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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 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. And Bill is back today after a brief hiatus. Really happy to have you back Bill for this ask and answered episodes. We're going to take our listener questions today. Thank you listeners for sending those in. But before we start, please send you questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links and we'd love it if you give us a review. We'd love it if you hit the thumbs up. If you're watching this on YouTube, we just want to hear from you. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. Alright, so Bill, welcome back. Where have you been?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Thanks. Been good actually relaxing last couple months, so I feel like I'm excited. It's back to school season and I'm excited to teach and learn and just interact with everybody, so it's good to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Good. Nice, nice. Yeah, I think we should all take one or two or even three months off every year just to get refreshed to leave our brains break because I honestly don't believe that our brains were meant to be this active and busy all the time. So I'm sure you feel quite refreshed at this stage.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I do. Let me just mention one of the fun things this summer, what I did this summer is I went on a river raft for four days in Oregon and it was the most exciting thing when we had rapids to go through and the most peaceful thing, it was this total quiet blue sky green trees on both sides just floating along. That was a real high point. I have fond memories of that. Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Was that up in Canada or on the west side?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Actually, that was Oregon, Southern Oregon. Yeah, we got up to Canada up to Victoria, but that part was in Oregon. But the whole west coast was a fun trip and just being outdoors big trees and also seeing people we know, including High Conflict Institute, people who we know who work in Canada, so that was fun as well.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Nice. When you were on the Oregon Trip River raft, were there fresh wild blackberries on the river banks?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
There were some berries. I think it was blackberries, I don't think it was blueberry, but blackberries were already ripening there. So we had some of those and those were great, but we also had some competition across the river from where we camped each night. One day we saw a black bear walking across and they also love berries, so we hoped that we would get to the berries first and that the black bears wouldn't get to us. So good to have an outdoor challenge. Like you said, the human brain is used to being outdoors and finding food, but also not being food. So a good experience.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
That's so good. Yeah, so that brings to mind, well, I actually did a river raft. The only one I've ever done was in Oregon, and I remember the blackberries specifically. We ate so many, we were almost sick. It was like 30 years ago. I didn't do anything quite so adventurous this summer. But my daughter went on the Colorado Trail, which is on almost 500 mile trail from Denver to Durango, Colorado by herself, and as her mom, so proud of her for doing this because I think you gained 60,000 feet in elevation over the weeks and you're constantly at 10,000 on average, 10,000 feet elevation. So it's a little concerning for a mother to know your daughter's out there in a tent every night. And then in the middle of the day she would send me a WhatsApp video of bears near her.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Oh no.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And she's not concerned at all. So that was pretty cool. She did finally get injured when she had about a hundred miles to go, but she did around 400 miles in four weeks. And I just tell you what, talk about impressive hailstorms, lightning, rain, cold fog, it was a lot. So
Speaker 2 (05:04):
She must have gained so much confidence from succeeding at that. That's I think one of the greatest things to challenge yourself single handedly and succeed. Of course, you as a mother must've been really, really happy when she finished.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
It was I was, and I knew she would be disappointed that she couldn't finish the race or the walk. She really wanted to, and she thought about it for a few days after pulling off the trail, but what everyone's telling her is, look, it's the decisions you make that are important, not the finish line necessarily. And she was injured and it could have ended up being potentially a debilitating, lifelong debilitating injury and she was going to be going over some major majorly difficult trails and passes and the weather was horrible this summer in Colorado for that kind of thing. So she made a good decision and I think that's an important thing that will give her confidence forever. And one of the first things she said is, I know now that I can do anything,
Speaker 2 (06:11):
That's the goal. Yep. Excellent.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, so I lived vicariously through her.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
