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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 (00:04):
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 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 (00:23):
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. Today is the first episode of our new series called Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life. Before we get into that, just let us know if you have any questions by sending them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links for today's episode and we'd love it if you could give us a thumbs up or leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. And thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Alright, bill, so today we're talking about five types of people who can ruin your life, which seems to give people quite a chuckle when they hear this title. You came up with this for the title of one of the books you've written, which right now is Hot, hot, hot because it was mentioned as we talked about in the last episode on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast with Dr. Andrew Huberman. It's quite exciting to see that a lot of people are interested in this book because of that. So the book's headline is definitely, or the title is definitely an attention grabber, but also the headline for it is as well, it goes some difficult people aren't just hard to deal with, they're dangerous. You talk about those with wild mood swings, those who act reasonably suspicious or antagonistic or blaming others for their own problems. So wild mood swings, people that are paranoid, suspicious, controlling, antagonistic, aggressive bullying, blaming, sometimes dangerous, sometimes physical violence. Is that why you wrote this book?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, really to make people aware of something I've been aware of as a therapist since 1980. And I learned about personality disorders then, and I had some in my caseload as a licensed clinical social worker working at a psychiatric hospital and they would be there for depression, for substance abuse and often the psychiatrists and other clinical people would say. And the person also has a personality disorder such as narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality, antisocial, histrionic, paranoid, and I was taught about 10 personality disorders. We actually had people from the committee for the diagnostic manual, which was the DSM three right hand. They came to the clinic where I worked and explained about personality disorders and diagnosing them. However, it wasn't until I became a family lawyer in 1993 that I saw that the behavior driving a lot of legal disputes was called high conflict. And in divorce court they talk about high conflict families.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, I said, well, these people seem to have personality disorders or traits of these disorders, so people need to be aware of this. They think this is a child support number problem. Why are they fighting so hard over child support? And you find out, well, one person has a personality disorder and say a narcissistic personality and they feel humiliated if they have to pay child support. So they're blaming the other person for everything so that they can get out of giving a penny to the other person what they call a narcissistic injury for them. And so I realized people need to start understanding personality disorders in the same way that they need to understand alcoholism and addiction and society in the last 50 years has gone from don't talk about alcoholism and addiction to everybody knows about it. Everybody knows somebody in recovery or maybe still drinking or using drugs, and it's a problem to solve.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It's not a judgment. Betty Ford wife of a president came out and said, I'm an alcoholic. I'm an addict with pills and such. And so it's not a thing about shame anymore. It's about how do we solve this problem? How do we get the person into treatment? So to me, it's a matter of fact, I worked in drug and alcohol treatment for six years while I was a therapist. It's a matter of fact problem solving to understand what the problem is, what it looks like and what you can do. So that's why I wrote this is let people know, here's the problem, here's what it looks like and here's what you can do. So the title sounds a little harsh, but hey, some of these folks do brew in other people's lives, not all of them. And not everybody with a personality disorder is a high conflict person. So I'm just talking about the high conflict people
Speaker 1 (05:54):
And the whole elephant in the room concept. The most interesting to me because it's such a delicate thing. I mean the work that we do for so long now, it's removed judgment and shame and blame and labeling and having a bias against someone with a high conflict brain because we realize it's just what's in the brain. It's the personality, it's what's developed and it's only 10% of the, well, only 10% of the population. It's quite a few people and it does touch most people's lives in some way, but it's getting your head wrapped around the concept that this isn't a chosen high conflict personality isn't chosen, it's not even known by those with this. And so I think that helps us remove blame and shame. But how do people start to see this differently? For example, with alcoholism, a lot of people understand, look, I've got it in my family and they're talking about it now.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Like you said, Hey, my parent struggled with alcoholism, my grandparents struggled with it. And so it's in the genes. So there can be kind of a, Hey, I didn't even really choose this even though I own it and that there's a reason for it with personality stuff, there's not that insight into that. They even have it. So there's no way to say, Hey, it's a genetic thing, or Hey, this, it doesn't exist for them. So it makes it really hard for those on the outside, external to them to want to even, it's really hard to understand that We want to think that everyone understands the impact they're having on your life, that they are ruining your life, but they really don't.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
