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Join Megan Hunter and Bill Eddy from High Conflict Institute in their first Q&A Lab, answering questions you have sent in.
In this episode we host our very first Q & A Lab where we answer your questions about high conflict people. We focus on three questions:
Listen in as we answer your questions by identifying whether it’s a high conflict behavior or not, providing insight into the behaviors, and making suggestions for handling them.
We’ll be doing a monthly Q & A Lab. Submit your questions anytime!
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Submit a Question for Bill and Megan
All of our books can be found in our online store or anywhere books are sold, including as e-books.
You can also find these show notes at our site as well.
Note: We are not diagnosing anyone in our discussions, merely discussing patterns of behavior.
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.
Megan Hunter:
Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most complicated people, those with high-conflict personalities. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, Bill Eddy.
Bill Eddy:
Hi, everybody.
Megan Hunter:
We're the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In today's episode, we are taking your questions. We've had a huge response from you, our listeners, about your unique high-conflict situations, and they are so good, so thank you for taking time to send them in.
Megan Hunter:
First, a few quick reminders. If you are dealing with a high-conflict situation created by a high-conflict person, we'd love to hear from you. This is your chance to get your questions answered directly by us. You can submit them by clicking the Submit a Question button at our website, highconflictinstitute.com/podcast, emailing us at podcast@highconflictinstitute.com, or dropping us a note on any of our socials. You can find all the show notes and links at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast as well. Make sure you subscribe, rate and review, and please tell all your friends about us. I say this every week, but we would love it if you could tell your friends about us and leave a review. Telling just one person that you like the show and where they can find it is the best way you can help us out and really help other people learn how to address high-conflict people.
Megan Hunter:
Now, one quick note. We are not diagnosing anyone in our discussions or sharing personal details about situations. We are merely discussing patterns of the behavior with the goal of helping you find the solutions and find the missing peace, P-E-A-C-E. We appreciate you listening so very much. Now, on with the show.
Megan Hunter:
This is our first Q&A lab and we've received some amazing questions. I'm kind of springing these on Bill. I love to just pick his brain. This is what Bill and I've done for 15 years. When I have a question, I go to Bill and I say, "Hey, this is the scenario I'm faced with," or, "We have a client that's that's asked this question," and I pick Bill's brain and we just discuss and discuss. That's what we're doing today.
Megan Hunter:
Let's just dive right into the first question. This one deals with narcissists. "How do you deal with someone who is such a narcissist that they think are a narcissist and they try to 'Bill Eddy' you, but they're the actual narcissist? They give Bill Eddy-type advice when it's clear they don't have insight into their own behavior. The person I'm thinking about also has BPD traits. None of these techniques work on this particular person with borderline and narcissistic behaviors. They just copy and try to do it back. Any advice?"
Bill Eddy:
Yeah, this is something that's coming up more and more as people become aware of narcissists and narcissistic behavior, but also narcissists are becoming aware of this, too, and so what you're talking about does happen. First of all, in dealing with other people's high-conflict situations, I always had to remind myself, it could be either way. This person could be blaming the other person for the behavior that they're doing. We call that "projection." We're seeing that a lot, for example, in family court cases, in workplace conflicts. The first person to complain, everyone goes, "Oh, well, this person must be telling the and accurate," and then you find out, no, the first person to complain is the person who's being a high-conflict person, so you got to watch out for that and just be aware of that.
Bill Eddy:
Now, in general, we recommend using the same techniques that we use with everybody, BIFF response emails, so that you keep it brief and formative, friendly, and firm, EAR statements, showing empathy, attention, and respect. What this person's saying is none of these techniques work on this particular person, they just copy and try to do it back. Now, it's good. When someone writes a BIFF response back, if it's a BIFF response, and we are hearing more and more, if you write that way, that's what you'll get back. But it's not always the case. What I always suggest is you do whatever methods you can, and if none of them work is try to walk away from the situation. You're not going to change anyone's personality in one conversation and you'll just frustrate yourself.