That's a safer way sometimes.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Alright, well I'm really happy to be back. Hi listeners. It's really great to be back altogether. So let's just dive in and talk about this first question that we've received from a listener in Europe. Dear Bill and Megan, I recently found out about you and read Bill's book, it's All Your fault, but I'm still clueless about a recent problem, especially on the emotional aspect. This is about my relationship with my mother. She's 87 and was always a difficult person. Already as a child, as my aunts and uncles have told me, I always very much loved her. And as she's a very interesting, intelligent, compassionate person except during conflicts, she knows everything. Whatever I got interested in, she knew everything about it and we just shared many values and et cetera. So I thought it was interesting, bill, we'll break here before getting to the rest that I think sometimes we're surprised that the high conflict brain can also be a very intelligent and interesting brain that you may share values with this person and it can feel then very disconcerting when you have some big rage or blow up or blame at you, right?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, I think what's interesting is I like to think of people with high conflict personalities as kind of parallel to people with alcoholism or an addiction in that that's the one part of their life. People with alcohol or drug addictions, that part of their lives is out of control and they have to have strategies and learn ways to be careful and people around them have to recognize this is part of their life, but it's not their whole life. And we know alcoholics and addicts have the full range of intelligence, brilliance and not so smart behavior. There's a whole range. Well, same with high conflict people. Their problem is conflict and so conflicts in their life end up in rages and blowups and all of that, and yet they can be brilliant. One of the problems that we see, some of our trainings and consultations, for example in the high tech world is some of the most brilliant people can be some of the most difficult people. So we don't teach people fire all your difficult people. We try to teach them how to manage their difficult people and coach their high conflict people to manage their own emotions better and their own behavior better. Not everybody can do that and some people have to be moved out of the organization, but the reality is it's just part of people's lives and I think that's so important. Don't see the whole person just as conflict.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I've been studying gifted brain, I guess gifted child lately. I'm finding that many of the emotions and behaviors of the gifted child and even into adulthood mimic those or very similar to those of maybe not the full on high conflict personality, but some of the very sensitive, intense emotions, highly emotionally sensitive and kind of blowing up a bit and having some extreme behaviors when things don't go as their brain wants them, says they should go. So I've just found it kind of interesting that maybe sometimes we're looking at is it a high conflict brain, is it a gifted brain? I guess it doesn't really matter about how you respond and what we do when someone is behaving or behaving badly or is extremely sensitive.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, I think this is part of the person and what's fascinating to me is there's every possible combination. So you have brilliant people who aren't high conflict people, brilliant people who are high conflict people. You have high conflict people that are skilled in every different occupation, but they're difficult and you have high conflict people that really can't even work because of their high conflict behavior. And so we see the whole range here. It's just like other mental health issues, personality disorders. Many people with personality disorders are relatively high functioning and good at their work, but they're not good at close relationships. Other mental health issues, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, substance abuse disorder, all of these, there's a whole just wide range of human behavior and that's why we really shouldn't be judgmental. We should learn what to do rather than to say, oh, well this person's good and this person's bad. There's good and bad behaviors, but I don't believe there's good and bad people. I think everyone's a good person, but they may have so many bad behaviors, they need to be locked up. Sometimes that's the case with criminal behavior, et cetera. But just it's so exciting to me, the whole breadth of human behavior and so much like you're saying, Megan, about what we're learning about the brain. So I'm excited. I think that the world is opening up to us in new ways and that's the future.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, yeah. I had a training last week in Boston. At the end, the director came to me and said, look, just learning about the brain, how we explain it, increased her empathy exponentially. It just does because you realize I wouldn't hold it against someone else with some kind of a brain difference and you're a difference, and I wouldn't think of them as a bad person, but high conflict behavior can feel very negative and attacking and awful, and it can be hard to separate out your own feelings about that person. But if you understand that this is the brain, they don't have control over it to quite a great extent, then how can you judge how can keep blaming and shaming them? You have to just see things differently. Okay, so let's get back to the question. We took a long pause there. Went on this big rabbit trail, but it was fun, A fun one.