histrionic or paranoid. And that histrionic, I think we have a built-in bias that we watched old black and white movies and someone would get really upset and the woman would be really upset and histrionic, so to speak, and the man would slap her across the face and shake her to get her out of her histrionics. And so I think that's just embedded and that's kind of from this study, a false stereotype.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
So men can be just as dramatic just as seeking of attention. I think with YouTube and everything, you see men doing crazy things to get attention. You see a lot of the movies nowadays, drama, drama, hangover one, hangover two, hangover, everyone's dramatic. And one of the shows you like is The Office say There's a little bit of histrionics there coming from a male character.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And you misspoke, bill. I don't like that show The Office. I love it. Oh, okay. I know every line from every episode, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So yeah, it's kind of interesting about the histrionic personality type that I think it's really hard because we think the word histrionic puts in our brain that it's somebody that's hysterical and super dramatic and weeping and out of their mind. But it isn't just that it's someone who's just attention seeking, has to be the center of attention, doesn't like it when they're ignored, the brain starts to go into cognitive distortions and whatever it takes to seek to get attention again. So it isn't just this histrionic woman which is false, it's that someone's seeking that attention when they're not feeling okay.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
And that one turned out to be 50 50.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Isn't that fascinating? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
So borderline almost 50 50 histrionic 50 50, paranoid 43 to 57. It's within a 60 40 range. Narcissists a little higher, 38% female. But they say since that study that women have been learning to become more narcissistic in our culture. And since the study was done 20 years ago, we've had a whole series of young actresses and musicians that a lot of people say, well, she's such a narcissist and things like that. But antisocial is the only one that seems really to be about three to one male to female. And that seems to be more hardwired, and that seems to be consistent for decades if not centuries. So that's the one that's not equal.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
And the audience always gets that one, right?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So there's some knowledge, some expertise, but there's also built-in bias, I believe, and just experience over your whole life. But it is fascinating with the antisocial. I've also read that it's really the hardcore trauma, the most severe trauma can end up with antisocial personality. So maybe someone who's been abused in really weird ways by their mother or someone who's perhaps locked in a closet and physically abused and starved and things like that. Is there truth to that bill?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yes, there's truth to that, but it's only a portion of anti socials have a terrible history like that more than probably the other personalities. That's a percent of them that are born this way. And this is what the diagnostic manual says. There's a stronger connection to a parent and child just passing this down in families that this seems to have more of a biological connection, which also explains why it's so hard to treat this personality. And this is often associated with crime. I've seen several studies about 40% of prisoners have antisocial personality disorder, and it makes sense. It's an enduring pattern of behavior that repeats and repeats. If they get out, there's a high risk of recidivism and they'll be back in. Now with everything we've said, I want to make sure I have a cautionary note, and that is that there's deviation within all of this.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So there's people that are antisocial without being criminals. There's people without the drama who are histrionic, they want attention, but don't have the same drama, borderline personality, et cetera. And there's treatment like borderline personality. There's some good treatment for that, the dialectical behavior therapy. And so especially if you know someone with one of these diagnoses or you wonder if you have one, these are tendencies, but there is more hope now than ever before that people can learn through intensive counseling to overcome some of these patterns of behavior. So I don't want people to judge people with these conditions. So they really started in childhood and they had no control of it. But also be aware there's these patterns of behavior so that you'd also don't get hurt yourself if they happen to include some dangerous behaviors, which not all of them do, but more than average do.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
And kind of coming full circle is that there are those with these disorders who may not have a high conflict personality. I think probably most do. That's just my opinion. But anyway, so now let's move on to the next part of their conversation. We'll wrap up with this.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
And so he has this great set of protocols. I love protocols that are essentially don't move in with marry or get engaged to or have a child with somebody in the first year. And this cuts in both directions. Just don't make that agreement in year one as well as for any behavior that kind of cues those senses gets your spidey senses up like you were describing. Ask yourself, would 90% or more of people do that behavior? And if it's a no, you have to pause. In other words, what he's saying in this book is that most people are actually pretty healthy, but that most of the woes of the world are created by about 10% of people, which he calls these high conflict people, but they don't always come out high conflict like screaming and yelling. They're often very tactical and manipulative and very vindictive. They'll leverage victimhood, they'll leverage a lot of different things, and again, cuts across men and women equally. He claims, and again, I don't know the data behind this book, but the book itself just feels like a very useful thing that everybody should know about. So I'm enjoying reading this book going, oh my God, I wish I had this book years ago. Plus realizing like, oh yeah, we always hear this. Most of our problems come from a very small set of people in things