Bill Eddy:
The other thing is looking at what their choices are. Let's say it's a family member or a roommate is just focus on, "Let's talk about what our choices are now and come up with what you can do and what you suggest the other person decide. Here's some choices of what you can do if you don't change," et cetera. I think our tools and techniques work with this situation, most of the time. Nothing works a hundred percent of the time, so try a few things, and then see if you can take a break from the situation.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah, great advice, Bill. It's so interesting when we get those calls. We've had thousands probably of calls and emails and other contacts from people all over the world who say, "I've just found your website," or, "I read your book and I've figured out that my spouse is one of these high-conflict personalities you talk about," and we always have to take that moment and step back. You just don't know if that is the person who is actually the high-conflict person or not and I think that's one of the bigger mistakes that people make is accepting that information as valid truth right off the bat. Would you agree?
Bill Eddy:
Absolutely. The word "projection" is one that everybody really should learn, that that may be what's happening, and you're getting what the other person is doing, but they're saying about you, so we're hoping to educate people. Watch out for that. Maybe things aren't always as they seem.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah, it's a very fascinating phenomenon, that the very people that we're talking about are the ones who do blame, and the reason is they do honestly believe and feel so strongly, right, within their own system, I call it their "operating system," that the reason they feel kind of miserable or the reason they aren't getting along with people very well, it comes from outside of themselves. It comes from someone external to them. There's no way they could be creating this drama or chaos themselves. If you're thinking that they're really making this up, I'm here to say, no, they're not. They truly believe that the other person is high conflict or the narcissist. Well, that was a great question. Whoever sent that in, thank you.
Megan Hunter:
Now, let's go on to the second question. This one is more related to workplace conflict. "I am the senior staff member for an organization with elected leadership. The president is definitely an HCP, but directs that conflict secondhand. He brings complaints to me more than daily about his second-in-command, but refuses to discuss them with her. I am not even sure if she knows he isn't happy with her. He also complains daily about every single staff member. Everything is everyone else's fault. They've had previous years as a high-performing team under previous leaders. Now, my staff are starting to withdraw to do what's needed to deliver their job rather than igniting our work because everything they do is criticized and not good enough, and I feel the same, so how do I begin to resolve in the workplace?"
Megan Hunter:
This is a good one, Bill, and we're going to do a little role play here. I have some ideas to talk about, but you in our 15 years with High Conflict Institute, the phrase "managing my narcissistic boss" still ranks first in searches for our site, so obviously this is quite a popular subject and a lot of people are experiencing this and it can be frustrating because you're in a role where you're kind of intimidated because the person you're reporting to is your supervisor, your boss, your manager, so it can be really tricky.
Megan Hunter:
But I suggest one of the easiest ways to handle this is to be prepared every time he brings you a complaint and respond with this two-parter. Of course, I'm going to give this suggestion, and then I'm going to ask Bill for his suggestion because Bill's always a step ahead of me. But my suggestion would be to give an EAR statement. This person comes in, gives you a complaint, and you give an EAR statement followed by a question. I like to call this "calm before think," meaning you have to calm the person instead of arguing with them or explaining too early to them and then get them thinking. Calm with an EAR statement and then shift into thinking by asking him a question. Here's a quick example. Bill is going to be the complainer here and I will be the responder.
Bill Eddy:
Okay. Oh, Megan. Oh, my gosh. I'm so annoyed with Amanda again. It's another "Here we go again" situation.
Megan Hunter:
Oh, hey, Bill. Oh, dear. That sounds frustrating again. Have you thought about how you could handle it so it can get resolved? It's as simple as that. There was a two-parter. "Hey, Bill. Oh, dear. That sounds frustrating again." That's an EAR statement that shows empathy, attention, and respect. Then I shifted immediately into a question. Instead of leaving Bill lingering there with just, "That sounds frustrating," which will calm his brain, I want to shift him into problem-solving and get him distracted from the complaint. It's really can be as simple as that, in just two sentences, you might stop the complaining. Bill, does this work and why? Will it work every time?