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Alright, so she says, I'm an artist and my mom was always very supportive since I was a small child. She kept every drawing I did, including notes on the back of a napkin. And she also gave me a lot of freedom, but she was always very easy to irritate and I just tried everything to not do that. When my father got a lover, I was six at the time and my sister was two that ended in divorce and there were then the three of us with my mother being very often angry including suicide threats, et cetera. She could explode at any time for whatever reasons. It was a very difficult time and many Christmases and birthdays got ruined by my mother's anger. I started living alone next door when I was 15. When I moved away for studying, I again got relatively close with my mother.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
It took me a while to realize that it was pointless to celebrate Christmas together. And I usually visited her over one day and we often had phone calls maybe once a week, sometimes more often, and I often enjoyed this and also felt supported while trying to not listen to her talking badly about something or somebody. And of course I wasn't allowed to mention the past before we get to the rest of it, I just think it's interesting that badmouthing bill is so common in high conflict, and I was thinking about this last week at that high conflict end of the spectrum. You could just call that the complaining blaming end. You're either complaining or blaming typically as the high conflict brain. So the complaining goes on. Bad mouth would come under that, right?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, I think so. I think what it is is high conflict. People can't look at themselves and it seems to be for psychological reasons. That's where it overlaps with personality disorders. People with personality disorders can't look at themselves, reflect on their own interpersonal behavior, and if you try to make them, they'll become enraged with you. So it's a difficulty that interferes with interpersonal and the vast majority of people, 80 to 90% of people will say, what's my part in this problem and what can I do differently in the future? Well, one of the characteristics of personality disorders is lack of change. They have an enduring pattern of behavior so they don't change and they don't reflect because why should they? Everybody's problem. It's everybody else's problem but their own. So you see a preoccupation with blaming others. That's part of how we define high conflict personalities. It's part of this inability to look at themselves. And so it's not unusual at all, and it's a warning sign. If that's what this person is like, then you're going to need to adapt how you deal with them because you're not going to get them to change their personality just by yelling at them. In fact, you're not going to get them to change their personality. That's work they have to do, not you,
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Which is hard to get them to that point or for them to get themselves to that point because they don't have that insight. Yeah. Alright, so let's go back to the question. When in recent years my mother got really old, I wanted to spend time with her more often, and still it happened that she suddenly out of a small thing like me declaring in the late evening that I would now leave, she would get angry and start insulting me. So that to me, bill screams fear of abandonment, right? You're here with me, I want that relationship with you, but you're going to leave even if it's late in the evening. I mean, did that trigger a fear of abandonment?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think it could be, but it also sounds personality based that she's going to shift into blaming and yelling and all of that routinely anyway. And for some people, for example, with borderline personality, that very much is based on a fear of abandonment. And any little thing might feel like abandonment. I'm going to go on vacation for a week next week, says a therapist to a borderline client. The borderline client freaks out and it's like, well, when you come back, I'll see you when I come back. Well, if I'm alive or something like that, they're angry because they're feeling abandoned. Domestic violence perpetrators, where were you? You got home 15 minutes late, where were you? Were you having an affair? And so every little, it's like micro abandonments can trigger that. So that could be what's happening. What she needs to do is figure out perhaps the timing.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Like if she leaves her mother late at night, that might not be a good time to end their conversation. Maybe better to end it during the daylight when the mother isn't as vulnerable and then the mother can take care of herself at night and make that transition more quietly. A big part of this is what the daughter's expectations are of her mother. And I think sadly, a lot of people want to be close to their parents, especially as they're older and if their parents are high conflict parents, there's going to be limitations to that and it's really sad, but you can maintain an arm's length relationship if you're willing to not expect as much closeness and make it more superficial and friendly so you don't have the roller coaster of intimacy and then explosions. And that doesn't help the mother either because they feel out of control and often regret it but can't control it. So I think it's managing the expectations and not trying to be as emotionally close, but having a comfortable and consistent relationship that they can live with and perhaps leaving mom during the daylight rather than late at night.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