Speaker 3 (29:08):
And most of society's problems.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
And so who are these people? So we tend to call them narcissists or sociopaths or psycho, but those labels, while very useful in the clinic, I think have been overused in the general public. We're not clinicians, we're not diagnosing anybody, but difficult people that can ruin your life abound. But it turns out it's only about 10%, and it has some very specific protocols of how to deal with the people who are more outwardly aggressive versus play victim, et cetera. Very useful book, I think. Yeah, it
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Sucks that you have to think that way though.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Can just enjoy someone,
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Enjoy their company
Speaker 4 (29:43):
If they're in the 90%.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, but that's the problem.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
You
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Could zig when you should have zagged and you run into a 10 percenter
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Take a year.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, year's a long time though.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Also, people can learn what you tolerate and don't tolerate and hide certain types of behavior from you. Yes.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Okay. So Dr. Huberman was talking about the great set of protocols that you put in the book Bill, talking about don't move in with someone before you've known them a year. Don't entangle your finances. Don't buy a house, don't have a baby together. Don't do anything that's going to be super permanent. Maybe get a tattoo, right?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
That's okay,
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's okay. You can cover that up or you can live with it or something. But these other things are going to potentially be costly and they will take a toll in some way, maybe on your emotional health, and some can be lifelong. If you have a child with someone that has a pattern of lying or abuse in some way, it's life altering.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah. And it's important to know that people with these personalities, some of the people with these personalities are very invested in covering up their full range of behavior. And it may be three months, six months before you find out that your partner is physically abusive and then they start hitting you. Usually within a year, you're going to see the full range of the personality. But that's why we say this, and it's for people's own safety in some cases. Domestic violence is perfect example of this because most partners with domestic violence don't show it at the beginning. Lying in important ways may not show at the beginning. There may be a secret life that the person has all of this. So you want to take time to get to know the person. And there's a range of how severe this is. So someone may get in a relationship with someone who say, got a narcissistic personality, but it may be you can manage the relationship.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Maybe there's enough room to work on themselves. So we don't want to make absolutely all or nothing suggestions here, but people need to be aware that five to 10% of the people in the world are different in their approach to relationships and conflict. And you want to protect yourself and not be surprised and also know what to do, like the protocols, how to calm someone. If you have someone like this in your family, how to set limits and impose consequences. All of these things come up and they may help you manage the relationship, especially in the workplace, someone that's your boss and they got a high conflict personality, but you may be able to manage them enough to make the job tolerable until you get your retirement in a year or two. Things like that.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Okay. Yeah. And kind of the last point they touched on was those spidey senses, right? Would 90% of people do that behavior that they're doing? Because a lot of us, most people I think want to assume the best in others that they're not going to cheat. They're not going to lie. They're not going to lie when they know they can get caught or they're not going to rage. And so we want to think the best, but we have to use, like you said, our spidey senses. You just have to use your own brain, right? And pay attention to gut feelings because they're in your right brain
Speaker 2 (33:31):
And read my book
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And read the book. So speaking of the book, and we'll wrap with this. So thank you for that, bill. And I want to give a shout out to Joe Rogan and Dr. Huberman for giving a shout out for this book because sales are up that we are going to launch starting next week, a series on this book, five types of people who can Ruin Your Life, and I think you'll really enjoy it. We're going to dive deep into all of the five types, just all the different nuances about them and things that you can do to protect yourself, identify things like that.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Thank you for listening, everyone. We really appreciate it. We'd love it if you give us a thumbs up or a like somewhere. Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And until next time, keep learning and practicing these skills. Be kind to yourself and to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is A protection 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.