And that's such a big thing is they don't have the self-awareness. So the idea that they may be ruining your life and really just not aware that they are. It's not just individual lack of awareness, sociocultural lack of awareness. I think that's part of what we're trying to do. What I'm trying to do with this book is to open the eyes of our culture and say, there's some problems out there. There's some people with problems out there and they may land on you and you need to be prepared so you don't overreact or underreact. That's what people tend to do. One thing I want to go back to that you said is real important is the cause of this, to some extent it may be genetic tendencies, just like we see, if you have an alcoholic parent, you may have a higher risk tendency towards alcohol.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
You got to watch out that you don't drink too much and let yourself get out of control with that. But it doesn't mean you'll become an alcoholic. It just means there's a higher chance. So you've got to watch out for that. Same with these personalities, for example, antisocial personality disorder is more genetically related that more children of people with antisocial have an antisocial personality than the average population. It doesn't mean you'll have that. I've worked with people, I've worked with clients, I have friends who have a sibling who's antisocial, but they're not antisocial and they had a parent who had some problems or a grandparent. And so it's a higher risk. So people need to be aware if you have a risk of these kinds of behaviors, high conflict behaviors, it may harm your fighting a partner, getting married, having children who are happy. You may need to do some work on yourself to be careful that you don't harm other people in your life unknowingly and unintentionally.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
So I think this awareness is so important to this whole extent. People are starting to become aware that they have a disorder. So for example, borderline personality disorder, more and more people are fighting information on the internet and saying, wow, I think I have that. And the good news is there's treatment for that. But a lot of times people don't go because they think Maybe I have that, but it's everybody else's fault and there's nothing for me to do. Whereas if you realize this, you're not to blame for having this personality. It comes from the genetic tendencies, maybe from child abuse or from child indulgence for bad behaviors, tolerated well, once you're an adult, now you're responsible for your personality and getting help.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I do believe we're kind of on the cusp of very edge of the cusp of getting people more aware of this. And I did see an article recently with the Elon Musk saying that personality has a bigger impact on the workplace than we previously suspected. And we saw on that Dr. Huberman and Joe Rogan interview, they were surprised that, wow, the really most difficult people are 10%. It's not like they're just popping up out of nowhere every other day. It's that there's this 10% and wherever they go, because these are interpersonal disorders, they're going to likely cause some chaos and disruption in whatever setting they're in because as soon as something doesn't go their way, they're just sort of automatically programmed to resist, to reject, to disrupt, to cause some chaos to emote and down to those four defining characteristics of the high conflict personality, unmanaged emotions, extreme behaviors, all or nothing thinking and blame.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So there's the problem. So here's the problem, here's what it looks like and here's what you can do. That's why you wrote this book. It's pretty eyeopening for people when they first get an understanding of what the problem is and they're like, oh my gosh, I can't, it's shocking. It makes sense. Some of my past experiences now make a lot more sense, and I can't remember if I mentioned this on an earlier episode, but I had a mediator say to me last year that he thought that there were people that were just having a bad day and through this training he understood that no, this is their every day. This is 24 7, 365. It doesn't mean they're being aggressive in the day and night, but when something doesn't go their way, when something doesn't go as expected, you're probably going to have a problem. And we're going to get into the different, all of the five types discussions in the coming five weeks. Okay, so let's get back to here's the problem. Here's what it looks like. What more could you say that would help people understand what it looks like?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
The four key characteristics of high conflict personalities, and I want to say high conflict personalities may be people with a personality disorder or not. Some of them have some traits of a disorder, but that's not a disorder. They may have some high conflict. So think about high conflict as a set of conflict behavior. Four key factors. One is, as you said, Megan preoccupation with blaming others. And it's not just one incident, this is how they live their life. When something goes wrong, it's always somebody else's fault. And working on a lot of high conflict divorces, I've run into many people like that where everything is their spouse's fault. Well, can you see what your part in the problem might be? How dare you ask me that? I'm not a part of the problem. It's all her fault.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And they say to their children, your father, if he wouldn't have made me so upset, I wouldn't have had to do whatever X, Y, and Z. It's just so inherent. The blame just is their first thought, is their first reaction. And it's so automatic, and I think people don't understand it. And I think people's brains are wired mostly to just key in on what the blame is instead of, oh, this is a pattern of behavior and seeing that as a red flag. Instead they're going, oh, I wonder if there's a problem with the father