And it can be really hard as always with your parents, right? Yeah. It's a relationship you want typically, and I guess we all kind of experience wishful thinking in a circumstance like this. We want that relationship with our parent, but it's just a part of being an adult of growing up and realizing it may not look like I want it to look, but I can adapt it a little bit and shift it into something that is more arm's length. And listen, the freedom that comes with that is huge. I think it's a big fear thing. It is difficult to think about making that decision, but there's so much freedom in it and then it opens your brain up to figuring out other ways to have that relationship.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And that's one thing I want to add to is there may be other ways to have that relationship with other people is find other people who you can get more, maybe even of a maternal energy from people who are healthier and aren't limited the way your mother may be, so that you can almost give your mother some of what she needs, even though she can't give you everything that you need. And that's finding more people in your life to fill in different needs.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I like that. Okay, so keep going with the question. Sometimes the visits would be fine and sometimes they would end in disappointment. When I recently visited her, she started to again and again, tell me how irritating it would be when I go to the toilet and how often I go, which was such a typical thing she did when we were still living together, like forbidding me in a harsh tone to cough because it was unnerving to her, which was just downright horrible. I couldn't help but to get unnerved as this was triggering all the depression from the past. And then after a heated exchange with her insulting me, I left. And when I called her the next day, she was very sorry and apologized. So let's stop here again, bill and talk about these apologies.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
The thing is, apologizing to high conflict people is something that they often want, often demand.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
The mother apologized to her.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Oh, the mother
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Apologized to her.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Let me just say both ways. There's a problem when they want you to apologize for being reasonable. Don't apologize for that when they apologize for being unreasonable. You can appreciate that. But see, apologies often drain off the energy of change. So people who have a lot of bad behavior often apologize and go on with the bad behavior. So the apology doesn't mean a lot because you're just going to do the bad behavior. What I think is to kind of find a way to balance how close you are and how far you are that arm's length relationship, because when it's too close, it's a roller coaster. When it's a little less close, then it's easier for them to manage themselves. We don't do a service to high conflict people to push them into exploding and controlling and blaming and all of that because then they feel bad.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
But they lack the self-control. And so is try to find measure, how close can I be and how not close can I be? Can you see maybe if you're together more than two hours, then it becomes too intense and the person's going to blow up and be controlling and all of that. So you might say, Hey, I can visit for two hours and then I've got to get to the store and get back to the kids. Manage your time so it isn't as close. But a big part of this seems to be she's expecting an intimacy with her mother that appears sometimes, but isn't consistent enough to expect all the time. And she may watch for warning signs. It's time to end this conversation or plan to have shorter conversations in the future.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So it's again, adjusting the expectations and kind of grieving what is never going to be right, that loss, accept it and this is how it is, and grieve it a little and move on. Focus on what you can do.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Let me just add something here. Everything we say about understanding people's behavior and tips perhaps for managing high conflict behavior are general principles. And you may want to talk to a counselor where you are, who gets to know you, gets to know your mother and can give more specific advice. We're not giving therapy advice here. We're not diagnosing people, we're just talking about general principles, right?
Speaker 1 (24:01):
So the last part is I have forgiven my mother, but since then I feel that I just can't go back to our usual closeness and I don't feel like phoning and et cetera. My mother would love for me to visit her again so she could make it well again. But I feel so fed up very common by the way. My friends are telling me to just tell her that I'm busy, but I don't know what to do with my 87-year-old mother who is now talking on my answering machine asking me to call her back. So what can I do? So I think we've pretty much already answered that question altogether, but any last thoughts on that bill?