Bill Eddy:
Well, from my experience and feedback that I get, because we've been teaching this for 15 years, EAR statements, is that it works about 90% of the time, so it's always worth a try. By empathizing with the person, and with EAR statements, it could be, empathy, it could be attention, it could be respect, any of those three, often just a sentence or two does calm the person down. They feel like, "Oh, good. You care," or, "You understand," something like that.
Bill Eddy:
Why it works is it calming the emotional side of our brain. I like to think of that in many ways as the right hemisphere of the brain where a lot of the up upset emotions are most active. What's interesting is asking a question gets the person to think, so they're going over more to the left hemisphere. Now, maybe the geography of it, neuroscientists will say, "That's way too simple, Bill," but it works, and that's what's amazing. I think Megan's phrase, "Calm before thing," connects those two. The person feels better because you've acknowledged them and what they're feeling without opening them up. But asking them a specific question gets them having to do regular cognitive thinking, so it's a good, in many ways, very brief intervention. This can happen in a minute or less.
Megan Hunter:
Is there a way to make this even a little bit better by having them focus on a choice at the end of that question? I guess it would be... Let's see. "Oh, hey, Bill. Oh, dear. That sounds frustrating. Have you thought about how you could handle it so it could get resolved?" Would there be another sentence you could put on there to get them thinking even more?
Bill Eddy:
Well, you might give them a couple choices and say, "Have you thought about discussing this with the other person? Or have you thought about writing an email or something? Have you thought about getting outside consultation on this?" It really depends what kind of issue it is. But if the person who's complaining is a high-conflict person and they're at the top of the ladder, that's where you really have to rely a lot on EAR statements because you don't have a lot of power, but you can also say a choice, like someone that's underneath, a supervisor could say, "Hey, boss. You've got these two projects you want me to make priority. Which one would be the highest priority so I know how to work on this?" You get them thinking, they have to think.
Bill Eddy:
It's really hard when the top of the organization is high conflict. We read about and hear in the news organizations that really get run into the ground by a brilliant entrepreneur who then just destroys their own organization because their high-conflict personality got it going, but couldn't sustain it. Techniques like this, the more employees have this and the more people can, if you have a board of directors, can say, "Wait a minute, this CEO maybe needs to get some coaching or needs to move on."
Megan Hunter:
It's a little bit, I guess at the worst end of it, sort of self-preservation. Use these techniques. If you don't have a lot of power in the organization, this person will continue working there, and you can't get the board of directors to listen, or you're afraid of getting fired, I mean, these are really tricky situations, so if you can just use a simple EAR statement, you can use that alone, just, "Oh, yeah, that does sound frustrating," right, and hope that he moves along, or use the EAR plus a question, "Hey, that sounds frustrating. What options have you tried? Have you talked to her about those things?" That gets you at least gets them thinking and distracted away from the complaint. A little bit of self-preservation is better than none, right?
Megan Hunter:
Here's another way I could have responded to Bill's complaint. "Hey, Bill. Oh, dear. That does sound frustrating again. Have you thought about how you could handle it so it can get resolved? It seems to be taken a lot of space in your head. Now, here's something that I do when I'm kind of frustrated. I make a list of options and then I analyze it against a checklist, which ultimately leaves me with the best way to handle it. Would you like to see it?" I don't know, Bill, that's kind of a distraction, but maybe it's too much. I don't know. Would this work?
Bill Eddy:
Well, I think it depends on your relationship with the person. This could be a very good statement, partly because you're showing empathy by saying, "It seems to be taking a lot of space in your head," and if you've got enough of a relationship, they might go, "Oh, yeah. You're really right." If you don't have a relationship really, that might not be a great thing to say because they might feel that you're being patronizing to them or something because you think that they've got a problem. If it's a high-conflict person, they're very sensitive to any implications that they have a problem. But I think the suggestion of what to do and asking if they want to see is a real good idea because if they say, "No, I don't need to see that," you go, "Oh, okay. Fine." But a lot of people be curious, "Yeah. Well, show me what you do." I mean, even as you said it, I was going, "Yeah, show me what you do, Megan."
Megan Hunter:
Just keep in mind and be aware that, of course, a lot of HCPs will never take your advice, so you could be wasting your time, but at least this is only maybe a few minutes of your time instead of hearing complaint after complaint for an hour.