Speaker 2 (14:51):
And you said something important. That's pattern of behavior because people notice an incident and when it's a blaming incident, they say, who's being blamed? Oh, father's being blamed and father may have a problem. They don't think about, well, wait a minute, the person pointing the finger may have a problem that this person really may be the one who's acting badly. And so when you think in terms of patterns of behavior, you also explore both ends of the blame patterns of behavior. So let's say in this case, mom laying dad for everything says, look at what he made me do. I got in trouble because he didn't do this or didn't do that. So you have to have three theories, and this is important with high conflict behavior. One theory is that maybe dad has a pattern of bad behavior, maybe he's an alcoholic, maybe he's abusive, maybe he lies a lot, maybe he is acting badly.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Then you have to consider the person pointing the finger at him, say, maybe she's the one who has a problem, who's acting badly, and he's totally innocent of all that. A lot of people think, well, part of that must be true. Well, that's not true with high conflict personalities. It may be a total projection, total fabrication, and the person doing that is the one who has a pattern of bad behavior. Now I said three theories. The third is maybe they both are acting badly and we see that I have high conflict divorces. I was just thinking of one I had, I was the mediator and both people had high conflict personalities and we spent a lot of time fighting over a stool, a little stool that you step up on or a child sits on. We probably spent an hour and a half on that stool and what it meant to each person, it was a power struggle.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
But because I knew that they had high conflict personalities, there was things I didn't do and things I made sure to do, and they eventually reached an agreement. So that's where the benefit of noticing patterns comes in. But the key surface patterns are preoccupation with blame, a lot of all or nothing thinking it's all someone else's fault or it has to go all my way. I can't share it's all mine. Third is I managed emotions which drive their behavior. It's not always obvious. Some people burst into tears and yell and scream. Other people keep themselves carefully, tightly organized, but inside they're enraged. And the fourth characteristic is extreme behavior that 90% of people would never do. And that's one thing they mentioned in the Joe Rogan show was if somebody's doing something, you go, wait, 90% of people would never do this. Good chance. You're dealing with a high conflict personality
Speaker 1 (18:10):
And the do this could mean they're breaching an agreement, they're breaking a contract, they're going back on their word, they're damaging property. So I think sometimes we struggle to really understand what is all or nothing or what is extreme behavior, but it can take form in many different ways. But it comes back to would 90% of people do this thing? Would 90% of people take zero responsibility in this problem and blame 100% the other person consistently like pattern over and over and over again. And you start to see it, and it makes so much sense once you understand the pattern. And like we've mentioned many times on this show, it becomes so very predictable, but we still get stuck. And where I see people getting stuck, and we'll talk about this after the break on the, here's what you can do. Part is as you've come up with the ear statements bill and how to deescalate and calm people with those, I find that people get stuck in ear land and they forget about setting limits and that you're just kind of in this rhythm of watching what's happening with the person and responding by connecting with them to calm them.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Or maybe you're going to have to set a limit with them and then they come up with that next thing and that's when people dunno what to do again. And so I've started thinking of it in a way, in this way that everything that you come up with where you don't know what to do, they've come back at you with another problem, another argument within an argument. It's everyone is an opportunity to say, okay, do I need to connect and calm them? Do I need to help them analyze some options right now, focus them on choices, focus them on what to do, maybe just say nothing at all. Maybe I do the SSN and just shut up smile and nod. Or maybe I have to set a limit. So we all have options. So let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about what those options are.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
So let's continue our discussion about what to do. We started with, here's the problem, and here's what it looks like. The book goes into tons more detail. So if you want the book, get the book, the links and the show notes, the what you can do part. I think that's where people get stuck, even if they start to have an understanding of here's the problem and here's what it looks like in real life. What you can do in real life is so extremely difficult sometimes because we have our own patterns as well in how we respond and react to people, and we have an expectation that this 10% of people, we can use the same arguments or just engage in our same patterns that we engage with the other 90% of folks and think we're going to get somewhere. Even if we haven't gotten anywhere for a long time, many times over and over with this person, we still magically think it's going to work this next time, but it's just because we haven't practiced what those things are exactly. Smack your forehead, hit your head on the wall. So you have to learn some tools. What are the tools for counteracting blame?