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, I think once again, this arms length relationship idea often is the way to manage it. So you don't cut the person off completely, but you don't try to be close. So maybe you have a weekly phone call or maybe a monthly phone call so that they know when they're going to have contact with you. This fear of abandonment's a very powerful and sad thing, and so don't mirror your mother by going all or nothing as well is find that sweet spot in the middle where you can connect and be nice to her and encourage her and then disconnect and let her know I'll be calling you next month at the same time or whatever because it's emotionally really hard for them. And you have to understand, they can't control themselves, their emotions at least as well as 80 or 90% of people. And so you don't want to punish her for that. On the other hand, you don't want to get too close so that you get scorched by her fire. So find that sweet spot that may be minimal contact, but still some
Speaker 1 (25:54):
At the end of the day, it's about setting limits and that's what that is, right? Exactly. Setting limits. Limits always mean just giving a boundary or telling someone, here's what I want you to do. It's just saying, Hey, we'll have regularly scheduled calls. I'll be calling you on Sundays at four o'clock and leave it at that. Right? Okay. So let's take a short break bill and we'll be right back with another question.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Alright, we are back. Let's take another listener question. I've enjoyed your podcast and thank you for the valuable resources. I would like more information around if HCPs, people with high conflict personalities understand the gravity of their language when they're fully in their high conflict moment. My sibling has said some truly awful things in my life and also has various diagnoses. Then a few weeks after the high conflict situation, my sibling will reach out as if nothing has happened. This is true for other family members as well. So my question is, does the HCP remember do they care? I seem to have more understanding of those who act out when under the influence of alcohol, but I don't have a good perspective about the HCPs behavior. So I've found that though to be a very interesting analogy about alcohol and high conflict behavior because when people are trapped in that right reacting brain, it's just stored up with all the negative junk, right? The F-bombs, the other nasty things, and they don't have that impulse control or that filter. It's just gone in those moments. So I'm thinking about if you're drunk inebriated, you lose your filter. It's very, very similar. So all of that, what I call maybe verbal vomit, just kind of comes out in those high conflict moments, right?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, it's a really good analogy. What's been learned about the brain and what I really helped me understand a lot of this behavior is the idea of the right brain in the left brain. I like what one researcher said years ago, and I'm blanking on his name, he was from Harvard, and he said that people say with borderline personality that they tend to jump back and forth from right and left hemisphere, left hemisphere associated with more ordinary problem solving, more matter of fact behavior. And that one day you might be just fine, you're helpful, and the next day you're a piece of dirt and there's nothing you can do. That's right. And that's more that right brain reactivity. And some people with that personality have a smaller corpus callosum, which is the bridge between the two hemispheres. So they physiologically have less control over going back and forth.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And so you're really almost dealing with two people and at different times you get the angry reactive person or you get the logical left brain person. And so the thing is to understand that they jump the tracks and it's like a record player where it skips ahead and then skips back. But part of this is it's very common that we hear the next day, the person's just friendly and ordinary as if nothing happened. It's not in the front of their mind. The trouble is you could bring it back to them and you don't want to. This is a no-no is don't say, well, what was happening with you yesterday? And they go yesterday. Yesterday, oh, well, yesterday you did such and such, and now you're back where they were. They jumped the tracks back to their ripe brain defensiveness. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
And that's one of the things people in treatment for, borderline personality, dialectical behavior therapy, DBT is particularly good at helping people connect their upsets to certain phrases. I can manage this situation, I can manage my distress. They teach distress tolerance, and so that helps the person be calmer, which helps them be more reasonable. And so with two to five years of that kind of therapy, some people outgrow the borderline personality disorder diagnosis. But that's the pattern is this jumping the tracks from everything's fine to rage and for people to realize this is a personality characteristic. And again, don't get too close, but don't be too rejecting. And with younger people who aren't 87 like the prior person, they can maybe help themselves to overcome this disability in a sense.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Okay, so that's borderline, but what about the other types, personality types? Let's say the narcissistic personality, it isn't just the borderline that can react in this way with saying very harsh and often mean things, right?