Megan Hunter:
Now that we have one last approach, I want to test with you, Bill. You've given the complaint and here's another response. "Oh, hey, Bill. That does sound frustrating. It doesn't seem to change, does it? Honestly, I have so much work on my plate that the Amanda issues are really starting to add to my list, which is causing me some stress, so I'm just going to go back to work now."
Bill Eddy:
Again, it depends on the relationship that you have. If you can say, "It's really now stressing all of us," maybe something that gets more attention. If you can say, if we're thinking in terms of setting limits, is saying, "I've got this project I've got to get done, so this really isn't a good time for me to listen about Amanda. Maybe we can talk about this later," which is a pretty neutral way to do it because you're are not saying they're doing anything wrong, you're just saying you're too busy to be able to help right now.
Megan Hunter:
Right, and for most HCPs, they're upset right now and they want to verbalize it and complain right now, so maybe if you can put them off a bit, the right now moment is over, and they'll forget about it once they're back into a meeting or something. Would that be accurate?
Bill Eddy:
Yeah. You may start with an EAR statement and then say, "I'm really busy right now and I've got to get this project in," and then end with an EAR statement, "I know it's hard dealing with this, but maybe make some notes for yourself or something, but I'm not going to be able to help right now. I may be able to later." You're not slamming the door in their face and you're empathizing with them and you're setting limits and that's really important. I think EAR statements with limit-setting with high-conflict people really can still the conflict. If you just give EAR statements without setting limits, they may wear you out, and if you just set limits, then they're going to feel offended, so an EAR statement and setting limits is often the best way to go.
Megan Hunter:
EAR really is the door to anything you need to use to deal with an HCP. Any situation, any dilemma, right, just use a little EAR. I think some people get a little frustrated thinking, "Oh, that sounds too simple," or, "Why should I be the one that has to do it?" But if you want to be next level and you really don't want to spend a lot of time on the chaos and all this distraction, just use an EAR statement, and it'll either open the door for whatever you need to say, or it'll calm them and get them to go focus on something else, so EAR is king. All right, that was a great one.
Megan Hunter:
Let's move on to our last question of the day. This one is surrounding divorce and co-parenting. The scenario is a child of divorcing parents gets sick at school and in this day and age we have COVID protocols. Those protocols require immediate pickup when the child gets sick, so the school called Mom, no answers. School calls Dad, who's at work. Dad tries to contact Mom because it's not his turn for parenting time, the child isn't supposed to be with him during this time, so he can't get ahold of mom and asks his parents to pick up and care for the child until mom can collect her, which they do.
Megan Hunter:
Then Dad texts Mom that the child is at his house ready for pickup, and shortly thereafter, Mom speeds up to the house, rings the doorbell repeatedly, and shouts that the grandparents have no right to interfere with her parental authority and she is contacting police because it's kidnapping, exclamation point! Then she grabs the sick child by the arm and marches the child out the door, into the car while continuing to threaten the grandparents and the grandparents and the child are both kind of in freeze mode at this point.
Megan Hunter:
The question: "What would an appropriate your statement be in such a situation, or are there times or people who are so extra high conflict that EARs shouldn't be attempted?"
Bill Eddy:
Yeah, I think in a situation like this, there's no harm in trying an EAR statement, but with the high-conflict person so angry and upset, they're not going to hear much. You might say, "Hey, we're just trying to help. Sounds like a hard time. We'll talk to you later," but it may not even be worth doing that. That's a judgment call. Just like the prior one we said depends on your relationship, in many ways here, this depends on the relationship. Some grandparents have a kind of ability to manage the high-conflict parent and others are just really shut out of communication, so it really depends.