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Let me put a set of tools out. The set of tools, first of all, are the things not to do what I like to call the four forget abouts, and these will help you avoid blame situations. The first is don't try to argue with the person and give them insight into themselves. If you say, no, no, can't you see what you're doing? You are the problem. Maybe I have a small part, but you're the big problem here, and it may be true.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
You see that you're being passive aggressive.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Right? I mean that's what the first thing that wants to come to mind is to tell the person, you're being out of bound here. You're being unreasonable, you're being passive aggressive, you're being snarky,
Speaker 2 (22:29):
And you may be totally right, but if that's the case, they're not going to hear it. If you're right or you're wrong, they're not going to hear it. Trying to give the person insight into their own behavior, if they're a high conflict person, will receive a very negative response, an angry defensive, maybe even a blast of anger. And if you're not sure, just try that sometime when someone's acting in a high conflict way and see what they do. The ordinary person, 90% of people might say, well, I'll have to think about that. Or maybe after the conversation they'll reflect on it. Maybe they won't admit it, but they'll still think about it. High conflict people doesn't even cross their mind. It's totally not their fault. They're not playing a part at all in the problem. So don't try to give them insight. Focus on their choices, focus out of themselves, not into themselves.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Get them thinking, okay, here's your choices. Now, don't try for insight. The next thing to forget about is opening up emotions. Don't get really emotional. Say, ah, I'm so angry with you because you open up emotions and high conflict. People generally don't go through the grieving process of grieving and healing their emotions and upsets and putting them in the past. So opening up emotions. You open up a lot of old stuff, a lot of overwhelmed stuff, they're overwhelmed, and now you're not helping them at all and you're not helping yourself. You may be the target of all the old stuff. The third thing to avoid is focusing on the past and high conflict because people, because they don't breathe and heal, are trying to rewrite the past all the time. They're talking, talking about the past, no, I was right to do what I did. No, he was wrong to do what he did. Don't focus in the past. Focus on what to do now. Let's look at our choices. And the fourth thing is don't give them a label. Don't say, well, you're a high conflict person, or you have a personality disorder, or you're abusive or you're an alienator, or just that you're a jerk.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Narcissist and
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Narcissist, sociopaths the favorites. Yep.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
It doesn't help. What you do is activate defensiveness. If you really want to solve problems, focus on what's our choices now. So those four things not to do, four things to do, and we'll get into these deeper when we talk about each personality, I like to call this the cars method. CARS first is connecting with the person. And as you said earlier, Megan, ear statements that stands for empathy, attention and respect. Empathy. I can see this is a hard time you're going through and I want to help, or I can understand your frustration. You've really been dealing with this for quite a while, or I can hear how sad you are. This is a sad time. Let's look now at what your choices are, what you can do. So connect. Then A is for analyzing, and that's where you look at your choices. You get people thinking by thinking in terms of choices.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
If you tell a high conflict person what to do, say, here's what you have to do. So very good chance they won't do that, and they'll be angry with you. It's better to say in a more matter of fact, well, here's what I see. Your choices are these two or three choices. Which one would you rather do? And I can help you with that. I don't give 'em a choice, you won't help with or tell them if they pick this choice, I can't be part of it, but think in terms of choices because it gets their brain analyzing. Then the next is R responding to misinformation. They often have a lot of distortions. They're in touch with reality, but put a spin, all or nothing thinking, jumping to conclusions, emotional reasoning. I feel it's true. So it must be true that you're having an affair or you're taking all the money out of the business or whatever it is that's not reality isn't based on how you feel, how you feel may give you some things to look for.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
But if you base all your decisions on how you feel, you're not going to be very accurate and probably no one's going to want to be around you. So you have to include that. But don't let that dominate. So that's responding to misinformation. It's not all or nothing. There's something I can do, we can each do to solve a problem. The fourth is S for setting limits, but we've added imposing consequences to that because if you're dealing with high conflict people and you set a limit and say, you can't talk to me that way, high conflict, people may just ignore that. So you have to impose a consequence. You can say, you can't talk to me that way, and if you continue to do that, I am hanging up or I'm walking away from this conversation. So that's just an overview of the four key skills to use in dealing with high conflict people.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So we'll get into that even more deeply in the coming weeks, in the coming five episodes. Next week will be narcissistic, high conflict people, and we'll go in kind of a deep dive on that. So thank you Bill for that. This book is just really fantastic. So for anyone that wants to kind of read it while we're going along this series, it's actually on sale on the website. So you can come to our website@highconflictinstitute.com and go to the bookstore, or you can get it at bookstores everywhere, audio and print. And that's a lot of sales for that book. Alright, so we appreciate you listening as always. Listeners, please send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. Until next time, keep learning, keep practicing the 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 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.