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah. So with narcissistic personality, it's almost more built into their personality to just regularly be insulting, blaming, complaining, and they don't have the same mood swing that the borderline does. But yes, it can be very unnerving, very insulting, very arrogant. And what's interesting is people with borderline have emotion dysregulation. People with narcissistic personalities seem to have self-esteem dysregulation. They don't feel okay unless they're putting somebody else down and feel superior to somebody. And if they have a setback to regain their sense of self-esteem, they have to blame somebody else. They can't take responsibility like I did. It would just be devastating, and their personality doesn't allow that. So these two personalities we often see with insult to anger, blame, et cetera. But let me add in the antisocial personality, they like to blame in many ways as a way of dominating you, controlling you is you're an idiot, therefore I'm going to take over your company or I'm going to beat you up and be in charge of the family. All of these personalities have that characteristic. It's outside themselves. They're projecting all their anger outside themselves, and because they don't waste any time reflecting on their own behavior, they've got more energy than the average person for blaming everybody else
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Twice as much. So you said with the borderline it's emotion dysregulation with I guess mood dysregulation with the narcissist dysregulation. So what would you say the antisocial, the dominating personality, if you could put a dysregulation, what would you call that one? I know I'm putting you on the spot here, but I'm writing these down.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
There's a, it's less obvious because their disconnect is really a drive to dominate control harm, get what they want. So it's almost like a need dysregulation. Their needs get out of proportion that they need. They need what you have one older teenager, which is when antisocial starts showing as older adolescents and young adulthood. One, it was a woman, a young woman, I say 18 or 19, saw another teenager with a beautiful coat and said, I love your coat. And woman said, well, thank you. She says, give it to me. It's like, no, I'm not giving you my coat. And so she stabbed her to death and took her coat. And that kind of thinking for antisocial is I want what I want and I want it now. It doesn't matter who's in the way, I'm going to get it. So maybe it's a need dysregulation. I'm not sure how that goes. But what's interesting and fascinating is to learn that people with antisocial personalities are really driven from inside to do a lot of their behavior. It's really not a logical choice. It's like a drive. And that's what makes them so dangerous and also helps us. We need to understand this isn't something you can logically talk them out of. You have to set limits and have consequences. And that's why about half of people with that disorder end up in and out of the prison system,
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
But the other half often end up in business. And so you can't assume that everybody with that personality is obviously a criminal history,
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Except they might start in business but eventually end up in the legal system, right?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yes. So you get your Enrons and Bernie Madoffs and all of those who had
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That personality. Lizabeth Holmes. Lizabeth Holmes, a lot of them. Okay, so let's go back to the question and we'll finish up this and then we have one little short question after that and then we'll wrap up. I would not be able to show my face to anyone after saying 10% of what I've heard come out of this person's mouth. I'm really just curious. At this stage in my life, I've come to the realization that I cannot have a relationship with my sibling and I'm really relieved and happy with this. I'm just seeking understanding at this point. So I think hopefully that between what we've talked about in this question, and then in the previous question at the beginning of the episode, there's probably enough wrapped in there about adjusting your expectations, having an arm's length relationship if you have one at all. And I should say here that we can make choices to have either an arm's length relationship and some people choose to not have any relationship at all, but those are decisions that every person has to make, and you just want to check your own thinking that you're not being totally all or nothing and just reacting, and instead are making a choice that's good for you and maybe for your family, your own children, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Okay, so last question.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
So this is a situation with my mother lives in a different country. She's elderly and she doesn't believe in the banking system. So she keeps her cash, saves up her cash, and she puts it out on her porch. So she let my sister and I know, and my sister lives near her, she let us know that she had over $10,000 in a jar along with some important paperwork out on her patio. Patio. Now, my sister called me and we talked about this and she brought it up. She almost never calls me. We have very little to say she's caused a lot of trouble in our family for many, many years. And she came up with this long, detailed explanation about this money that now mom says is missing from the jar. Our mother thinks that the son-in-law stole it, my daughter's husband. So saying, my daughter would never do that.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
So we know that based on a long history that my sister took the money, she's always running behind on her bills. It just doesn't surprise us at all. And she's asked us to not say anything to her husband about the money we're going to visit in a week or two, and we want to know, do we say anything to our mom about this? It's unlikely she will believe us. Do we say anything to our sister and her husband about this? What I'd like to do is just address it while we're all together, but I know that it will cause a major explosion and maybe destroy the relationship forever. What do we do?