Bill Eddy:
What I think is good is that the text was sent afterwards saying, "No one's trying to interfere. Just trying to help, make sure the child's cared for," is a great text message, shows some respect for her for the mother's role. Mother's reply, "Don't contact me. Follow the law and court order," I just ignore that, not respond to that. Many high-conflict people have rollercoaster moods, so they may not even remember what they said tomorrow, so I wouldn't get too rattled by that, just going, "Okay, one of those days for Mom," and still try to maintain a normal level of relationship, whatever it is, even if it's sending holiday cards and wishing them well. I wouldn't react further, but I think it was good that they sent that text. I don't see anything real different to do here. I think the grandparents did what was reasonable and there's nothing they could do when Mom came, but sending that text afterward makes sense, and then not responding afterwards, so the "Do not contact me" thing, just ignoring that.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah, I was thinking about, "What would I do if I were in this situation?" I do think sending the text right away is, is good. I think I might have added that, "Hey, I know this is your parenting time and absolutely don't want to interfere. Just let us know what we can do to make sure you have the child with you," or something like that that takes the wind out of her sails because it sounds to me like this parent wants to be in charge of her parenting time and feels quite offended, so I think I would just say something brief that indicates you know that it's her parenting time. I don't know. Would you agree?
Bill Eddy:
Yeah, that's the respect. That's the respect. Might even use that word in the text to say, "No one was trying to interfere with your parental rights. We respect your role as Johnny's mother. Just trying to make sure the child was cared for. If there's any other way, we can be helpful, let us know," something like that, that might be a nice way to end it. Then just don't be rattled by "Do not contact me. Follow the law and the court order" is really venting by someone in an emotional rollercoaster.
Megan Hunter:
Yeah, I guess I hadn't read that part of the question yet. In case our listeners are wondering, "Where did that come from?", basically, the mom's immediate reply was, in all caps, "DO NOT CONTACT ME. FOLLOW THE LAW AND THE COURT ORDER." That's what you're replying to, Bill, is even whether there's a court order or not, or whatever, that this doesn't need to be responded to because it's someone just verbally venting. When they do that, those of us on the receiving end of that seem to let that just bounce around in our brains, right, perseverate, and we dwell on it. I hear of people going to bed and not sleeping for several nights because they're thinking about this so much, "How do I respond to this? How do I reply?" In the meantime, the other person, they just needed to get it out right in that moment right now. They're upset right now, so they're going to say those awful things in the moment, and then they feel better, frankly, as soon as they do.
Megan Hunter:
It's almost like when you're nauseous and you have the stomach flu and you finally vomit, sorry to be so crude, but you feel so much better afterwards, and that's kind of how this is, is once they get that out, they feel better, their anxieties come down. Now, it's landed on you and you get to choose whether to keep that, hold onto it, or just let it go. I think, like you said, Bill, in most cases, we can just let those things go because we recognize that this is their internal upset and we can't let it stick to us. We have to be like Teflon and just let it roll off and don't lose sleep over it.
Bill Eddy:
Yeah, let me just add that I think it's good to have a phrase for yourself, like, "It's not about me," something like that just helps you let go of it.
Megan Hunter:
I like that. That wraps up our first Q&A lab. These were really great questions. We appreciate you sending the questions in. Feel free to send any questions any time to us, whether it's about this episode or any question about HCP behavior. If you recognize some of these behaviors in yourself, don't beat yourself up. Instead, do something about it. Learn some emotion management skills, challenge yourself to think in terms of options, instead of all or nothing, and contact us if you want any help with that. We have a lot of great tools that are very helpful. In the show notes, you'll find links to Bill's book with Georgi DiStefano called It's All Your Fault at Work: Managing Narcissists and Other High-Conflict People, along with some links to some other books and articles that will be related to today's show.
Megan Hunter:
In next week's episode, we'll discuss high-conflict emotions. In general, we absorb emotions every day from others, but the emotions we absorb from an HCP can be highly contagious and create a lot more internal stress and external conflict. The most important piece about it, you don't won't even realize it's happening, so you won't want to miss this episode. Bill gets deep into emotion here and I think you'll really enjoy it.
Megan Hunter:
Remember to rate and review us and tell your friends and colleagues about us. That would mean the world to us. Thanks for listening. We hope our words made an impact in your life in a positive way today. Don't forget to enjoy every day as you work toward understanding humans, and most importantly, use our tools, use these skills to help find the missing P-E-A-C-E peace.
Megan Hunter:
It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at trustory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.