Speaker 2 (38:43):
First of all, the mother that's putting the money out, et cetera, is a grownup. And she gets to do what she wants unless she has a conservator or guardian that's been court appointed to take care of her decision making. So the bottom line is she's allowed to make bad decisions. And this is a problem as people age, and this is a reason that some people get conservators or guardian depending on what state you're in. It's the same thing where someone else makes your important life decisions and manages your money and such. If that's not the case, she's allowed to be, let's say, eccentric and give money to her porch, giving it away to the world.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
So that's, first of all. So in other words, there's no role she has to take here. It's a choice. Now, she may choose to discuss it with her mother. She may choose to say, Hey mom, there's some things I'm thinking about might be good for us to meet with a counselor. Next time I'm in town. Let's meet with a counselor and talk about different things and things that make you happy and things that make you worried. I'll talk about things that make me happy and things that make me worried. And if she'll agree to meeting with a counselor, that may be a good setting to talk about. And I'm worried that really that's a high risk putting money on the porch. I mean, you see all those commercials about leaving boxes to be delivered on the porch and someone stealing the box from the porch.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Porch donations. We could call this add to this bill that now this amount of money has gone missing. Mom has put in several more thousand dollars in the jar and put it back on the porch. So now the question is, what do we do with, should the mother tell? She plans to tell both daughters about it. Again,
Speaker 2 (40:50):
The daughter can try to have a rational conversation about it. She can decide whether to talk about it with the husband. The mother's saying, don't talk to him about it. Doesn't keep her from talking.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
No, it's the sister. It's the sister that's saying, don't talk to my husband. So Oh,
Speaker 2 (41:06):
The sister's
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Husband. Husband, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
All of these are decisions. So the daughter really has a lot of choices here and can decide what to do. This is kind almost one of those Dear Abby kind of situations. It's got all the relatives and everyone's got opinions and this and that, but to me, the biggest thing are right now, it's free choice. You can make bad decisions. It's her money. She can make bad decisions. And that's why working, discussing it, having a counselor. But on the other hand, I'd be concerned if she's making these kind of bad decisions that this could increase. And that's where she should talk to a lawyer about whether a conservator of her estate, that's the finances or a conservator of the person that's where she lives, medical decisions, et cetera, come into play. And it may be that the mother is heading in that direction, but first I'd really try to get her into some kind of counseling session and see if could set some limits on that in terms of dealing with the sister. In some ways, it's easier to let go of a relationship with a sibling because they're able to take care of themselves versus letting go of a relationship with an elderly parent where you may want that arm's length relationship so you can still help and be aware of what's going on, but sometimes just going, Hey, I'm out of here. If you're going to have to deal with this yourselves, and I'm not going to play, I'm not going to be part of this dysfunctional dynamic.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, I kind of go toward a more setting limits approach, and I know it's the mother's money, but she's elderly. And in my view, it comes down to elder abuse. This is financial abuse. If you're taking money that the mother has specifically said is for both of her adult children after she's gone and the one sibling is taking all the money and lying about it and things like that. So I kind of look at it as it is time to set a limit. And I guess, bill, what you're saying with talking to a lawyer, maybe getting a conservatorship or something, a guardianship over that is a good way to go and understanding at least the laws of that country and how they work around that. And also, it just behooves the point that you, it's great to take care of these things in advance and have a trust set up or something, but many people don't.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
So this one I know happens to a lot of people, and at the end of one's life or the last stages of life, it's so easy to manipulate and take, just take money. I think with some, maybe in high conflict land, there's just a need. As we were talking about on the last question, a need dysregulation, and I need that money, so I'm going to get it, and that's it, and I'm not going to pay it back. So stopping someone like this, I guess it is a very personal decision everyone has to do, but make for themselves. But I think if you're a person who's afraid to rock the boat, you're walking on it eggshells a bit, it's a shame that others can just steamroll you like that.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, well, I think talking to an elder law attorney would be good because see, the thing with elder abuse is when it's family member who may be inheriting money, taking money, the lines are fuzzier, whether someone can intervene with that, but I think they need to get a local opinion about what the laws are, where she is and what the options are. This is definitely a case, I think, for a legal consultation and also maybe a family counselor meeting, but this is an elder situation, and these are coming up more and more, and the lines are very gray, especially when it's family members.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
So people take care of your business, talk to a lawyer way earlier, have your trust documents set up, have your will done, and have a trusted party that can handle those things for you.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Well, thank you listeners for sending those questions, and thank you everyone for listening today. We went a little bit long, but bill's been gone a while, so we needed to catch up. So next week we'll be talking about a lot of things related to high conflict divorce, from grandparent alienation to therapy, to communication to protection orders, and more. So send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself, connect with others, and don't forget to set limits while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.